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SINJVISSIPPI 
 
SIJVMISSIPPI 
 
 A Valley Under a Spell 
 
 By 
 JAMES M. PHALEN 
 
 THE ASSOCIATION OF MILITARY SURGEONS 
 
 1942 
 
Copyright 1942 
 By James M. Phalen 
 
 PRINTED AND BOUND BY GEORGE BANTA PUBLISHING COMPANY 
 MENASHA, WISCONSIN 
 
3 11 ■ SB 
 
 T49s 
 
 To my comrades of the 
 
 86 (Black Hawk) Division 
 
 A. E. F. 
 
 1917-1919 
 
 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2012 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 
 
 http://archive.org/details/sinnissippivalleOOphal 
 
O could I flow like thee, and make thy stream 
 My great example, as it is my theme! 
 Though deep, yet clear; though gentle, yet not dull; 
 Strong, without rage; without overflowing, full. 
 
 —Sir John Denham 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Valley's Genius Loci 1 
 
 Horicon Marsh 9 
 
 Refugee Haven 23 
 
 Four Lakes 43 
 
 Rock Prairie . 55 
 
 Troy Valley 71 
 
 The Lead Country 91 
 
 Depression Year in the Metropolis 107 
 
 Land of Milk and Some Honey 121 
 
 Ganymede's Spring and Eagle's Nest 141 
 
 Grand Detour 157 
 
 Dixon's Ferry 173 
 
 The Prophet's Country 193 
 
 Saukanuk 207 
 
 L'Envoi 233 
 
 ix 
 

 
 r\ j 'M* 
 
 
 *:l :: V:vf ?v 
 
 The Sac Sentinel 
 
THE VALLEY'S GENIUS 
 LOCI 
 
 1 1 ot far distant from Semur-en-Auxois in the old kingdom 
 of Burgundy, there rises from the plateau land of the Cote 
 d'Or, a sharply detached hill of no great height and of no 
 great extent, with a village upon its summit. The abruptly 
 contoured hill and its crown of stone buildings are of them- 
 selves attention-arresting, but interest becomes fascination 
 when it is realized that here is the almost fabulous Mont 
 Auxois and town of Alesia. Situated as the hill is in a region 
 but sparsely populated and remote from travelled routes, it 
 may well be that its present day aspect is not greatly different 
 from that of twenty centuries ago. It is easy to visualize the 
 barren, rolling land around the hill covered with the camps 
 of Caesar's Roman legions and the ramparts of Alesia flaunt- 
 ing its standards and flashing back the sunlight from the bur- 
 nished weapons of its defenders. For it was from this hilltop 
 that the revolting Gaulish tribe of the Arverni under their 
 young chieftain Vercingetorix, for a year threw back the as- 
 saults of Caesar's heaviest phalanxes. But the fate of Alesia 
 was the usual one of a force which allows itself to become 
 invested. Its capitulation was followed by the massacre of its 
 garrison and the triumphal dispatch of Vercingetorix to 
 Rome, where he was paraded through the streets of the city 
 chained to the chariot of his conqueror. 
 
 1 
 
2 Sinnissippi 
 
 Caesar brought his armies into Gaul as an ally against the 
 Germans in the year 58 before the Christian era and turning 
 upon his allies, in seven years reduced the country to the 
 status of a Roman province. The revolt of the Arverni was the 
 last major effort of the Gauls and the capture of Alesia was 
 the death blow to the nation. 
 
 The name of the chief of the Arverni will awaken little 
 response in the memory of the world of today, but the 
 peasants of the villages on the hills above the Armoncon still 
 tell their children by the evening firelight of the grand 
 bataille in which the mingled blood of Gaul and Roman 
 flowed off the hill as far as the village of Saigny, two miles 
 distant, and of the bewitched steeds of the relieving army of 
 Vergassilaune that conspired together to carry their unwilling 
 masters out of the fight. 
 
 The story of Alesia and its defenders differs only in detail 
 from hundreds of such desperate ventures since the days of 
 the Gallic wars, where injustice and oppression could no 
 longer be endured, even though the alternative was a hope- 
 less fight with extermination only too clearly in prospect. 
 The leader of such a forlorn hope has awakened always a 
 popular enthusiasm and sympathy and though his lot in life 
 be difficult and his end tragic, his fame is likely to be more 
 lasting than that of his conqueror. On the site of one of the 
 angles of the defense works of Alesia the young chief of the 
 Arverni stands in heroic size in bronze upon a marble pedes- 
 tal. A plaque quotes from Caesar's Gallic Wars the words of 
 Vercingetorix to the assembled tribes of his country: "Gaul, 
 united into a single nation, animated by a common purpose, 
 can defy the world." 
 
The Valley's Genius Loci 3 
 
 Nearly a score of centuries in time and nearly half a world 
 of space intervene between Caesar's conquests and the so- 
 called Black Hawk War when General Winfield Scott mobi- 
 lized practically the entire military might of the nation in the 
 Rock River Valley in the spring of 1832 for the punishment of 
 the Sac and Fox tribesmen. 
 
 The analogies between the two events are not striking in 
 their details, but there was in each case a self-styled superior 
 race imposing its will upon a people whose lands it coveted. 
 In each case the weaker people had determined leadership 
 and a will for resistance. The leader of the Sac-Fox warriors 
 was of the same stern stuff as the Arverni king. He was 
 Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak, whose translated name, Black 
 Sparrow Hawk, is generally shortened to Black Hawk. In his 
 young manhood he had succeeded his father as a war-chief 
 of the Sac tribe which was allied to the Fox tribe to form one 
 so-called nation. This united people had for a century held 
 for its home and hunting ground the lands bordering the 
 Mississippi river on both sides from the mouth of the Wis- 
 consin river to the Des Moines rapids, including therein the 
 lower valley of the Rock. Forced with the people of the two 
 allied tribes across the Mississippi in the summer of 1831, 
 Black Hawk made the forbidden return crossing in the spring 
 of 1832, at the head of a band whose professed purpose was 
 the peaceful cultivation of their old cornfields in the Rock 
 valley. The course of their fateful odyssey, and of the pursuit 
 by the Government troops, led up the valleys of the Rock 
 and the Kishwaukee Rivers, into Wisconsin past Lake Geneva 
 and down Whitewater Creek to Lake Koshkonong. Seeking to 
 get back across the Mississippi River, they went across the 
 
4 Sinnissippi 
 
 Four Lakes country, thence northwest across the Wisconsin 
 River, across Sauk Prairie and the Kickapoo River country to 
 their utter defeat near the point where the little Bad Axe 
 River enters the Mississippi. The route of nearly four hundred 
 miles was strewn with the bodies of his followers, men, wom- 
 en, and children. Of about one thousand persons who crossed 
 into Illinois at the Yellow Banks in April, less than two 
 hundred escaped across the river into Iowa, only to fall into 
 the hands of the Sioux in August. The defeated leader was 
 sent a prisoner to Washington and exhibited to the populace, 
 not in chains, but in a military uniform furnished by Presi- 
 dent Jackson. 
 
 The century that has elapsed since this fateful campaign 
 has but increased the potent spell cast by the old Sac warrior 
 over the valley which had been his kingdom, and which saw 
 the destruction of his people. For it is not on account of 
 euphony alone that his name is borne by eight villages in as 
 many states, by one county, by village and city streets, by 
 city and state parks, by motor highways, by country clubs, 
 by athletic teams, by hotels of all grades of pretension, and 
 even by tea-rooms, drug stores and garages far beyond the 
 confines of the Rock valley. The Boy Scout organizations of 
 that section are grouped under his name, and hold their sum- 
 mer camps almost in the shadow of his memorial. 
 
 When our country went into the world strife in 1917, a 
 great Army camp sprang into being in the angle formed by 
 the junction of the Kishwaukee river with the Rock. It was 
 named in honor of General Grant, who with his faithful chief 
 of staff, General Rawlins, went into the Union service from 
 near-by Galena. Here in Camp Grant were trained under the 
 
The Valley's Genius Loci 5 
 
 aegis of the Black Hawk, 115,000 men. These were sent to 
 every combat unit in France, they took part in every engage- 
 ment in which our troops were involved and suffered battle 
 casualties to the number of the rifles in an Infantry Division. 
 When they were questioned, as often happened, about the 
 black spread-winged bird on its red back-ground that was 
 worn on their left upper arms they made answer that the 
 bird was the faucon noir, that its name was that of the patron 
 of the Division, a gallant warrior of their native valley, who 
 in the olden days had rallied his people in a hopeless effort 
 at defense of their homeland. 
 
 Black Hawk gave his autobiography, through an inter- 
 preter, to the editor of a local paper in Oquaqua, Illinois, 
 who took it down as it came from the lips of the Sac chieftain 
 soon after his return from temporary confinement following 
 the campaign of 1832. Whether due to the gift for language 
 of the old chief, or to the skill of the interpreter, Antoine Le 
 Clair, or that of J. B. Patterson, the amanuensis, there re- 
 sulted a classic of simple narrative and philosophic observa- 
 tion. Nothing could give a clearer interpretation of the 
 Indian's lack of understanding and bewilderment at the con- 
 trast between the fair words of government representatives 
 and the ruthless action permitted to the white man in his deal- 
 ings with the aboriginal American. It is filled with the expres- 
 sion of high hopes and of bitter disillusionment, of that keen 
 feeling of injustice which no right-minded person can deny 
 to the Indian of that day. The time for any remedy for these 
 injustices has gone by. The policy of despoiling the Indian 
 of his lands by any means possible has been carried to its 
 logical conclusion. Perhaps the ends attained were not to be 
 
6 Sinnissippi 
 
 permanently avoided, but the methods by which they were 
 brought about will remain a lasting indictment of the in- 
 humanity and double dealing which the American govern- 
 ment and people practiced toward the Indian tribesmen. 
 These northern hunter people were not without their quali- 
 ties of character and standards of conduct that could not fail 
 of appreciation by one who knew them well. They were kind 
 and hospitable, not only to their own people, but to the white 
 stranger who came in good faith among them. In their early 
 contacts with the whites they were easily won by a show of 
 friendship and were highly appreciative of small kindnesses 
 and much flattered by white hospitality and small honors. 
 Experience tended to dull their early credulity, but they con- 
 tinued in their faithful adherence to proven friendships. They 
 had great personal dignity and the most scrupulous regard 
 for their pledged word. They were of the highest personal 
 courage and had a fortitude in suffering that is past under- 
 standing. 
 
 The aboriginal American had indeed many good qualities, 
 more than is ordinarily conceded to him, but they were so 
 joined to qualities less attractive, that there emerged an 
 individual to whom no glamour could attach and a people 
 that no Caucasian wished for neighbors. It should however 
 be possible to show that Black Hawk and the many of his 
 kind who attempted to hold back the surge of the white man 
 from the east and south were not merely blood-thirsty un- 
 thinking savages, but primitive minded men inspired with a 
 patriotism of their own kind and with an attachment to the 
 section where they were born and reared. And, aside from 
 the sentiment involved, they were trying to defend their live- 
 lihood, and that of their wives and children. 
 
The Valley's Genius Loci 7 
 
 Their unbounded hospitality was the quality that made of 
 them the worst of neighbors for the white settlers. Anyone 
 might walk into an Indian lodge and know that a welcome 
 was there for him. The Indian thought to find the same in 
 the homes of the white men, but instead found his intrusions 
 brought only fear and distrust. The hunter-nomad civilization 
 of the Indian could not exist alongside that of the white 
 farmer. The peace and quiet of the forest hunting ground 
 was being broken by the sound of the ax and gun of the 
 settler, bringing an ever darkening outlook for Indian exist- 
 ence. There was no alternative but to move on ahead of the 
 advancing intruders, and the most to be hoped for was a 
 delay of the next migration. It is an impossible task to make 
 a romantic figure of any Indian that we have known. Only 
 in the case of the mythical Hiawatha has it ever been done. 
 While claiming for Black Hawk the good qualities of his race 
 in full measure, his most devoted apologist must admit that 
 he also had its defects to an equal degree. He was no less a 
 savage than were his followers, he had scant regard for 
 human life, and was implacable in warfare upon his enemies. 
 But he was the outstanding Indian patriot of his time and sec- 
 tion, with the courage to fight for what he conceived to be 
 his people's rights and for this reason his name is honored in 
 his native valley. 
 
 The history of the Rock valley begins with the story of 
 Black Hawk's career and continues with the settlement of 
 its acres following the campaign in which his people were 
 crushed and later banished to lands west of the Mississippi. 
 Short as that campaign was, the events provide the historical 
 landmarks of the valley. Not a mile of the river from its 
 mouth to the foot of Horicon Marsh, not one of its tributary 
 
8 Sinnissippi 
 
 streams, that did not see the passing of Indian parties, while 
 over the whole area are places where local history fixes the 
 scene of a skirmish, the site of a camp, the fording of a river 
 or a hill top used as a lookout post by the Indian warriors. 
 
 The name of Stillman is carried by a village in Illinois, near 
 the field where that officer suffered defeat by the Indians. 
 Fort Atkinson on the river in Wisconsin and Dodgeville in 
 the lead region to the west honor the names of leaders of the 
 Government forces. Whiteside county in Illinois is named 
 for the commander of the state's militia in this conflict. Lesser 
 figures in the campaign have had their recognition in local 
 place names. On the Indian side Keokuk was a wise and 
 prudent chief who kept his Fox followers out of the conflict. 
 He had a village named for him, which by fortuitous chance 
 became a city, but few today know the origin of its name. 
 Even though the army rolls of the Sac-Fox campaign carry 
 the names of many great men, names of generals and future 
 generals, of future presidents even, the central figure in it 
 was and still is, the valiant old Sac warrior. History calls it 
 the Black Hawk war. 
 
 Upon a sandstone bluff on the left bank of the Rock, a 
 short distance above Oregon, Illinois, stands the colossal 
 statue of Black Hawk, in reinforced concrete, overlooking for 
 miles above and below, the river valley which for so long 
 had been marked by the moccasin prints of his people and by 
 the wigwams of their hunting parties. Like the king of the 
 Arverni, his fame is secure and his memory will remain green 
 as long as stories of just though hopeless causes, bravely de- 
 fended, continue to stir the hearts of men. 
 
%*J 
 
HO RICO N MARSH 
 
 r\.LL Wisconsin is divided into two parts. The frontier be- 
 tween them is marked by a terminal moraine. It separates 
 two sets of people, each happy in its surroundings, by an issue 
 which is neither political nor social but geologic. Living thus 
 sectionally dissociated from each other, there is no dis- 
 harmony within the clans. In terms of geology they may be 
 classified as glaciated and non-glaciated peoples. The gla- 
 ciated faction lives in the eastern and northern parts of the 
 state, occupying a good three-fourths of its area. They are 
 thus in the majority. They are the heirs to the rich benefac- 
 tions of slowly moving ice and the deposit of drift. These 
 have produced a land of numerous deep lakes, with steep- 
 sloping banks, of wide river valleys, of long escarpments of 
 gravel paralleling the streams, of smoothly rounded detached 
 hills and of dykes of morainic deposit providentially thrown 
 athwart the valleys at intervals for the production of water 
 power. 
 
 The non-glaciated or "driftless" people live in the south- 
 west quarter of the state, the upper part of the area lying 
 between the Wisconsin and Mississippi Rivers. Fewer in num- 
 ber, they regard themselves as exclusive. Do they not live in 
 a land which, geologically, has no counterpart on the five 
 continents nor on the islands of the sea? If they have no 
 glacial lakes, they have castellated mesas, natural rock 
 bridges and all varieties of the bizarre in stone. They have 
 a sea bottom in the midst of their cultivated fields and isolated 
 
10 Sinnissippi 
 
 peaks of stone that are older than animal life upon the earth. 
 It is small wonder that these people are geologic snobs. 
 
 However attractive this western scene and however re- 
 luctantly it is left behind, our field lies in the less unusual area 
 of eastern Wisconsin, covered ages ago by the ice-field ex- 
 tending well below the foot of Lake Michigan. The monster 
 glacier which dug the bed of that lake was paralleled to the 
 west by lesser ones which carved out Green Bay, Lake Win- 
 nebago and the valleys of the Fox and Rock Rivers. They 
 dug depressions which in early post-glacial times were lake- 
 beds, but which in the course of time became sites of ex- 
 tensive marshes. Such was the area that at the beginning of 
 white settlement of the state was called the Winnebago 
 Marsh. 
 
 Before its improvement by the hand of man this area was 
 a giant morass of many miles of extent which lay to the 
 southwest of the lower end of Lake Winnebago and separated 
 from it by a low ridge of glacial drift. This ridge separated 
 by its narrow width the waters which should reach the St. 
 Lawrence by way of Green Bay and the Great Lakes from 
 those which would empty into the Gulf of Mexico by way of 
 Rock River and the Mississippi. Here was found one of those 
 short portages, so important and so much used in the early 
 days, for transfer between these two great water systems. As 
 a portage it was less favored than that between the Fox and 
 Wisconsin Rivers to the northwest or that between the Chi- 
 cago and Des Plaines Rivers far to the south. To the north 
 the ridge separated the Winnebago Marsh area from a similar 
 waste of bogland through which the Fox River of Green Bay 
 flowed its tortuous way to Lake Winnebago. 
 
Horicon Marsh 11 
 
 The marsh in those days was roughly ovoid in shape with 
 its long diameter extending north and south through the 
 northern half of the present county of Dodge and over into 
 the lower townships of Fond du Lac county to the north. It 
 covered an area of well toward one hundred square miles. 
 Along the crest east of the swamp was a dense forest of oak, 
 maple, ash, elm, birch and hickory. To the west was a stretch 
 of prairie broken by small groves of burr-oak. Looking west 
 from the ridge, the marsh appeared a sea of waving reeds, 
 broken only here and there by small clumps of willow and 
 aspen poplars, a sea of living green, over which successive 
 wind-driven waves broke against the slight elevation of its 
 far shores. Upon exploration it was found made up of peat- 
 bogs covered with grass and reeds, separated by water chan- 
 nels, lined with wild rice, which in places widened to the 
 dignity of brooks. On the higher placed bogs were the creep- 
 ing vines of the cranberry. The willow groups occupied 
 islands of greater or less extent. Everywhere along the water- 
 courses were the furry brown spikes of the cat-tail. Solid 
 green from a distance, the marsh was in reality a riot of 
 color, in season, from the myriads of bright-hued flowers, that 
 only a botanist could name. On the more solid hummocks 
 grew wild roses, yellow snapdragons and the purple vetch. 
 From between the bogs shone the glistening yellow of the 
 marsh-marigold. Upon the water floated the pads of the 
 water-lily and between them its bursting flowers, purple and 
 white and the brilliant blossoms of the water-anemone. 
 
 From the earliest knowledge of the Green Bay-Fox River 
 region it held a concentration of Indian population equaled 
 by but few sections of the country. This was due to the com- 
 
12 Sinnissippi 
 
 bination of abundant fish in the waters and plentiful water 
 fowl upon their surfaces, the latter attracted by the luxuriant 
 growth of wild rice, the folic avoine ( wild oats ) of the early 
 French explorers, in the wide marshes bordering the water- 
 ways. Not only was the wild rice favored by the migratory 
 bird flocks, but it was, even more than corn, the staple cereal 
 of the local Indian people. 
 
 When Jean Nicolet came to Wisconsin in 1634, after visit- 
 ing the Winnebago tribe on the Lower Fox he paid a visit to 
 the Mascoutin town on the ridge between the marshes of the 
 upper Fox and the Horicon basin. With the Mascoutins were 
 members of the Miami and Kickapoo nations. Father Allouez 
 in 1670 and Joliet and Father Marquette on their way to the 
 discovery of the Mississippi in 1673, visited the Mascoutin 
 town finding it much as reported forty years before. 
 
 The Outagamies (Reynards of the French, Foxes of the 
 English) were a fierce, warlike tribe, unfriendly from the 
 first to any white penetration of the country. When first met, 
 they had their principal village near the mouth of the Wolf 
 River, at the place since named the Buttes des Morts. Aided by 
 the Mascoutins they gave increasing trouble to the French, 
 until in 1699, with a village at Winnebago Rapids, where the 
 Fox leaves Lake Winnebago, they stopped all travel over the 
 Fox- Wisconsin river portage. In this stand they had the sup- 
 port of the Iroquois, their eastern allies, and of the English 
 at Albany. They gave as reason that they wanted nobody to 
 go into the country with which they were at war and that 
 they aimed at keeping firearms out of the hands of their 
 enemies, the Sioux. As custodians of the portage, they not 
 only exacted heavy charges for their assistance to traders and 
 
Horicon Marsh 13 
 
 explorers in moving their boats around the rapids of the 
 lower Fox, but they imposed a burdensome tariff upon all 
 goods passing their station. Repeatedly, from 1706 to 1735, 
 the French with their Chippewa and Ottawa allies, swept 
 over the Fox villages with fire and sword, until finally this 
 militant tribe left the valley never to return. One band tried 
 to join the Iroquois in the east but were practically annihilated 
 by the French from Fort Chartres and the Illinois at the In- 
 dian village of Maramec on the Fox River of the Illinois. The 
 remainder united with the Sacs in the lower Wisconsin valley 
 to constitute thereafter a single tribe, which later moved its 
 principal villages to the valley of the lower Rock in Illinois. 
 In the so-called Fox War the Mascoutins disappeared as a 
 tribe and the Miamis and the Kickapoos sought more peace- 
 ful scenes in the country around the lower end of Lake Mich- 
 igan. The wooded ridge east of the Winnebago marsh was 
 thereafter included in the hunting ground of the Menominees, 
 while the prairie to the west fell to the Winnebago tribe. At 
 the beginning of settlement in this section there was a vil- 
 lage of Winnebagos near the south end of the marsh and 
 encampments of less permanence around its borders. In these 
 favorable surroundings the Indian lived the simple life of 
 the practical person that he was. That which was not directly 
 useful in his primitive economy warranted no attention. He 
 hunted and fished only for food and covering, he grew or 
 gathered only what could be eaten and used the forest only 
 for the materials for his home, his canoe and his fire. He 
 sought quarries for stone for his implements and colored 
 earths for the painting of his body. The beauty of forest and 
 stream interested him little. 
 
14 Sinnissippi 
 
 The great marsh, whatever the season, was the livelihood 
 of these people. Through its devious waterways they plied 
 their canoes of cedar framing and birch bark covering. For 
 the Menominee was full heir to the typical Algonquin art of 
 canoe building and the Winnebago had become more Algon- 
 quin then Sioux from their centuries of association. In their 
 quest of the wild life of the marsh their deft paddling made 
 hardly a ripple upon the water nor a sound to vary the myriad 
 voices of bird and insect life. In the spring and autumn the 
 marsh was visited by thousands of migrating ducks that 
 sought the wild rice beds or rested in the wider expanses of 
 water which later came to be known by the colloquial name 
 of "widespreads". These they captured in nets and traps or 
 shot with arrow and gun. Gliding noiselessly through the 
 narrow channels they came upon small groups of the trum- 
 peter swan, upon the whooping crane, in pairs, and upon the 
 blue heron and the bittern, perched upon snags or fishing in 
 the shallow water. The height of the grassy growth shut off all 
 view except along the water channels. The islands of willow 
 and aspen, leaves fluttering and glistening in every breeze, 
 rang with the cries of the red-winged blackbird, the grackle 
 and the robin, while overhead whistling plovers flew from 
 one feeding ground to another. In the water darkened by the 
 underlying peat, were swarms of perch, favored food that 
 brought in the voracious pike to be shot by the arrow of the 
 Indian or impaled upon his barbed spear. Overhead a cloud 
 of swarming lake-flies followed the slow course of the drifting 
 canoe by day, while in the dusk the air became filled with 
 buzzing mosquitoes, thirsting for blood. Whether by day or 
 night there was no long interval without the bellowing voice 
 
Horicon Marsh 15 
 
 of the bull-frog from his place of hiding. From long distance 
 or from near at hand came the varying cadence of their 
 voices, from the customary deep reverberation of the bass- 
 viol to the sudden twang of the bass string of the violin. 
 These amphibian bulls of the marsh grew into giants of their 
 kind, and when the usual evening drone of cicada and katy- 
 did was interrupted, as it frequently was, by the full orches- 
 tration of the frog world, all other sound was submerged. 
 For the Indian who in time of need would eat anything that 
 was flesh, here was in season a meat supply to be counted on. 
 The marsh was a paradise for the muskrat whose nearby 
 presence was evidenced only by a glimpse of brown fur and 
 a swish of water as he dove for the under-water opening to 
 his summer home in the stream bank. This overgrown mouse 
 and its swarming progeny found here a home supplying all 
 their needs and as safe as any in a world full of enemies. He 
 left his snug retreat in the tree-roots seldom by daylight and 
 ventured little away from its entrance. By night he roamed 
 the neighboring bog and water for his food. He favored the 
 juicy stems of the water-lily, but found small fish and mollusks 
 a welcome variety. He was eternally alert for the presence 
 of the snapping turtle or the pike, while in the water and 
 against the whir of the wings of owl or hawk while on land. 
 But his most dreaded enemy was the mink, that aquatic 
 weasel of the glistening rich brown fur. The quick dive for 
 the refuge under the bank was no escape from this killer, 
 who followed through whatever devious windings and was 
 satisfied only with the extermination of the entire household. 
 And he was an easy prey to the wiles of man. The presence of 
 a luscious, scented piece of carrot lying adjacent to his door- 
 
16 Sinnissippi 
 
 way appeared a piece of great good fortune until the snap 
 of metal and the closing jaws of a trap left him to a quick 
 watery death. On account of his numbers his beautiful fur 
 brought no great price. But to the Indian trapper of the marsh 
 the muskrat was the one unfailing source of revenue. Were 
 it not for the two or three large additions each year to his 
 family he might have disappeared long ago with his neigh- 
 bors of the Mascoutin villages. 
 
 Autumn was the season of harvest of the wild rice. It was 
 woman's work. They set out in canoes, each with one at the 
 paddle at the stern and one or two to gather the grain. 
 Paddled along the waterways, they pulled down the grassy 
 growth which towered over their heads, with a widely curved 
 wooden staff while with a stout stick in the other hand they 
 beat off the heads of the stalks into the bottom of the canoe. 
 A load garnered, they returned to the village, where the 
 grain was stamped or pounded out of its coverings, winnowed 
 and stored in birch-bark baskets against the lean days of win- 
 ter. These Indians were growers of corn, but in this northern 
 country frost often came too early for its ripening. Acorns 
 from the eastern woods stored well and added a variety. 
 
 The winters were long and bitter around the marsh. Snow 
 came early, piled higher with the months, and left reluctantly 
 in the late spring. Marsh and river were ice-bound and snow- 
 covered. It was a world of white broken only by the green 
 of cedar clumps and the bluish-gray of massed tamaracks. 
 The Indian and his family crouched about the fire in the 
 smoke-filled atmosphere of a communal wigwam built of 
 heavy matting. The hoarded food supply was closely guarded 
 by the women and doled out sparingly. Though there were 
 
Horicon Marsh 17 
 
 deer and bear in the forest on the ridge and rabbits and squir- 
 rels everywhere the marsh was still the main source of the 
 meat supply. In successive holes in the ice gill-nets were sus- 
 pended and through other holes the Indian, covered with a 
 tent to exclude light, hunted the pike and other large fish 
 with his barbed spear. The muskrat, abandoning his summer 
 home among the willow roots, built for his winter shelter a 
 domed house of grass and reeds, held together by dried mud. 
 It was thick and strong enough to defy any but the larger 
 wild beasts. The Indian, however, driving his iron-shod spear 
 through its walls, could impale the inmates, that were then 
 dug out. The fur was at its best and the Indian minded not 
 an aromatic quality to his meat. 
 
 It was from this maze of bog and water that the assini sebi 
 ( stony water ) of the Algonquin people had its origin. Clear 
 swift-running streams, spring-fed from the wooded ridges to 
 the north and east coursed down to the marsh and joined 
 their waters. A flow continually augmented by the seepage 
 from spongy bogs found a stream, definitely of river volume 
 where it emerged from the foot of the marsh. But a few miles 
 below it expanded into Sinnissippi Lake, out of which it flowed 
 again south, then west and north to form a great half circle 
 before it straightened away for its final course southwestward 
 to the Mississippi. Within a short distance below the marsh 
 the valley was crossed by several ridges of drift, over which 
 the river tumbled to form rapids. Settler explorers gave their 
 names to Hubbard's Rapids, Hustis' Rapids, and Johnson's 
 Rapids, richly prized sources of water power and sites for 
 future towns. Between these dykes of drift the river flowed 
 quietly between low banks, paralleled by extensive stretches 
 
18 Sinnissippi 
 
 of marsh land. These expanses of reeds were broken at times 
 by heavy growths of the black larch, to form the sombre mass 
 called after its Algonquin name, the tamarack swamp. 
 
 Hubbard's Rapids, which crossed the morainic dyke limit- 
 ing the marsh at its southern end, early attracted the atten- 
 tion of a group of eastern settlers as a village site. One of the 
 group had come from the shores of Lake George in New 
 York and he named the new settlement Horicon, the fanciful 
 name that James Fenimore Cooper had given to the eastern 
 lake. The nearby marsh soon came to be called by the same 
 name. A dam at the village, begun in 1843 and completed 
 two years later, furnished power for a grist-mill and a saw- 
 mill. By 1847 the greater part of the old marsh area was oc- 
 cupied by a lake, fifteen miles long and covering an area of 
 fifty square miles. A pamphlet issued by the nearby city of 
 Watertown in 1854 carries a map upon which Horicon Lake 
 is shown of a size exceeded only in that section of the state 
 by Lake Winnebago. In these early years logs cut along Wolf 
 River were floated to Fond du Lac, carried thence to Horicon 
 Lake by railroad and again floated to the mills of Watertown 
 and Janesville. There had been some private buying of land 
 in the marsh and its flooding by the dam brought on litigation 
 which dragged through the courts for fifteen years, resulting 
 in a final decision of the state Supreme Court that the dam 
 be removed. Thus during the years of the Civil War the for- 
 mer Horicon Lake became again a marsh. In 1867 a local 
 company bought of the government 25,000 acres of marsh 
 land and placed it upon the market. In that era of cheap land 
 it sold but slowly and after twenty years but a fraction had 
 passed into individual ownership. Later, however, with in- 
 
Horicon Marsh 19 
 
 creasing land values, ditching machinery was put at work 
 and from the great marsh came the richest of farming land, 
 with deep lateral ditches draining into the canalized river in 
 the center. As a marsh it is today only a memory and soon 
 will be but a tradition. 
 
 It was to the foot of nearby Sinnissippi Lake, where a Win- 
 nebago village occupied one side of the lake outlet and a 
 Menominee village the other, that Black Hawk brought his 
 band in the summer of 1832 and where they were lost for a 
 time by the pursuing government troops. Leaving here, they 
 went down the river to Johnson's Rapids and then across 
 country to the Four Lakes. It was on this cross-country flight 
 that they were discovered by the scouting parties of General 
 Dodge, who commanded the territorial troops. 
 
 The passing of the Horicon Marsh has not been altogether 
 an advantage. Coupled with the clearing of the wooded east- 
 ern ridge there has resulted a marked diminution of the 
 volume of water in the river. The streams that flowed into 
 the marsh from the eastern hills, turning grist and sawmills 
 on their way, are but trickles of their former volume. There 
 exist no more the dense forests to hold the snow and the rains, 
 nor the reservoir of the great swamp to feed its waters grad- 
 ually into the river. With the drying up of the wild rice beds 
 the flights of wild duck and geese that formerly found here 
 their favorite feeding grounds, pass without stopping. The 
 swan, the heron, and the bittern seek further for waters more 
 remote from towns and motor roads. The muskrat is greatly 
 diminished in numbers, but still hides by day among the 
 willow roots in the river bank and still pits his cunning against 
 the pike, the turtle, the owl and the hawk at night. The trap 
 
20 Sinnissippi 
 
 of the farmer boy has taken the place of that of the Indian and 
 the professional trapper. The traveler through Wisconsin will 
 find that the Indian is still a familiar figure in his old hunting 
 grounds, but their old haunts around the Horicon Marsh and 
 in the Fox Valley know them no more. The Menominees have 
 their reservation on the Wolf River and the Winnebagos are 
 found in scattered groups in the western part of the state. 
 The Chippewas are as numerous as ever in the northern 
 woods, where also may be found stray groups of Ottawas, 
 Kickapoos and Potawatomies. These are the remnants of the 
 tribes of the great Algonquin nation, that from the Fox valley 
 sent their warrior bands under Charles Michel de Langlade 
 to the rout of Braddock on the Monongahela in 1775 and to 
 bring success to the arms of Montcalm around Lake George 
 in the following years. They formed the forces with which 
 Pontiac in 1763 cleared the Northwest Territory of British 
 soldiery and in 1777 they constituted the Indian contingent 
 of Burgoyne's army in northern New York. In the valley too 
 the British Colonel Dickson in 1812 recruited a band of war- 
 riors under the Sac chieftain Black Hawk, which joined 
 Tecumseh with the British army operating against the post 
 of Detroit. 
 
 The Indian seen today in his squalid camp by the roadside 
 can scarcely be visioned as a warrior of Langlade's fierce 
 band, a master of ambush and as formidable a fighter in per- 
 sonal combat as history gives any account of. His day of 
 glory is gone, even as is the great marsh on whose shores he 
 chose to make his home. Much too late there has come re- 
 cently to the people of Wisconsin a realization that the ob- 
 literation of the giant marsh was a mistake. The gains in 
 
Horicon Marsh 21 
 
 tillable land have been more than offset by the consequent 
 disruption of the section's water system. The court order that 
 brought about the draining away of the waters of the Lake 
 Horicon of the middle of the century past began the unfor- 
 tunate chain of events. Quite aside from the regulatory in- 
 fluence it would have had on the flow of Rock River, the 
 lake of 1850 would have been of much greater value to the 
 local inhabitants of 1950 than the few thousand acres of 
 reclaimed farmland, of which the country has more than its 
 need. In other sections about the Great Lakes, streams run- 
 ning through marshland have been dammed up to form small 
 lakes, whose shorelines have taken on values much beyond 
 that of the soggy acres that have been flooded. 
 
 Recently the conservation service of the state government 
 has become interested in making such restoration of the 
 marsh as is now possible, and to make it again a place where 
 migrating water birds will choose to stop. How fruitful these 
 efforts will eventually be cannot now be told, but it is cer- 
 tain that any artificial wild life refuge that is brought into 
 being in the old area will be but a mockery of the one that 
 existed once upon a time. 
 
c 
 
 •BP 
 
 S 
 
 
A REFUGEE HAVEN 
 
 l\ refugee is defined as one who escapes to a refuge, es- 
 pecially one who flees from persecution or political danger, to 
 a foreign country. There are two essential elements in this 
 definition, a wrong suffered and a haven reached. The world 
 today is teeming with oppressed peoples, who are called 
 refugees, but who are without a refuge. In a world regarded 
 as fully occupied, the former refugee, or his descendants, 
 reject the suggestion that he move over to make room for 
 the newcomer. He is somewhat willing to do this for his 
 kindred people, but he resists any crowding from a foreigner. 
 There appears to be scant cordiality in any welcome ex- 
 tended to the refugee immigrant in the hard world of today. 
 There has been persecution and there have been refugees 
 since history began. At no time has the world been so thor- 
 oughly at peace that there have been no mass injustices and 
 that people have not resented them with such means as they 
 could. Against persecution the stouter souls made forcible 
 resistance, tempting extermination if their efforts failed. 
 Those of weaker fibre strove to placate the oppressor and to 
 avoid his attention. In all minds was the thought of flight. 
 To many no imposition was sufficient to drive them from 
 their established homes. But to the enterprising, always the 
 young adults, migration was the practical solution of their 
 problems. While there have always been persecutions, there 
 have not always been havens of refuge. There has always 
 
 23 
 
24 Sinnissippi 
 
 been escape for individuals, but refugeeism is a matter of 
 mass migration. The ancient and medieval worlds were not 
 densely populated, but even then the arrival of hordes of 
 strangers was not welcomed, and migration of peoples was 
 seldom affected without a recourse to arms. With the dis- 
 covery of the new world and of Australia, there was opened 
 up an avenue of expansion which for centuries was available 
 to any who thought themselves mistreated at home. To the 
 millions who came to these new countries in search of better 
 opportunity, there were added other millions who came to 
 escape injustices, real or fancied. There are few countries of 
 the Old World which have not contributed refugees to the 
 western continent, persecuted either in body or soul, but a 
 comparison of records makes a sorry record for a few. 
 
 The story of the Puritans, as dissenters from the Church 
 of England and as refugees to our eastern shores three cen- 
 turies ago is a thoroughly familiar one. Though refugees for 
 conscience sake themselves, nowhere was there developed a 
 greater intolerance of opinion or belief which might be dif- 
 ferent from their own. They wanted no refugees in the Mas- 
 sachusetts Bay Colony of a different stripe than themselves. 
 Members of the Society of Friends, followers of George Fox, 
 thought to find among them relief from the persecutions put 
 upon them by the English authorities. In Britain for forty 
 years after the beginning of the movement, about 1645, they 
 were subjected to heavy penalties for such acts as refusal to 
 pay tithes, to attend prescribed services, and to subscribe to 
 required oaths, for preaching in public places, for Sabbath 
 breaking, and for disturbance of public worship by traveling 
 on that day. Coming as individuals to New England they 
 
Refugee Haven 25 
 
 fared no better there than in the homeland. A group col- 
 lected together in England formed a settlement, first in the 
 Raritan valley in New Jersey and later in Pennsylvania, where 
 their leader, William Penn, had acquired a refugee haven 
 for them. It is to the credit of this colony that it achieved a 
 practice of toleration far in advance of that of Massachusetts 
 Bay. In all the acts of toleration of this age there were always 
 exceptions leveled at those whose convictions differed too 
 widely from a commonly accepted standard. Another refugee 
 group of this period was the colony of English Catholics 
 which the Calverts brought to southern Maryland in 1633. 
 The acts of toleration issued by these Proprietors of Mary- 
 land were marvels of liberality in their time, yet they limited 
 their religious toleration to Christians of Trinitarian belief. 
 This colony was faced across the Potomac River by the crown 
 colony of Virginia, with all the restrictive laws of old Eng- 
 land intact, and all the popular prejudices in full force. On 
 the north, it had a feud on with the Penn interests, which was 
 ended only by the drawing of the Mason and Dixon line. 
 The unity of the Maryland colony was disrupted first by a 
 Puritan uprising and later by its control as a British crown 
 colony. 
 
 Other elements in our early immigration are equally well 
 recognized as of refugee character. It is not so generally 
 known that the valley of the upper Rock River in Wisconsin 
 was the haven for groups of Old Lutherans, forced out of 
 northern Germany by restrictions upon their freedom of wor- 
 ship. This desire for religious freedom was the principal cause 
 of German migration to Wisconsin from 1830 to 1850. To 
 these refugees from religious oppression were added a new 
 
26 Sinnissippi 
 
 element following the political disturbances which shook 
 Germany, along with other European countries in 1848. 
 
 From its beginning, Protestantism in Germany was divided 
 into two great sects, the followers of Luther and those of 
 Zwingli and Calvin. The line of demarkation which was 
 drawn when Luther's controversy with the Swiss reformers 
 took place, had been strictly held down to the end of the 
 eighteenth century. In the opinion of theologians of both 
 schools their disagreements in matter of doctrine was of vital 
 importance, and a union of the two churches therefore im- 
 possible. At this time the Lutherans comprised practically 
 the entire population of northern Germany, while the Re- 
 formed or Calvinistic church held the bulk of the Protestant 
 people of the south and west. Despite theological opinion 
 sentiment for union was growing and there was some rap- 
 prochement between the parties. But in the Lutheran church 
 there was still strong sentiment for strict adherence to doc- 
 trine, while in the Reformed church there was much em- 
 phasis placed upon "inner life" and moral character. 
 
 Through several reigns the royal house of Prussia had 
 backed church unity, and in 1817 Frederick William III pro- 
 claimed the union of the two churches within his kingdom, 
 and this was soon followed by similar action by other German 
 rulers. The royal house of Prussia was Calvinistic, and the 
 action of the king was taken as an effort to root out Luther- 
 anism. Opposition flamed all over the north of Germany, in 
 the Baltic provinces, in Saxony and Silesia. In a nation of 
 individualists, with a positive passion for indignations, there 
 was a veritable storm of protest. But as no immediate steps 
 were taken to implement the union, the opposition soon re- 
 
Refugee Haven 27 
 
 solved itself into a stream of literary polemics. But in 1830 
 there was issued a new agenda to govern procedure in the 
 United church, and immediately there was open rebellion. 
 Throughout the north country pastors were suspended and 
 churches closed against their congregations. Independent so- 
 cieties were organized, meeting in the houses of the pastors. 
 A leader arose in the person of Pastor Johannes Grabau of 
 Erfurt, who in 1836 publicly branded the new agenda as 
 contrary to the Scriptures and its observance contrary to his 
 conscience. He and many of his pastor followers were thrown 
 into prison and accorded only the consideration given to the 
 robbers and cutthroats who were confined with them. Harsh 
 measures were taken against the lay members of the recal- 
 citrant flocks who employed dissenting pastors for baptisms 
 and marriages or who failed to pay the tax for support of the 
 union church. Heinrich von Rohr, of Magdeburg, captain of 
 the guard, was leader of the Old Lutheran movement, which 
 was strong in that city. He first came into open conflict with 
 the authorities when he refused to permit the baptism of his 
 child by a pastor of the United church. For this he was fined 
 and given a summary dismissal from the army. Von Rohr 
 managed the escape of Pastor Grabau from the prison at 
 Heiligenstadt and took him to the coast in Pomerania. From 
 there negotiations were opened with the government, which 
 brought the reply: "The Lutheran church is within the United 
 church, and outside of it the king will tolerate no Lutheran 
 church in his land/' 
 
 Pastor Grabau was given permission, under strict condi- 
 tions, to emigrate, and Captain von Rohr obtained authority 
 for the emigration of a party of lay malcontents. He went to 
 
28 Sinnissippi 
 
 America early in 1839 to locate a site for the proposed colony 
 and came back with good accounts of western New York and 
 eastern Wisconsin. In the meantime there has been recruited 
 societies mainly from Pomerania aggregating about a thou- 
 sand souls. These were joined at Hamburg by Pastor Ernest 
 Krause with his society from Silesia. Five American sailing 
 ships, chartered by von Rohr, sailed from Hamburg late in 
 July, arriving in New York early in October. The party pro- 
 ceeded by way of the Hudson River and the Erie Canal to 
 Buffalo, where about half of the members, with Pastor Gra- 
 bau, remained. The rest went by way of the Great Lakes to 
 Milwaukee with von Rohr in charge. This party, nearly all 
 from Pomerania, found suitable land to the north of Milwau- 
 kee in Ozaukee County where they started the settlements of 
 Freistadt and Cedarburg. Pastor Kindermann was the spirit- 
 ual head of this group. This, the first German immigration to 
 Wisconsin came when the state had only a scattered popula- 
 tion along the southwestern shore of Lake Michigan and in 
 the lead region near the Mississippi River. 
 
 Pastor Grabau and Captain von Rohr returned to Ger- 
 many and together canvassed the Baltic provinces for recruits 
 for the Wisconsin settlements. The next large migration came 
 from the Oderbruch in Prussia. A society of Old Lutherans 
 sent a committee to interview Pastor Kindermann who was 
 back in Pomerania active in promoting emigration. They then 
 sent agents to Hamburg to arrange for transportation and in 
 May left the Oderbruch for the port. They were joined in 
 Berlin by Pastor Hoeckendorf and his flock. They sailed from 
 Hamburg in June and arrived in New York in August. Upon 
 arrival in Milwaukee they sent agents into the interior to lo- 
 cate suitable land for the colony. They brought back favor- 
 
Refugee Haven 29 
 
 able reports on Sauk prairie on the lower Wisconsin River 
 and on land along the upper reaches of the Rock. They de- 
 
 
 
 
 Myf^k%^hmX% 
 
 
 
 Sv5tMc,vsoW« 
 
 
 jpj* v ♦ rVX ICt *u $ o IV 
 
 
 
 Upper Reaches of the River 
 
 cided upon the Rock valley and picked the vicinity of John- 
 son's Rapids as their goal. Johnson's Rapids, now Watertown, 
 was but a small village at the time but it was the market for 
 the upper valley. In the sweeping bend of the river above 
 
30 Sinnissippi 
 
 Johnson's Rapids was the Great Marsh, joined at its northern 
 and southern extremities to the river. In the center of this 
 marsh was an island of about 4500 acres, covered with forest, 
 mostly of maple. The Oderbruch pilgrims took over the island 
 in its entirety, naming it Zucker Inset or Sugar Island. One of 
 their leaders, William Woltmann, proposed the name of Leb- 
 anon for the settlement, a name considered appropriate for 
 a settlement of Christians in a hilly country. For despite its 
 marshes, this was a hilly country, heavily wooded. Lebanon 
 was but seven miles from the future Watertown, but it was 
 so isolated by the marshes, that it was a two-day trip by way 
 of Hustis' Rapids, to that market. 
 
 There were sixty-eight families in the Lebanon colony. It 
 was slow work clearing the forest and building their log 
 homes, but progress was steady and substantial. The first 
 service was conducted in the home of Joachim Kreuger, by 
 Pastor Kindermann who came from Cedarburg by ox-team 
 and who made periodical visits until 1844 when Pastor Geyer 
 was brought in from St. Louis. In that year Carl Setzkorn 
 wedded Louise Moldenhauer, the first marriage in the colony 
 and it was more than sixty years later that the first divorce 
 suit was brought in the town. They built their church in 1846 
 and a parochial school in 1847, but already a schism was at 
 work in the community. A group of settlers became converted 
 to the belief that immersion was the only true method of 
 baptism and formed themselves into a congregation, building 
 a second church soon after the first. Freed from the dictation 
 of the state, these Old Lutherans substituted an ecclesiastical 
 dictatorship in the person of Pastor Geyer. In the exercises 
 opening the parochial school building, the schoolmaster, Erd- 
 
Refugee Haven 31 
 
 mann Pankow, played a selection upon the violin. For this 
 unseemly act he was accused of scandalous conduct by the 
 pastor, and not showing repentance, he was refused partici- 
 pation in the Lord's Supper. Pankow with a considerable 
 following left the church and formed an independent congre- 
 gation. Efforts to heal the breach failed, and thus a second 
 dissenting church sprang from the flock which had so re- 
 cently been united in a common bond. Pankow remained in 
 charge of the new congregation for the remainder of his life, 
 an independent pastor, attached to no ecclesiastical body. 
 
 The story of the recruitment, the migration, and the settle- 
 ment of the Lebanon colony is thus told in detail because it 
 is typical of the experience of other refugee groups that within 
 the next few years followed into the Rock valley and began 
 the settlements of Lomira, Theresa, Herman and Portland in 
 Dodge County, and Ixonia, Waterloo, Lake Mills, Aztalan, 
 Farmington, Jefferson and Hebron in Jefferson County. 
 
 In 1846 King William IV of Prussia announced permission 
 for separate worship, and the major cause of religious dis- 
 content was thus removed. But the severities of Pastor Geyer 
 in Lebanon were being duplicated in Germany, and these 
 differences regarding church discipline were dividing the 
 Lutheran people and continuing the migration of dissenting 
 groups. To these refugees from religious oppression were soon 
 added the multitude who fled Germany following the abor- 
 tive revolution of 1848, coincident with similar political up- 
 heavals throughout Europe. The early refugee migration was 
 mainly from Pomerania and Brandenburg, forming a nucleus 
 for north German immigration into Dodge and Jefferson 
 Counties for the next half century. 
 
32 Sinnissippi 
 
 The location of these refugee colonies was partly a matter 
 of choice and partly of land-office policy. They were not the 
 first settlers in this section of the valley. Following the Black 
 Hawk War in 1832 native Americans from New England and 
 New York began coming in, followed soon by Irish immi- 
 grants, the first foreign-born settlers in the middle west. 
 The first arrivals chose the prairie land, the easiest to clear 
 and prepare for crops. It was mainly along and to the west 
 of the river. The land-office had located the Irish mainly 
 on the prairie west of the great bend of the river and north of 
 the earlier Yankee settlers. There was thus left for the Ger- 
 man newcomers either scattered tracts on the prairie or the 
 untouched forest land on the ridge east of the valley. This 
 opportunity for communal life on the forested hills appears 
 to have coincided with their choice of land. The wooded hills 
 sloped sharply to the marshes along the river, and here they 
 found the two prime requisites of successful German farming, 
 wood and hay. In comfort and prosperity they lagged years 
 behind the prairie settlers, but the handicap of uncleared 
 land did not last for long, and their farms became in time the 
 best in the upper valley. 
 
 German immigration to the state became heavy in 1848, 
 and reached a climax in 1854 not again reached until 1884. 
 The immigrants from Pomerania and Brandenburg, from 
 Mecklenburg and West Prussia continued to favor the coun- 
 ties of Dodge and Jefferson. They bought out and supplanted 
 the early American and Irish farmers until before the end of 
 the century they held three-fourths of the farm land and 
 formed that proportion of the population. 
 
 Though the early German immigration was of refugee char- 
 
Refugee Haven 33 
 
 acter, there was no wish of the home government to lose their 
 allegiance. On the contrary, there was deep resentment 
 throughout Germany that by the emigration of its people, no 
 new territory was being added to the mother country, as was 
 the case with other countries. Nor were the emigrants dis- 
 posed to throw off their German allegiance or to adopt a 
 culture other than that of their old home. They saw them- 
 selves not as any part of their new home-country but as an 
 outpost of Germany in the New World. The Old Lutheran 
 groups contained many from city life, educated business men 
 and skilled craftsmen. Among the political refugees were 
 many professional men and instructors, all politically minded. 
 The pioneer atmosphere was in strong contrast to their high 
 aspirations. They saw the life of the native American as 
 sordid and low, both in politics and religion. They complained 
 loudly to the homeland of the lack of appreciation of the 
 higher ideals and of the scant recognition accorded the quali- 
 ties of the German character. It is pertinent to note that this 
 was about the time, in 1841, when Charles Dickens found 
 the American people, except for a fringe of the northeastern 
 seaboard, a nation of morose, unsocial, tobacco-chewing and 
 tobacco-spitting barbarians. 
 
 These Wisconsin ventures in German colonization were but 
 one phase of an agitation that was occupying the writers on 
 economics and colonization throughout the German world. 
 There was a call for a concentration of German emigration 
 and for a widening of German influence in the New World. 
 Agents of various organizations were sent into the sparsely 
 settled areas of the American midwest to report upon suitable 
 lands for colonization, always with the idea of the eventual 
 
34 Sinnissippi 
 
 foundation of a German controlled state. In these reports Wis- 
 consin held high place as the potential promised land. It was 
 favored on account of a climate much the same as that of 
 Germany, an excellent soil for farming, mineral wealth, with 
 the special advantage of a location upon the Great Lakes, 
 promising a water route for commerce and intercourse with 
 the outside world. There was visualized the early establish- 
 ment of a line of steam vessels plying the route between Ham- 
 burg and Bremen and Milwaukee. After a beginning had 
 been made here pictures were drawn of the happy situation 
 of the Germans in Milwaukee where they dominated the so- 
 cial and political life of the young city. Along with these 
 highly favorable reports of the new land there was always 
 the warning that though it had many of the qualities of the 
 Vaterland, its great beauty was not to be expected. 
 
 In 1832 a society was formed in Rhenish Bavaria, the pur- 
 pose of which was to purchase of the United States a tract for 
 German settlement. Negotiations came to nothing. Various 
 schemes of Utopian character were later evolved, some of 
 which were put through to partial success. To these planned 
 ventures are due such concentrations of people of German 
 blood as that of central Pennsylvania, as that in Buffalo, in 
 Cincinnati, and in St. Louis. The German genius for disunity 
 conspired to locate the colonies in widely separated places. 
 
 There was a unity of sentiment, however, among the emi- 
 grants and in the home government that a German state 
 should result from this mass of transplanted German people. 
 Its spokesman was Franz Lober, who in 1847 published 
 simultaneously in Leipzig and Cincinnati his Geschichte und 
 Zustande der Deutschen in Amerika. His thesis is summed 
 as follows: 
 
Refugee Haven 35 
 
 Germans can remain German in America, they can mingle and 
 intermarry with non-Germans and adopt their ways, but they can 
 still remain essentially German. They can plant the vine on the 
 hills and drink it with happy song and dance, they can have Ger- 
 man schools and universities, German literature and art, German 
 science and philosophy, German courts and assemblies— in short, 
 they can form a German state, in which the German language is 
 as much the popular and official language as the English is now 
 and in which the German spirit rules. 
 
 At about this same time, in 1848, a German revolutionist 
 named Westling, organized in New York the Arbeiterhund, 
 a communistic community destined for settlement in Wiscon- 
 sin. Other groups were coming into the western country all 
 with the same idea in the back of their minds. There was 
 never an officially recognized locality for the German state. 
 All were agreed upon a part of the old Northwest Territory 
 and popular opinion favored Wisconsin. The Great Lakes 
 route to the sea and the Old World was the controlling factor. 
 What with the slavery issue dividing the country, there was 
 firm belief in the German mind that the loose bond which 
 held the states in confederation would be broken. In the 
 envisioned dissolution and reorganization, they saw the Great 
 Lakes states with a population predominantly German, issue 
 as a German state, independent perhaps but holding close ties 
 to the homeland. 
 
 The political upheaval of 1848 which shook central Europe, 
 for the first time sent to this country groups of Germans who 
 however dearly they were attached to the culture of the 
 homeland, were yet ready to break with its political philoso- 
 phy. Then for the first time did they begin to see their future 
 as citizens of the American republic. 
 
 Carl Schurz, a political refugee of 1848, was the first prom- 
 
36 Sinnissippi 
 
 inent German in Wisconsin to take an active part in the af- 
 fairs of the state and nation. Following a flight to England, 
 he came to America in 1852 and to Watertown, Wisconsin, in 
 1855. He identified himself with the newly formed Repub- 
 lican party and was a potent factor in determining the Ger- 
 man sentiment against slavery. He actively supported Lin- 
 coln for the presidency and was appointed minister to Spain 
 and later a brigadier-general in the Union army. The German 
 element did its share in support of the national government 
 in the Civil War, and its outcome put at rest any thought that 
 the Great Lakes country could be separated from the union. 
 However, as late as 1878, William Rascher in his Political 
 Economy urging the German government to subsidize emi- 
 gration says: 
 
 Much might be gained if the German emigrants to the United 
 States would concentrate in one state, and thus make it a German 
 state. For many reasons Wisconsin is best adapted to that purpose. 
 
 During the World War there was much heart-burning 
 among the German-American population, with occasional 
 family feuds of extreme bitterness. It was only the exceptional 
 German-born person of an older generation who gave out- 
 spoken support to the German cause. The second and third 
 generation were quite as outspoken in opposition. 
 
 The early immigration into the upper Rock valley went 
 almost exclusively to the farms. Later came professional men, 
 merchants and craftsmen to the towns, and with the years, 
 Watertown, Jefferson and Fort Atkinson took on more and 
 more of a German aspect. These town-bred immigrants 
 brought a higher and more practical knowledge and skill in 
 certain pursuits than that possessed by the native born. There 
 
Refugee Haven 37 
 
 were among them well-schooled cobblers and tailors, cabinet- 
 makers who could fashion furniture and repair it, silversmiths 
 and men well versed in the mechanism of the watch and 
 clock. There were those who had followed the trade of miller 
 in the old country and those whose work it was to turn the 
 flour into bread. More typical was their knowledge of the 
 malting of barley and the brewing of beer. They introduced 
 to the American scene a new business, the preparing and 
 vending of ready prepared foods, notably cold cuts of meats, 
 sausages, cheeses, pickles, preserves, and pastries. The name 
 delicatessen has good English usage when applied to foods 
 of this class and to the shops in which they are sold. To this 
 day Watertown carries on an export business in roast goose, 
 stuffed with noodles, in old-time German style and the fame 
 of Fort Atkinson rests upon the slim outlines of a nationally 
 distributed pork wurst. The German immigrant farmer was 
 notorious for making a vice of his frugality, and his town- 
 dwelling brother was ever mindful that a penny saved was a 
 penny re-earned. All had full faith in the returns from a pru- 
 dent parsimony. They were thus prosperous beyond the 
 average of their neighbors. Typical was the German town 
 home, a low house set in a large garden, enclosed by a high 
 fence or a hedge for privacy, and furnished with fruit trees 
 and grapevines, with a vegetable garden and a profusion of 
 flowers. 
 
 The interior furnishings that most clearly identified the 
 householder were the cages of canaries, immigrants like their 
 owners, calling back one to another the rich notes that sets 
 apart these German warblers of the Harz highlands. In their 
 gardens, after church services on Sunday, gathered family 
 
38 Sinnissippi 
 
 and friends, for long afternoons of conversation, music and 
 refreshments, all in an Old World atmosphere and with an 
 Old World flavor. Here were the scenes of their struggle to 
 maintain their language, their religion and their culture, all 
 dearly prized inheritances, a struggle not entirely successful, 
 yet far from being fruitless. Here in an atmosphere of tobacco 
 smoke, the men gave full voice to their doctrinism, called by 
 them idealism, a product of the German mind which tended 
 to make futile the best of their well-intended ideas. From the 
 background of their difficulties with the homeland govern- 
 ment these men had a highly developed political conscious- 
 ness, but on account of individualistic leanings they had scant 
 genius for leadership. Here as elsewhere, they gratified their 
 addiction to clubs, athletic, singing, benevolent, military, and 
 their pride in uniform dress. With a taste for the moderate 
 use of beer and wine and for tobacco they contributed mate- 
 rially toward making the life and habits of their communities 
 less stern, less dull, less puritanical, and added color and 
 music to them. 
 
 As in the fatherland, Christmas was the great festival of 
 the year, celebrated not so much by the exchange of gifts as 
 by long and elaborate church services and by the giving of 
 great feasts. For Christmas and for his day of Thanksgiving 
 the neighboring Yankee would have his turkey, but in these 
 German households the goose firmly held its place. With 
 Gansebraten the mainstay of the dinner, and Apfelkuchle and 
 Pflaumenmus to sharpen its flavor, the gala spirit was truly 
 invoked. Bowls of Zweibelsuppe to give the meal a good 
 beginning, great dishes of Rotkohl, stewed and spiced, Kar- 
 toffelschnee and Brotchens to supplement the main dish, with 
 
Refugee Haven 39 
 
 Baumkuchen and Pfefferniisse to put a fitting finish to the 
 feast. Kafe, of course, with an additional body and bite from 
 a dash of Zichorie, cheese of the odorous type, Limburger, 
 Backstein or Miinchen, with a domestic Miinchener from the 
 local brewery that every town supported and home-made 
 wine of the Moselle or Rhine type. The health, happiness, 
 and prosperity of the guests were toasted in turn, with many 
 an Auf Ihr Wohl and many a Prosit. Only men of iron reso- 
 lution and stout stomachs made recovery before the new year. 
 
 The railroads came to the towns, and with them the com- 
 mercial hotel, conveniently located near the station. These 
 were well enough for the transient seeker of orders for goods, 
 but not for the solvent burghers of this new Rhineland. For 
 them the inconspicuous Gasihof, well away from Main Street, 
 with its shady garden and tables in the rear. Here the Karte 
 carried the names of dishes conceived ages ago in German 
 homes and here faithfully prepared to the classic formulas. 
 From day to day, Hasenpfeffer, Kalbkopf, Gefullte Tauben, 
 Schweinfiisse, Schmorbraten, Schinkenbriitchen and always a 
 variety of Suppen and Wursten. No light-minded exchange 
 of pleasantries or of neighborhood gossip occupied the time 
 of these earnest and serious minded diners. Here they took 
 up anew the thread of political or sociological argument 
 where it had been left off at their last previous gathering. 
 
 Though after a century from the arrival of the Lebanon 
 colony, Americanization has gone far toward molding these 
 people to the national type, there is still abundant evidence 
 in the valley of their Germanic origin. In a section where the 
 towns carry names derived from the Algonquin tongue, the 
 family names are still those that were brought over from 
 
40 Sinnissippi 
 
 Germany in the sailing vessels of a century ago and renewed 
 by more recent arrivals. 
 
 The teaching of German in the public schools and its 
 habitual use in many homes have maintained a wide familiar- 
 ity with the language throughout southeastern Wisconsin. In 
 this community with its high bilingual population there has 
 developed through the years a type of German English that 
 has been given the name of the Milwaukee dialect, a mode 
 of speech of as distinct character as the Pennsylvania Dutch 
 of the Susquehanna valley. It has been made the subject of 
 a thesis by Hannah Jacobsen, at the time a student at the 
 University of Wisconsin. The features of this as of other dia- 
 lects are variations from normal rhythm and pitch, elisions 
 and substitutions of vowels and consonants, and misplace- 
 ments of accent and emphasis. It carries exclamatory words 
 and phrases from the mother language with an occasional 
 interspersion of a German word which perhaps carries for 
 the speaker a more exact meaning than its nearest English 
 equivalent. The most common factor in the dialect is an in- 
 verse phrasing due to direct translation from the mother 
 tongue. German words of greeting are often used and terms 
 of derision have had special survival. Mixing of genders of 
 nouns and of tenses of verbs with the use of double negatives 
 are notable features. So too, are questions given in the form 
 of direct statements ending with the expected affirmative or 
 negative, and a rising inflexion. 
 
 In pronunciation there is a constant confusion of hard and 
 soft consonants, and a difficulty in giving the vowels the exact 
 shade of English pronunciation. The use of v for w and wh, 
 and of d for th produces such words as vedder for weather 
 
Refugee Haven 41 
 
 and vy for why. Other common usage is that of sh for s and 
 ch for the soft g, producing words like shleep and Chermany. 
 Notable also is the use of ge prefixed to English verbs, re- 
 sulting in such verbs as geshtopt, gemisst and gedresst. The 
 most usual changes in vowels is the use of the short e for 
 short a, and the change of i into e or ee. 
 
 It should not be thought that this is the speech of the 
 common run of those of German descent. It is rather the 
 English of that section of these people, a fair proportion, who 
 have maintained German as their primary tongue, who use 
 it habitually in their homes and elsewhere when associated 
 with others of their kind. 
 
 A careful study of the Milwaukee missprack will reveal 
 that it has had a real influence upon the English spoken in the 
 same section. To a question one may well receive a ja from 
 a person in whose veins flows not a drop of German blood. 
 This is of course but an evidence of careless speech, but from 
 the words and expressions which are recognized as definitely 
 of the local dialect, many have been taken over and incor- 
 porated fully into the English speech of the district. 
 
ill 
 
 w*ts 
 
 iSasSlilS* 
 
 , f -; ,^.=. • 
 
 Wisconsin's Capitol from Lake Monona 
 
FOUR LAKES 
 
 In the days when the upper Rock valley was part of Michi- 
 gan Territory the Catfish River flowed a short mile between 
 the Fourth Lake and Third Lake, thence a short course 
 through swamp land to Second Lake and a longer one to 
 First Lake and thence a score or more of miles to a junction 
 with Rock River below Lake Koshkonong. The same river 
 flows through the same lakes today, but the river is now the 
 Yahara, and the lakes in order along its course are the Men- 
 dota, Monona, Wabesa, and Kegonsa. These were the names 
 given to the river and lakes by the Winnebagos, who for a 
 century or more had lived along their waters, names restored 
 to them by the state lawmakers. In writings about the Yahara, 
 the term "Avonlike" recurs again and again. To those who 
 are familiar with the Warwickshire stream this may convey a 
 sufficiently definite meaning, but for others it may be said 
 that the Yohara is a sluggish, winding stream of low banks in 
 its upper reaches, and that its flow becomes more rapid and 
 its banks higher farther upon its course, and that it traverses 
 a land of cultivated fields and of meadows where cattle graze 
 contentedly. Whatever beauty there is to its valley is of the 
 pastoral variety. 
 
 The lakes, strung like jewels along the thread of the river, 
 are variable in their attractions. Mendota, surrounded by hills, 
 is the gem of the lot, and a gem indeed it is. Monona, with 
 shores less high and some swampland on its borders is a lake 
 
 43 
 
44 Sinnissippi 
 
 of great charm. The other two, in lower and flatter country, 
 are but ordinary specimens of the lakes with which the state 
 is studded. Wingra, a fifth and smaller, is overshadowed by 
 its brilliant sisters. All have shores of fine gravel shingle and 
 bottoms of white sand to be seen at great depth. The bold 
 escarpments of Mendota's shores give way to gently sloping 
 hillsides on the lower lakes. 
 
 If there seems to be lack of enthusiasm for any individual 
 member of this water system, let it be said at once that the 
 Four Lakes country is a land of utmost charm, a land that 
 wins praise from every visitor that comes its way. From the 
 time of our earliest knowledge of the country it was the 
 favored home of the Winnebago tribe, who gave it the name 
 of Taychopera. The shores of the lakes are ringed with sites 
 upon which at one time the Indians had their villages. The 
 lakes abounded in fish, the neighboring swamps held large 
 families of muskrat and mink, while in season, duck, geese 
 and swan came into the lakes in myriads. In the surrounding 
 forests, deer, bear and raccoon found a home, and furnished 
 a meat supply for the tribe. 
 
 The land around and between the lakes was sown with the 
 evidences of occupancy by a people who antedated the Win- 
 nebago. Whether they were the ancestors of this Siouan tribe, 
 or of those of Algonquin stock, or whether they were a people 
 unrelated to the modern Indian there is no agreement. Best 
 opinion holds that they were indeed the not greatly remote 
 ancestors of the tribes found in possession of the country. 
 Contrary to general belief they represented no higher level 
 of civilization. From the character of their works they are 
 known as the mound-builders. Vast mounds, round, conical, 
 
Four Lakes 
 
 45 
 
 ovoid, and rectangular, are found widely scattered through- 
 out the Mississippi water system. There are those that appear 
 to mark village sites and earthworks for their defense. Others 
 
 
 4to^£i& 
 
 
 
 
 G-wesvk 
 
 Four Lakes Country 
 
 appear as signal towers, while others are elevations upon 
 which ceremonies of worship and sacrifice were performed. 
 Without doubt the greater number were raised as tombs for 
 the dead. Unique among the workers of these people are the 
 effigy mounds, which are practically confined to Wisconsin 
 and the Rock valley in northern Illinois. They were raised in 
 
46 Sinnissippi 
 
 the form of man, of quadrupeds, of birds, of fish, and of rep- 
 tiles, effigies often hundreds of feet in extent. They are built 
 on the shores of lakes and along the banks of rivers. There is 
 no ready explanation of their purpose, but a logical one is 
 that they are burial mounds raised in the images of the tribal 
 totems. 
 
 Like the later native occupants the moundbuilders saw in 
 the picturesque setting of the lakes a place where the means 
 of existence were to be had and a fitting scene for the raising 
 of their earth structures. Even in the Rock River valley with 
 its wealth of effigy mounds, those of the lake country are out- 
 standing in number and variety of form. 
 
 There can be little doubt that the villages of Taychopera 
 were periodically visited by the courriers du bois during the 
 long period of French possession of the country. These wan- 
 derers of the forest went everywhere that Indian settlements 
 and beaver skins might be found. There is dispute as to which 
 of two men was the first American to visit this lake country. 
 The name of one of them would mean nothing if it were told. 
 The other was a lieutenant of infantry, Jefferson Davis, who 
 served at Fort Winnebago at the Wisconsin-Fox portage 
 shortly after his graduation from West Point in 1828. Both 
 were in Taychopera during the summer of 1829 and found 
 the Winnebagos there in their villages. The next American 
 visitation was in July 1832 when Chief Peopope, with the rear 
 guard of Black Hawk's band was fighting a delaying action 
 against General Atkinson's force of regulars and territorial 
 militia in the swamplands around the lakes. Another rear 
 guard conflict a few days later at Wisconsin Heights and the 
 Indians were in scattered flight. 
 
Four Lakes 47 
 
 Indian treaties had been made providing for clearing them 
 out of southern Wisconsin. Those that remained in the state 
 were to be moved to the north of the line of the Wisconsin 
 and Fox rivers. The Sac and Fox tribes were to be pushed 
 west across the Mississippi River, and the Potawatomies 
 transplanted to the Missouri valley. The Menomonees were 
 assigned a new home in the Wolf River valley and the Win- 
 nebagos were to move into the upper Wisconsin valley. In 
 October 1828 Fort Winnebago at the portage was first occu- 
 pied by troops sent over from Green Bay. The new post was 
 to protect an Indian sub-agency, newly established for super- 
 vision of the Winnebago tribe. John H. Kinzie, son of the 
 Chicago pioneer, was in charge of Indian affairs. The lure of 
 annuities and trading facilities drew the Taychoperan vil- 
 lagers away from their lakes into the forests to the north. 
 
 The first American settlers in each choice section of the 
 valley found themselves preceded by the Canadian trader, 
 white or half-breed, with an Indian wife. He was found 
 lodged in a log-cabin, always on a water-course and always 
 near an Indian village or where one had been. Michel St. 
 Cyr, half Indian, half white, lived with his Winnebago wife 
 and family in a log hut on the western end of Fourth Lake. 
 With the Indians gone his small trade in whiskey and tobacco 
 had to be supplemented by cultivation of a fenced-in garden, 
 where he raised potatoes, corn, beans, and squash. He was 
 thus able to rate his establishment as a tavern, where not only 
 shelter could be had, but food, in which a stew of muskrat 
 was a staple item. His scanty clientele had no fault to find 
 with such filling sustenance. 
 
 Two brothers by the name of Slaughter, each with the title 
 
48 Sinnissippi 
 
 of colonel, and spoken of in the early records as "Virginia 
 gentlemen" coveted the holding of the half-breed trader, and 
 in the summer of 1836 they made entry upon it and surveyed 
 a townsite, upon which they conferred the name of City of 
 the Four Lakes. St. Cyr, disappointed in failure to obtain title 
 to the land himself, was made contended with a payment for 
 his improvements. 
 
 In Green Bay lived James D. Doty, a one-time federal 
 judge, but now a free-lance. He would have been rated a 
 high-power promotor in any age and he was well aware of 
 the unwisdom of carrying all one's eggs in a single basket. 
 Stevens T. Mason had been elected governor of the new 
 state of Michigan in the fall of 1835, and Judge Doty secured 
 in him a partner in his land ventures. They early secured an 
 interest in the new town with the mouth-filling name. 
 
 With the first territorial legislature of Wisconsin gathering 
 at Belmont and the site of the territorial capital to be settled 
 during its session Doty went seriously to work. He left Green 
 Bay one day in October 1836 with John Suydam, a surveyor. 
 Up Fox River to Lake Winnebago, they stopped at the nor- 
 thern end long enough to lay out a townsite on Doty's Island, 
 which was given the name of Cliffton, now the town of 
 Menasha. They went up the Fox River to the portage, and 
 on the left bank of the Wisconsin River, a few miles below, 
 they surveyed a townsite and called it Wisconsinopolis. From 
 here they skirted the northern side and west end of the Fourth 
 Lake, arriving at St. Cyr's cabin where they were lodged and 
 fed. The main proprietors of the City of the Four Lakes had 
 gone back to Virginia to avoid the rigors of the northern 
 winter and awaited the spring for its further development. 
 
Four Lakes 49 
 
 Before leaving Green Bay, Judge Doty had made entry of 
 the strip of land lying between the Fourth and Third Lakes, 
 and now his surveyor, with the help of St. Cyr, set about mak- 
 ing the necessary surveys and meanders for a townsite upon 
 it. In three days they were done, and with them Doty and the 
 surveyor went on to Belmont, the latter to draw up the neces- 
 sary crude maps, and the former to interest the legislators in 
 the advantages of his town of Madison as the territorial capi- 
 tal. There was no lack of rival promotors, each with his town- 
 site and each with his maps and sales talk to show its advan- 
 tages. The question of the capital location was brought up 
 in the Council, the upper chamber, by a member from Mil- 
 waukee who proposed the town of Madison. Determined op- 
 position developed at once. The name of Fond du Lac was 
 advanced, then Dubuque, then Portage, followed in turn by 
 Helena, Milwaukee, Racine, Belmont, Mineral Point, Platte- 
 ville, Astor, Cassville, Belleview, Koshkonong, Wisconsinop- 
 olis, Peru and Wisconsin City. Many of these, like Madison, 
 were but towns on paper, while three of them were in Iowa 
 beyond the Mississippi River. Upon every vote, the thirteen 
 members of the Council divided, seven for Madison and six 
 for the rival location. The solid phalanx of seven was never 
 broken. In the House the contest was renewed and the same 
 rivals were again brought out and more added. At every 
 division there was a majority for Madison. The final vote was 
 fifteen to eleven, a victory for Madison. In six weeks from 
 leaving Green Bay, Doty had created a town and obtained 
 for it the seat of the territorial government. It was later ob- 
 served that many of the legislators had become owners of 
 corner lots in the new capital. The closeness of the vote by 
 
50 Sinnissippi 
 
 which the prize was won would indicate that the distribution 
 of lots had not been more general or generous than was 
 necessary. 
 
 Here was now a capital city in the wilderness, a capital 
 without buildings and without inhabitants. Surveyors were 
 put to work in February 1837 to complete the platting of the 
 town. On a hill midway between the two lakes, and seventy- 
 five feet above their shorelines was set aside a park for the 
 capitol building. A mile to the west, a somewhat higher hill 
 was marked as the location for the university, which was al- 
 ready under discussion. The town had been named after the 
 fourth president, and now they called the principal street, 
 east and west through the capitol site, after the name of 
 Washington. The north and south street bisecting this street 
 at the capitol park honored the name of Alexander Hamilton. 
 Other streets were laid out radiating from the capitol as in 
 Washington, and each was given the name of a signer of the 
 federal constitution. Most of them were thus honored, as 
 many as there were streets in the embryo capital. 
 
 Madison's success in the contest for the capital was no 
 discouragement to the promotors of the City of the Four 
 Lakes. On the contrary new townsites sprang up like mush- 
 rooms until shortly there was scarcely any part of the Fourth 
 Lake shoreline that was not included in one or another of 
 them. There was similar activity on the other lakes, only to 
 a less degree. The urge for gain ran to the building of new 
 villages and to efforts to connect them with the outside world 
 by waterway. Not to own a village site was to be voted a 
 poor man, and to doubt the possibilities of any stream, how- 
 ever small, for navigation, was to be branded as lacking in 
 
Four Lakes 51 
 
 enterprise. A canal to connect the waters of the Wisconsin and 
 Rock Rivers was seen as a certainty, and an immigration was 
 visualized that would bring wealth to those fortunate ones 
 already in possession of the land. 
 
 The legislature met in the winter of 1837-38 at Burlington 
 in Iowa and in the following winter, held its first session in 
 Madison in a capitol building far from completion. The popu- 
 lation at this time was made up of the men who were cutting 
 the stone and sawing the timbers for the capitol building, the 
 carpenters and masons and a few others engaged in housing 
 and feeding the builders. In due time the capitol was com- 
 pleted, but at the end of ten years from its selection as the 
 capital, Madison was a village of less than three hundred 
 people. After the completion of the capitol building it was 
 dependent for its existence upon the expenditures of the peo- 
 ple attending the annual sessions of the legislature. By this 
 time the neighboring village promoters had awakened from 
 their golden dreams, poorer and to this extent wiser, and had 
 made a wholesale conversion of town lots into cornfields. 
 
 These years of trial for the young capital were years of 
 hard times for the nation. A pioneer community might be 
 able to make good its necessities, but progress and growth 
 were not to be expected with no wealth coming in from the 
 outside and an uncertain market for its few salable products. 
 But, in the words of one of their local historians, "the absence 
 of fashion and pride and the chilling influence of wealth made 
 their wants few/' 
 
 In the second decade of its life, Madison's tempo of growth 
 was increased though still slow. At the time when it became 
 the capital of a state of the union in 1848 it had a village 
 
52 Sinnissippi 
 
 population of about one thousand. Up to this time an added 
 chill was given to the rigors of its winters, when at each ses- 
 sion of the legislature, some member, usually from Milwau- 
 kee, introduced a measure for the transfer elsewhere of the 
 capital. Whether these efforts were for the winning of votes 
 from prospective gainers from a move, or whether they were 
 in protest against the privations of winter life in Madison can 
 only be guessed. Each such move had been voted down and 
 the state constitution, as adopted, gave permanence to the 
 capital's location. 
 
 The gold output of California in 1849 is credited with end- 
 ing the period of economic depression for the country. Madi- 
 son increased its business and population, until with the com- 
 ing of the railroad from Milwaukee in 1854, it was a thriving 
 town of five thousand people. Its subsequent story leads too 
 far afield for this work. It is today a capital city in which the 
 entire state takes a merited pride. The capitol which replaced 
 the original structure in the city park looks down the radiating 
 streets to blue waters or to forested hills. The buildings of the 
 university, off to the west, stand upon the hill chosen for 
 them by the first planners. Much of the work of the mound- 
 builders has been undone by grader and steam shovel in the 
 extension of the city. Taychopera has changed greatly in 
 the century since it was abandoned by its children, but there 
 are secluded spots enough within its old boundaries where 
 the spirits of its Winnebago people would find it still 
 the same good land. 
 
 Any criticism of Judge Doty's choice of a capital site that 
 may have been raised has been long silenced. Neither the 
 judge nor his legislator friends appear to have profited greatly 
 
Four Lakes 53 
 
 from their Madison holdings. And the half-breed, St. Cyr, 
 finding the pressure of civilization too great upon him, fol- 
 lowed his Winnebago kindred to Minnesota, and from there 
 to a reservation in Kansas. 
 
 Horace Greeley and Bayard Taylor, visiting Madison on 
 different occasions in 1855, began the pilgrimage of men and 
 women bearing distinguished names, a multitude in all, who 
 have since visited the land of the Four Lakes, from centers 
 in this country and from beyond the seas. If foreign visitors 
 in New York are early questioned for their impressions of 
 America and its ways, there is no such crudity shown in Madi- 
 son, where the simple host or hostess or the welcoming com- 
 mittee waits with whatever patience is necessary until the 
 visitor has voiced the expected eulogy on the setting of the 
 city. No one of these has yet been an entire disappointment, 
 though many are found with words inadequate to their needs. 
 It is only the bearer of a great name whose words of admira- 
 tion find record in print. But there are enough of these to fill 
 volumes. There is indeed a literature in praise of the scenic 
 beauty and unique charm of the city and its surroundings. 
 A wealth of hyperbole has been lavished upon them, superla- 
 tives have been worked to exhaustion. It is greatly to be 
 wished that some master of the abstracting art would con- 
 dense this mass of admiring phrases into the compass of a 
 tidy pamphlet. It is quite beyond the powers of your his- 
 torian. Of all those who have written in praise of this lake 
 country, exceptional is the poet Longfellow, who did it in 
 verse. No doubt, lesser rhymsters have done the same, per- 
 haps with lines quite as adequate. The master singer gave the 
 name Four Lakes of Madison to his verses. 
 
54 Sinnissippi 
 
 Four limpid lakes, four Naiades 
 
 Of sylvan deities are these, 
 
 In flowing robes of azure dressed; 
 
 Four lovely handmaids that uphold 
 
 Their shining mirrors rimmed with gold, 
 
 To the fair city of the West. 
 
 By day the coursers of the sun 
 Drink of these waters as they run 
 Their swift diurnal round on high; 
 By night the constellations glow 
 Far down the hollow deeps below, 
 And glimmer in another sky. 
 
 Four lakes serene and full of light, 
 Fair town arrayed in robes of white 
 How visionary ye appear! 
 All like a floating landscape seems 
 In cloudland or the land of dreams 
 Bathed in a golden atmosphere. 
 
 The poet was moved to write these lines after seeing paint- 
 ings of the Four Lakes exhibited at the exposition of 1876 
 at Philadelphia. If he could do so well with only the inspira- 
 tion of a painted view, what masterpiece of poetic fancy 
 might he not have done, could he have seen Mendota on a 
 bright May morning or the dome of the capitol rising above 
 the red roofs and green trees of the town, across the waters 
 of Monona from the south. 
 
CO 
 
 O 
 
 ^3 
 CO 
 
 s 
 CCS 
 
ROCK PRAIRIE 
 
 L his chapter in the story of the river might well carry as 
 subtitle "a tale of two cities", for any account of Rock Prairie 
 will bring up the jealous rivalry through the years of the 
 neighboring communities of Janesville and Beloit. Separated 
 by but a dozen miles, the two started at scratch as log settle- 
 ments on the river, each with a good site where water-power 
 was available. The rivalry of that early day has been carried 
 on with temporary triumphs for each, and continues to-day 
 on very even terms. 
 
 The river, leaving Lake Koshkonong at its southern end, 
 executes a near half-circle to the west and south and then 
 straightens away to the southeast. In its westward sweep it is 
 joined by the Yahara with its waters from the Four Lakes. 
 Its dozen miles to the southeast is ended in a sharp angle 
 where it turns to the west and after two or three miles, turns 
 again to a generally southern course to the Illinois boundary. 
 It has a narrow, flat, flood-plain bordered by rounded bluffs 
 rising to a hundred feet or more. In its flow of forty miles 
 from the lake it has a fall of about fifty feet, quite uniform ex- 
 cept for one stretch of rapids. In pre-settlement days this sec- 
 tion of the valley was Winnebago country. There were two 
 well-established Indian villages, Tayecheedah, on Lake Kosh- 
 konong near its outlet, and a village in the angle of Rock 
 River and Turtle Creek, carrying a Winnebago name meaning 
 "turtle", possibly from the massive turtle-shaped mound on a 
 
 55 
 
56 Sinnissippi 
 
 nearby hill. General Atkinson's army in 1832 passed through 
 these villages, finding them as they had stood for years, but 
 deserted of inhabitants. At this time the rivers bank was 
 everywhere bordered by a band of hard-wood forest, behind 
 which lay an expanse of prairie stretching away to the hori- 
 zon, broken only by infrequent groves of white and burr-oak. 
 
 Near the bend in the river there was a rapids in which, 
 within the distance of a mile and a half the water fell seven 
 feet. Within the bend was a flat area rising twenty to thirty 
 feet above the river level. Nearby rose the Big Rock, which 
 was a landmark to guide travelers, Indian and white, to a 
 treacherous ford near its base, the only one in the vicinity. 
 
 The ford and rapids marked the bend as an advantageous 
 site for settlement. A move upon it was made from several 
 quarters in the winter of 1835-36. Samuel St. John came with 
 his wife from Vermont and staked a claim on the east side of 
 the river below the bend. Their son, Seth St. John, born in 
 January, 1836, was the first white child born in Rock county 
 and the death of Mrs. St. John in the following June marked 
 the first passing of a settler. In that winter a small company 
 from Milwaukee reached the river and began a settlement 
 in the bend west of the river, calling it Rockport. In February, 
 1836, Henry Janes, a Virginian from the south fork of the 
 Potomac, arrived at the river and took up a tract of land on 
 the east side, north of St. John's place. Near his land a stream, 
 Spring Creek, flowed into the river, and near this stream a 
 mile back from the river was a timbered tract called Black 
 Hawk Grove from its having been the camping place of a Sac 
 war-party in the war four years before. In the fashion of the 
 day Janes laid out a town on his holdings and called it Black 
 
Rock Prairie 57 
 
 Hawk Grove. By the summer of 1836 there were, on the river 
 between Lake Koshkonong and the Illinois line, in addition to 
 Janes' proposed town, Carramana, Hume's Ferry, Rockport, 
 Monterey, Wisconsin City, Newburgh, Koshkonong, and New 
 Albany, the latter the embryo Beloit. They all existed much 
 more on paper than on the ground, but they were all in jealous 
 rivalry for roads, ferries, post-offices, and above all, for the 
 seat of government of the county-to-be. Janes made an appli- 
 cation for a post-office for Black Hawk Grove, but the ap- 
 plication came back with the notation that there was already 
 a post-office in the territory, west of the Mississippi, named 
 after the Sac chief, but naming Janes postmaster of an office 
 to be called Janes ville. By such chance did the future city 
 come by its name. Wagon tracks from the east were converg- 
 ing on the settlements at the bend and there was an increas- 
 ing call at Janes' tavern for passage across the river. He built 
 himself a ferry-boat as did his rivals across the river, but ferry 
 service for hire might not be furnished without a license from 
 the territorial government and there was keen competition 
 for these licenses. At the first assembly of the territorial legis- 
 lature at Belmont, and at the second the following year at 
 Burlington across in Iowa, Janes pushed his interests to the 
 end that, not only did he obtain the ferry license, but also won 
 the seat of government of the newly created county of Rock 
 for his settlement. But the act which gave him the county- 
 seat took his land-holding from him for the court-house site. 
 A wanderer born, he accepted this mischance philosophically 
 and left in 1839 for lands farther west, finally arriving in Cali- 
 fornia, with nothing to show for his three years of striving 
 except the lasting memorial of a city to bear his name. The 
 
58 Sinnissippi 
 
 pioneer spirit of the man is shown in a letter written by him, 
 in 1866, from Camp Curtis in California. 
 
 In the fall of 1849 the Pacific Coast put an end to my further 
 progress toward the setting sun, and as I never varied much from 
 north to south, my wanderings are at an end. I managed to keep 
 ahead of all railroads and telegraphs, and now in my sixty-third 
 year, I have never yet seen a railroad or a telegraph. 
 
 The location of the county-seat settled, the other settle- 
 ments grouped around the river's bend were abandoned. 
 Their sites were eventually swallowed up in the expansion of 
 the victorious town. Koshkonong had its day in the legislature 
 when it received a vote of six to seven for Madison for the 
 site of the state capital. Carramana, across the Rock from the 
 mouth of the Yahara, was over-covetous when a railroad was 
 seeking a route and lost its chance to forestall Edgerton as 
 the market- town of its section. 
 
 But down the river to the south a real rival was in the 
 making. Its location on the Illinois line had put aside any 
 hopes for the county seat. It had taken over the site of the 
 old Indian village at the junction of Turtle Creek with the 
 Rock. Here the greater river comes down the narrower valley, 
 while the Turtle, using the valley of what ages ago was a 
 great glacial river, carries westward from Lake Delevan the 
 exceedingly varying volume into the Rock. The angle where 
 the two lines of bluffs come together, forms a bastion com- 
 manding a sweep up both the valleys. Some time after the 
 abandonment by the Winnebagos of their town here, Joseph 
 Thibault, a French-Canadian, with a Winnebago wife and 
 family, took possession of the site and made a claim to the 
 land in the vicinity. The earliest American settlers found him 
 
Rock Prairie 59 
 
 there in a log cabin in 1835. Caleb Blodgett, soon after his 
 arrival, purchased the vague claim of the Frenchman, to 
 about seven thousand acres. Thibault in 1836 sold his log 
 cabin to a newly arrived trader, and moved his Indian family 
 to a new claim near the outlet of Lake Koshkonong. 
 
 The scene changes, momentarily, to a small town on the 
 Connecticut river in northern New Hampshire. Here in the 
 spring of 1837 a group of men were gathered together to hear 
 the report of their voyaging agent. They composed the New 
 England Emigrating Company of Colebrook, and their agent 
 was Dr. Horace White. He had left early in the winter just 
 past, by horse and cutter, by way of Canada and Detroit, 
 to find and secure for the company a tract of land in the west 
 for colonization. He was now returned, and was able to report 
 that after looking over prospective ventures in western Illinois 
 and in Iowa, he had purchased for the company a tract of 
 about twenty-five hundred acres in the angle between the 
 Rock River and Turtle Creek in southern Wisconsin for ap- 
 proximately a dollar an acre. He was pleased to report that 
 one hundred acres were under plow and ready for the sowing 
 of a crop. 
 
 Dr. White had come up from Rockford and had bought 
 from Caleb Blodgett one-third of the old Thibault claim, in- 
 cluding the site of the former Winnebago village. The log 
 cabin of Blodgett, and the one formerly occupied by Thi- 
 bault, were the only buildings upon the ground. The move 
 from Colebrook began at once after Dr. White's return and 
 by the middle of summer a score of families from the New 
 England town were settled in their new home. This migra- 
 tion continued through the following year, until by the end 
 
60 Sinnissippi 
 
 of 1838, it would seem that the whole of Colebrook had been 
 uprooted. But while the bulk of the migrants were from the 
 home of the company, many recruits were obtained from 
 other towns of the vicinity. There were Winnebagos in the 
 valley of Sugar river to the west, and these were pressed into 
 service in building the first log cabins. There was immediate 
 need for a place for lodging and food for newcomers, and this 
 was early provided by the company, for which Dr. White 
 still acted as agent. It was thus in surroundings free from 
 danger and largely devoid of hardship that Beloit had its be- 
 ginning. There was little of adventure in its founding, or in 
 that of any other place on Rock Prairie. Caleb Blodgett had 
 not cared for the Winnebago name which had attached itself 
 to his holding and called his settlement New Albany. For 
 some reason this name did not appear fitting to the ears of the 
 Colebrook people. A committee for the purpose pondered 
 over a suitable name. They weighed the French terms belotte, 
 small and pretty, and detroit, a piece of land between two 
 waters, and combined the two in the name Beloit. 
 
 The men of the New England company had very definite 
 ideas as to what their town was to be like. It was to reproduce 
 here a town of the mold of Colebrook and of its neighbors. 
 It was to be New England in architecture with the same wide 
 streets shaded by elm and maple. It was to be puritan in its 
 way of life. It was to have schools, churches, and libraries, 
 but no saloons. They rated themselves a godly people and 
 practiced their godliness after the Congregational and Pres- 
 byterian manner. The two sects held their early services in 
 common, but soon built each its own substantial church build- 
 ings. Ministers and laymen of the two denominations met to- 
 
Rock Prairie 61 
 
 gether in 1846 to consider higher education for their youth, 
 and from that meeting developed the foundation of Beloit 
 College and of Rockford Seminary, the one for youths and the 
 other for young ladies of the community. 
 
 A decade of its life and we find Beloit in a fair way to real- 
 ize the fondest hopes of its founders. It was now a village of 
 two thousand souls, a village well built of brick and stone. 
 The sober-minded, cautious New England founders had 
 drawn to themselves chiefly those of their kind. It was a 
 homogeneous society, ninety percent natives of New Eng- 
 land and New York, or children of such. A scattered few came 
 from other eastern states and another few of foreign-born 
 from the British realm. The schools, churches, and libraries 
 had been established and were flourishing. The liquor traf- 
 fic would have been under full control, except that a section 
 of the village had spread down to the junction of the two 
 streams, which was in Illinois and therefore beyond the 
 jurisdiction of the town officers. A semi-automatic ferry had 
 been thrown across the Rock River in the early days, to be 
 superseded shortly by a bridge connecting the town with the 
 western settlements. Water power on both streams was turn- 
 ing the wheels of mills for the sawing of timber, the grinding 
 of grain and the carding of wool. Brick yards, lime kilns, and 
 an iron foundry, together with a nearby quarry, accounted 
 for the substantial character of the town's buildings. 
 
 At the end of a similar period Janesville was a somewhat 
 larger village than its neighbor downstream. If the spirit of 
 the men of Colebrook was controlling the destinies of Beloit, 
 there remained something reminiscent of Henry Janes in the 
 spirit of his old town. Its people lacked the common heredity 
 
62 Sinnissippi 
 
 and the common ideals of their puritan neighbors. They had 
 their origins in divers parts of the union and in various coun- 
 tries of the old world. It is of some significance that the first re- 
 ligious service in the town was held by an itinerant Methodist 
 preacher, who called his audience to salvation in the open 
 air under a spreading oak tree. The first church in the village 
 was built by a congregation of that faith. The town grew with- 
 out cohesive plan around centers on the two sides of the river. 
 Substantial brick and stone buildings had for neighbors others 
 of much less permanence. The ferries on the river had given 
 way to bridges and the rapids were covered by waters backed 
 up by two dams. The water power turned mills of the same 
 character as at Beloit, but here they were larger and served 
 a much greater area. Logs from the woods above Lake Winne- 
 bago were coming down the Rock River to the Janesville 
 mills and the grain of the counties upstream was filling their 
 elevators. The business of the county government and of the 
 courts added materially to the growth and importance of the 
 town. Janesville countered the establishment of Beloit Col- 
 lege with a seminary of short life and with a school for the 
 blind which was soon taken over by the state. In the field of 
 common-school education it was nowise behind its rival. In 
 journalism, Janesville began its Gazette in 1845, and Beloit 
 followed the next year with the Messenger. 
 
 The decade preceding the Civil War was a period of po- 
 litical upheaval here as elsewhere. As might be expected Be- 
 loit was a center of anti-slavery agitation and was rumored 
 to have its part in the running of fugitive slaves to freedom in 
 Canada. Janesville, too, was preaching abolition, but less mili- 
 tantly, and the whole community was moving through free- 
 
Rock Prairie 63 
 
 soil organizations to the Republican fold, The district sent a 
 man of that party to Congress in 1855 and in the following 
 year the state gave its vote for John C. Fremont for the presi- 
 dency. Lincoln spoke in both towns and Douglas in Janes- 
 ville during the election campaign of 1860. 
 
 During these years, Beloit, true to its traditions, had settled 
 into the role of a college town, and had grown but little. The 
 milling industries of Janesville were expanding and the town 
 growing. At the end of the period it was definitely outgrowing 
 its rival. 
 
 The epochal event of the decade was the coming of the 
 railroad. Plans for years in the making, finally brought a rail- 
 road into Janesville from Milwaukee early in 1853. Late in the 
 same year Beloit saw its first train when the Galena Union, 
 branching from its Chicago line at Belvidere, extended its 
 rails to Madison. In 1856 railroad facilities for the two towns 
 were balanced when Janesville obtained a direct line to Chi- 
 cago and Beloit was connected with Milwaukee by a line to 
 Racine. But Beloit remained always a way-station on its rail- 
 roads, while Janesville was being made the terminus for this 
 and that train run. Not only did the town profit from the 
 establishment of railroad shops, but Rock Prairie became a 
 recruiting ground for enginemen and trainmen for the two 
 lines which served its towns. Among these were some who 
 later made high place for themselves in the railroad world. 
 Both towns had been united to the outside world by telegraph 
 lines in 1848. Janesville took on city government in 1853, 
 and Beloit three years later. Janesville's prestige was further 
 advanced when its Gazette became a daily in 1854. 
 
 With the outbreak of the Civil War, Beloit sent its Guards 
 
64 Sinnissippi 
 
 as a company into the first ninety-day regiment called by the 
 governor. The regiment went east, took part in the battle of 
 Falling Waters in Virginia, and was returned home. The 
 Beloit unit then became a company of a regiment that went 
 through the war in the Iron Brigade. Janesville furnished 
 companies to several regiments, and its fair grounds saw the 
 mobilization and training of an infantry and a cavalry regi- 
 ment. The county did its entire part later in keeping full the 
 regiments from the state which were organized "for the dura- 
 tion of the war". Beloit College was represented in the war 
 by four-hundred, over one-half, of its graduates. Of these, 
 forty-six did not return. This decimation of its alumni is 
 memorialized by the college with a building built on the 
 campus shortly after the war ended. Janesville became widely 
 known as a horse market, and furnished thousands of draft 
 and saddle animals to the army. General Sheridan made a 
 visit to the town to look over horses destined for the cavalry 
 arm. Rock County furnished a war governor to the state, 
 Louis P. Harvey of the village of Shopiere. His term ended in 
 tragedy. Following the battle of Shiloh, he went with a party 
 which was carrying the state's sympathy and supplies to the 
 wounded at Pittsburg Landing. A misstep threw him from his 
 boat into the Tennessee River where he was drowned. 
 
 The decade which included and followed the war was 
 marked by slight growth and little progress in the two towns. 
 Janesville slightly increased its advantage, and at the end of 
 the period had about double the population of Beloit. There 
 was published toward the end of the century a survey of what 
 Beloit was in 1872. It listed the items of public utility that the 
 town lacked at that time, and the list would apply equally 
 
Rock Prairie 65 
 
 well to Janesville. On the credit side they had railroads, the 
 telegraph, and gas-light. Important among the deficiencies 
 were electricity, water-works, sewage, telephones, paved 
 streets, and means of public transportation. If the list were 
 extended in the light of more modern advances, and included 
 items of domestic utility, the life of these progressive com- 
 munities would be pictured as but little advanced from that 
 of our colonial times. 
 
 Janesville installed electric lighting in 1880, and when seen 
 by your historian some years later, was his introduction to the 
 new wonder. Beloit followed a few years later. The year 1880 
 saw the introduction of the telephone to both towns. If Be- 
 loit was behind its neighbor in many fields, its water- works, 
 opened in 1885, antedated that of Janesville by two years. 
 Both were years away from any public sewage disposal. 
 Janesville had street-cars in 1885, two decades ahead of 
 Beloit. Paved streets came gradually and slowly. In 1880 the 
 two towns were directly connected by each of their railroads, 
 and in 1902 an interurban line connected them with Rock- 
 ford, down the river. By the end of the century they had made 
 up all of the major deficiencies charged against them. 
 
 The year of 1886 saw the nearest approach to armed con- 
 flict between the towns. With the years, the Chicago line to 
 Beloit had become that railroad's main route to the north- 
 west. All through trains, including the luxury limiteds, were 
 going over this line. Meanwhile, Janesville, with all its roads, 
 saw only the passage of locals through its stations. In this 
 eventful year Janesville bonded itself heavily to assist this 
 railroad in building what was called the "Evansville cut-off", 
 which created through Janesville a shorter line than that 
 
66 Sinnissippi 
 
 through Beloit. Bitter resentment in the smaller town was 
 partially allayed by a schedule which sent the Twin City 
 trains over the new cut-off, but kept for the Beloit line the 
 through express trains to Winona and the Dakotas. In the 
 Beloit paper was pictured the astonishment with which the 
 Janes ville multitude saw for the first time a real railroad 
 train. This new construction and the subsequent completion 
 of a new freight yard by the same railroad gave Janesville 
 more definitely the role of a railroad town. 
 
 In this early period Beloit added the manufacture of paper 
 to its industries and Janesville went in for textiles, both cotton 
 and woolen. The last decade of the century past saw slow but 
 substantial growth in both towns, Beloit increasing the tempo 
 of progress, and gradually cutting down its rival's lead. Fol- 
 lowing the turn of the century, Beloit gained several large 
 industrial plants, and passed its neighbor to the north in 
 population for the first time. That small advantage has been 
 held in each succeeding enumeration, an advantage so small 
 that it could be wiped out by the shifting of a single industry. 
 As they stand today there is nothing of the metropolis about 
 either of these towns. They are each small industrial cities, 
 each with a well-built business section, each with a busy indus- 
 trial center grouped around the water power of the river, and 
 each has its stately mansions standing well back from the 
 road on favored streets and hundreds of attractive homes 
 and gardens on the hills at the edge of town. Neither would 
 admit the presence of a slum, though each might acknowl- 
 edge a section which turned out to be on the wrong side of 
 the tracks. Janes ville's industries are many, varied and gen- 
 erally of moderate size. Beloit, on the contrary, has but a 
 
Rock Prairie 67 
 
 small number of large plants, engaged in heavy industries. 
 If we adopt the economist's classification of consumer goods 
 and capital goods, we can say that Janesville turns out the 
 former, and Beloit the latter. By this generalization a slight 
 confusion of mind is passed on from writer to his reader. 
 Though they are both industrial towns, there is in each abun- 
 dant evidence of early influences that shaped their develop- 
 ment. North of the business center of Beloit is the campus 
 and its buildings, and a surrounding section of streets and 
 homes that mark the place as still a college town. The rail- 
 roads have lost something of their importance and of their 
 prosperity. But from Janesville, lines of roads still radiate in 
 every direction, and trains from all these lines continue to 
 arrive at its stations and to depart, even if less frequently 
 than they did. The switching of freight-cars and the making- 
 up of trains still goes on in the yards. It is still a railroad town, 
 the railroad center of its section. 
 
 Rock County, outside its cities, is agricultural. Its fields in 
 the main furnish the same crops as elsewhere in the northern 
 midwest. But not entirely so. Fashions change, it is true, but 
 there was a time when no well-dressed cigar went out without 
 its Wisconsin wrapper. Less fastidious ones wore a Connecti- 
 cut garment. Wisconsin tobacco is what is known in the trade 
 as "cigar leaf", a large tough leaf especially fitted for cigar 
 wrappings. The area in which this tobacco is grown surrounds 
 the junction of the Rock and Yahara Rivers, partly in Rock 
 County, and partly in the county of Dane. Planted from Con- 
 necticut stock by the early settlers and wholly used locally, 
 it first found a market in Milwaukee and Chicago when the 
 Civil War cut off the supply from Virginia. It has since de- 
 
68 Sinnissippi 
 
 veloped into big business, and at one time Wisconsin ranked 
 number four among the states in the growth of tobacco. It 
 has lost that relative standing since, but a very substantial 
 crop is still sent to market through the warehouses of Edger- 
 ton and Janes ville. This section, with one centered around 
 Sparta, furnishes practically the whole crop of the state. 
 Supplementing tobacco is the sugar-beet. The sugar industry 
 is centered in Janes ville, where a plant was built in 1904. 
 Into it is fed each year a crop of sugar-beets, grown mainly, 
 but by no means, exclusively, on Rock Prairie. 
 
 It would be pleasurable if to the products of the county 
 could be added a list of men and women of genius. They do 
 not come readily to mind. Without doubt the faculty of the 
 college at Beloit has produced scholarly volumes of worth 
 and interest, but their appeal has not been to the popular 
 taste. The names of two women of pioneer families, who have 
 made names for themselves in the outside world, merit notice. 
 Both came of old Vermont stock. Frances E. Willard, born in 
 the eastern state, passed her childhood and young woman- 
 hood in the vicinity of Janes ville. Later, with her home at 
 Evanston, Illinois, she went into educational work and be- 
 came head of a college for women. Beginning her crusade 
 against the liquor business by song and prayer in corner 
 saloons, she became the head and front of the movement, 
 holding for years the leadership of the National Woman's 
 Temperance Union. She was one of the founders of the 
 Prohibition party and she brought the whole influence of the 
 Temperance Union to the support of woman suffrage. The 
 state of Illinois has recognized her claim to a place among 
 the nation's great by placing her statue in the Capitol in 
 
Rock Prairie 69 
 
 Washington. Ella Wheeler Wilcox was born Ella Wheeler at 
 Johnstown Center on Rock Prairie. Moved to a village home 
 in adjoining Dane county, she began a writing career in 
 young girlhood. Essays, poems and stories flowed in streams 
 from her pen. The Civil War, but recently ended, formed the 
 background for much of her early poesy. Her readings had 
 great popularity at gatherings of the Grand Army, where 
 her combined youth and poetic gifts were always matters for 
 wonderment. While with one set of verse she was glorifying 
 the Union soldier at the front and his devoted family back 
 home, with another she was calling down the wrath of God 
 and of the people upon the rumseller. She published in 1872 
 a volume of this temperance verse under the title of Drops 
 of Water, which was republished and favorably received in 
 England. Other volumes followed, but she had acquired only 
 a limited audience until her Poems of Passion caused a mild 
 sensation in 1883. Later from her home in New York this 
 "laureate of the lowbrows" conducted for years a syndicated 
 column, in which poetry of high quality was mingled with 
 philosophical observations in doggerel verse and muddled 
 prose, writing that brought her a nation-wide popularity and 
 substantial worldly reward. All too seldom did she reach the 
 heights of the verses that begin with the lines 
 
 Laugh, and the world laughs with you; 
 Weep, and you weep alone. 
 
 A sweet singer of a somewhat later day, Carrie Jacobs 
 Bond, was born in Janesville and passed her girlhood there. 
 But neither she nor any other ballad- writer has yet thought to 
 bring to the beauties of the Rock the imperishable fame of 
 
70 Sinnissippi 
 
 Aft on Water and the gently flowing Shannon, even though 
 it flows between banks fully as green as does the Scottish 
 stream and through a country quite as picturesque as the Irish 
 central plain. Nor has any homesick longing for its banks 
 been sung as was done for the Wabash with its sycamore 
 shaded shores. But the age of the valley is still young and 
 surely the time will come when some gifted admirer will be 
 able to restrain his lyric pen no longer. Far more than the 
 Danube or the Juniata, does it warrant a tribute to the blue- 
 ness of its waters. When the river's song is sung it will be 
 with its smooth-flowing Algonkian name. 
 
 Concrete roads and motor travel have brought the com- 
 munities of Beloit and Janes ville much closer together. With 
 the lessening of the time gap between them, the sense of 
 mutual interest has developed and grown. That common inter- 
 est is such today that jealous rivalry is no longer logical. 
 Whatever benefits the one, far from harming the other, brings 
 benefit to both. It is certain that any figures brought out by 
 the census of 1940 have caused no such heartaches to these 
 towns as did the enumerations of decades past. 
 
s 
 
 3 
 
TROT VALLEY 
 
 1VJL ention has been made of the effigy mound in the form 
 of a turtle that is carefully preserved on the grounds of the 
 college in Beloit. This turtle mound gave its name to the 
 Winnebago village that stood on the site of Beloit and to the 
 stream that joins Rock River at this point. The traveler com- 
 ing up from Illinois is struck by the wide valley of Turtle 
 Creek and by the relatively small stream that flows down its 
 center. The wide stream bed gives the impression of a large 
 river having flowed down it at one time, a river that might 
 well have carried more water than does the Rock River itself. 
 At Shopiere, where a railroad crosses the creek, a high and 
 long trestle is necessary to carry the rails across the wide 
 valley below. Turtle Creek carries only the waters of Lake 
 Delavan down to the Rock, supplemented by whatever spring 
 and surface water enters it, in its course of about thirty miles. 
 There is nothing here to account for the wide valley with 
 which the creek has at some time provided itself. The science 
 of geology must be called upon for the explanation of the 
 great valley and the small stream. From the learning of these 
 wise men we find that a receding ice-field in ages past left 
 behind it a great lake in the area that is now southern Wis- 
 consin, a lake larger than any that now exists in the state. 
 Using present landmarks the lake's southern shoreline was 
 somewhat south of that of Lake Geneva. From the vicinity of 
 
 71 
 
72 Sinnissippi 
 
 Walworth it ran northwest through Darien to Richmond 
 thence eastward to the vicinity of Burlington, and from there 
 southwest back to Lake Geneva. This lake, roughly twenty- 
 five by fifteen miles, included within its banks the present 
 lakes of Delavan, Como and Geneva, with all the lands be- 
 tween and a considerable area beyond them. It was this great 
 lake that sent its waters to the Mississippi through the valley 
 of Turtle Creek and Rock River, in a stream comparable per- 
 haps with the Fox as it leaves Lake Winnebago. 
 
 In the forests and fields around this lake dwelt the ances- 
 tors of our horse and buffalo, and gigantic elk, as well as the 
 mastodon and the mammoth. Of these animals only the 
 mastodon and the elk have left any trace of themselves. 
 Massive bones and teeth of the former and the ivory-hard 
 antlers of the latter have been turned up in the earth of the 
 old lakebed. 
 
 The cold of the arctic seas was however, creeping gradually 
 southward again, and the ice-field was spreading again far- 
 ther and farther to the southward, and animal life was clear- 
 ing out of its path. The cover of ice engulfed the great lake 
 and carried a few short miles beyond its bed. The period of 
 this last great ice-field is placed at some hundreds of cen- 
 turies ago. 
 
 The conflicting pressures put upon the great glacier caused 
 havoc with the outlines of the former lake. When, centuries 
 later, the melting ice-field had retreated northward, it left a 
 barren, scarred area of rocks, where forest and lake had 
 formerly been, with a few deeply cut depressions where water 
 remained. Centuries more passed by and gradually vegetable 
 and animal life returned to the place from which it had been 
 
Troy Valley 73 
 
 erased. Woods and prairie grass came back to the land, and 
 to them came the birds and beasts from the southland. The 
 mastodon, the mammoth, and the great elk did not return, 
 and some that did come back were much changed in shape 
 and stature. Fish, too, returned to the waters by way of the 
 streams that drained them. 
 
 But vital changes had been left by the retreating glaciers. 
 Not only had the one great lake been superseded by three 
 smaller ones, but a barrier had been thrown up between the 
 outlets of the two larger lakes. Now only the waters of the 
 one occupying the northwest part of the old lake bed dis- 
 charges by its old outlet down Turtle Creek. The waters of 
 the other two, cut off from their old course, now flowed to a 
 new outlet to the eastward. Further centuries consolidated 
 these changes and built up the water system as it is today, and 
 as it was when the white man's eye first fell upon it. The 
 first record of such an event was in the summer of 1831, 
 when the party of John H. Kinzie, journeying from Fort 
 Dearborn to Fort Winnebago, at the Fox- Wisconsin portage 
 came upon Lake Geneva near its western end. They stopped 
 at the village of the Pottawattomie chief, Big Foot, on the 
 western end of the lake. Mrs. Kinzie, in her book, Wau-Bun, 
 tells the events of the visit. She went into raptures over the 
 beauty of the lake, comparing it to "a lake in the Forest Can- 
 tons." Years before this time the lake was known at Solomon 
 Juneau's trading post at Milwaukee and at Fort Dearborn, 
 from Indians bringing in their furs, but it was out of the line 
 of ordinary travel. It was called by the Indians "Maunk 
 Suck," by the French "Lac Gros Pied," and by the first ar- 
 rived Americans "Big Foot Lake," both of the latter transla- 
 
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Troy Valley 75 
 
 tions of the Indian name. It is probable that the Indians 
 derived its name from the fancied resemblance of the lake's 
 outline to a huge footprint, and that the Pottawattomie chief 
 took his name from that of the lake upon which he lived. The 
 lake had a more widely known Indian name, Kishwauketoe, 
 meaning "clear water." The surveyor, John Brink, visited it 
 in 1833 and named it "Lake Geneva" after his old home, 
 Geneva, in New York state. 
 
 The Kinzie party did not see Lake Como or Lake Delavan 
 at this time, and those white travelers who first saw them 
 have left no record of the events, probably because they are 
 less eye-arresting than the larger lake. Lake Delavan was 
 given the name of a New York temperance advocate, promi- 
 nent at the time of the settlement of the lake country. Lake 
 Como, the small body of water between the two larger, long 
 bore the name of Duck Lake, probably more appropriate than 
 that of the picturesque Italian lake. 
 
 Settlement began in the thirties of the nineteenth century 
 and the land around and between the lakes was quickly 
 filled up. The migration was largely from the eastern states, 
 with very little admixture from overseas. It began as a Yan- 
 keeland and has kept its character fairly well. The towns of 
 Delavan, Elkhorn, Lake Geneva, Walworth and Darien de- 
 veloped as trading centers, and Elkhorn was chosen for the 
 seat of county government. Though the outlines of the old 
 lake bed are traceable only by the rules of geology, the early 
 settlers sensed something of its former existence and gave the 
 name Troy Valley to the whole section. 
 
 Occupation of the country by eastern settlers was quite 
 without notable incident. Settlement had not begun when the 
 
76 Sinnissippi 
 
 Winnebago war of 1827 disturbed the border communities, 
 nor yet in 1832 when Black Hawk led his band up the valley 
 of Piscasaw Creek, past Lake Geneva and Lake Delavan to 
 Whitewater Creek and back to the Rock. Big Foot had his 
 village near the inlet, on Lake Geneva, with other small camps 
 of his band at Williams Bay, Spring Prairie, and Mukwanago, 
 but all of these left peaceably for western reservations in 
 1836. 
 
 The end of the half -century found the lake country peopled 
 by agricultural communities, with its half-dozen towns still 
 only local market centers, the largest of a bare couple of 
 thousands of people, and none industrialized. Each of them, 
 however, rated some distinction. Delavan, from being a de- 
 veloping ground for circuses, became the seat of a school for 
 the deaf and took on an atmosphere of culture, made vocal by 
 a summer Chautauqua school. Elkhorn was not only the 
 county seat, but was the place of meeting of a famous county 
 fair. Lake Geneva was distinctly a summer resort town, while 
 Walworth was unique in that its people were almost exclu- 
 sively of the sect of Seventh Day Baptists, who held their 
 church services on Saturday, and observed Sunday as any 
 other day of the week. Walworth was also the Gretna Green 
 for a section of Illinois on account of the laxity of Wisconsin 
 marriage laws. 
 
 One of these has been called a summer resort town, while 
 in truth the whole of Troy Valley was summer resort country. 
 The shores of Lake Geneva were lined with the landscaped 
 gardens of palatial summer homes, with neat cottages of the 
 less wealthy, with public recreation parks, and with summer 
 hotels. Green roofs, white pillars, and red castellated towers, 
 
Troy Valley 77 
 
 shining through or towering above the trees on commanding 
 heights above the shore line were the landmarks for land 
 and water travelers. Seip's place on Black Point, the villa and 
 Dutch windmill on the Sturges grounds, the Allerton home 
 on the Narrows, Letter's, Crane's, Mitchell's Ceylon Court, 
 and the Young marble palace, all added their artificial touch 
 to make the lake matchless in this midwest country. It re- 
 mains today as secure in the quality of its beauty as on that 
 far-off day when the Kinzie family first saw it. Lake George 
 in the east duplicates it on a grander scale, and Schroon Lake 
 at the headwaters of the Hudson shares many of its scenic 
 qualities. If there are others, their names do not come to 
 mind. The wooded shores of Lake Delavan, less high than 
 those of the larger lake, were dotted with camps of cottages 
 and tent sites, where colonies of neighbors from cities and 
 towns of the vicinity spent the months of summer in each 
 other's company. Notable was the colony of Rockford people 
 on the south shore. Lake Lawn, with its fine hotel, was the 
 outstanding public resort. 
 
 The modern impression of Troy Valley, if the nineties are 
 accepted as modern times, are those of a youth who in the 
 eighties and nineties of the century past found in it a world 
 of pleasure and adventure, and who has seen it only super- 
 ficially and for short periods since that time. For better under- 
 standing it is well to give something of the background of this 
 youth. When the Earl of Pembroke invaded Ireland in the 
 twelfth century, there went with him a member of the English 
 family of Lovelace. This soldier stayed in Ireland, and in the 
 centuries that have intervened, his descendants have become 
 thoroughly Gaelicized in blood and character, and the name 
 
78 Sinnissippi 
 
 underwent changes. There was little or nothing of the English 
 soldier left, except the variant form of his name, in the family 
 that left Kilkenny in the hard forties of the century past and 
 came to America. There were the householder and his wife, 
 two sons and two daughters. Arrived in America the father 
 found his first employment in the powder-mill of Mr. Du- 
 Pont in the village of Brandywine in Delaware. One day an 
 explosion wrecked the mill and when the Irish immigrant 
 looked upon the mangled remains of his fellow workers he 
 thanked God for his own deliverance from a like fate, and 
 resolved to find a place where he could take up his old 
 occupation of farmer. By river, canal, and the Great Lakes 
 the family reached Wisconsin, and was shortly settled upon 
 a farm near the shores of Button's Bay, a southern bulge of 
 Lake Geneva near its eastern end. Their arrival corresponded 
 closely with the admission of Wisconsin to the union of states. 
 With the passage of years more children came to the family, 
 the older ones married, and in the Civil War three sons 
 joined the Union Army and for one reason or another, never 
 returned to the old home. Then one day there came to the 
 farm a young mechanic, an employee of the great McCor- 
 mack reaper works in Chicago, whose work it was to assemble 
 the company's machine for the farmer and to instruct him 
 in its operation. This young man was of the sept of O'Faelan, 
 a notable family in the old kingdom of Ormonde. An attach- 
 ment grew up between this young man and the youngest 
 daughter of the immigrant farmer, an attachment which cul- 
 minated in their marriage in a little church in Lake Geneva. 
 The young couple chose as their future home a nearby village 
 growing rapidly under the influence of railroad business. In 
 
Troy Valley 79 
 
 this village they spent the remainder of their industrious lives, 
 and there raised their family to useful citizenship. The chil- 
 dren of this marriage had only hearsay knowledge of their 
 grandparents and the farm passed into other hands. 
 
 It was a small boy of this family who stood in the wind of 
 a raw November morning in the eighties, awaiting a great 
 adventure. Lake Geneva was ten miles to the north, a long 
 distance in those times, and he had never seen it. In that year 
 the Washington government had a mail route from the rail- 
 road town to the lake and the contract was let to one of the 
 many Brickleys that farmed the black soil of the Island. A 
 two-wheeled cart with a fat farm horse attached drew up and 
 the boy climbed into the seat by the driver. Crosswise under 
 their feet was the canvas and leather sack with the mail. 
 Clop, clop, clop, over the gravel road, an hour perhaps for 
 the four miles to Big Foot, the first postoffice and the Wiscon- 
 sin state line. The sack is thrown to the postmaster, who un- 
 locks it and dumps the contents on the floor. After the mail 
 for this office is separated, the rest is thrown back into the 
 sack, and the drive is resumed. Clop, clop, clop, for three 
 miles more, past prairie farms and Walworth is reached. 
 More action by the postmaster and again on the road. Clop, 
 clop, clop, now up and over a hill, when two miles away lies 
 the end of the lake, and beyond more miles of water to high 
 wooded shores. The road descends and winds along under a 
 bluff, following the valley contours to the village of Fontana, 
 the end of the trail. It is well on toward noon now and hunger 
 is high. Lunch in the combined postoffice and general store on 
 gingersnaps and birch-beer. Then a walk of a short half-mile 
 to the lake shore at the point where the Indian village had 
 
80 Sinnissippi 
 
 stood. The November wind is still strong and cold and the 
 roughened water is thrown into white caps and spray. Not 
 the best introduction to this gem of lakes, but from thence- 
 forth it was no longer a name. Like the early settlers of Troy 
 Valley who forgot to record the discovery of Lake Delavan 
 and Lake Como, the boy lost recollection of his first views 
 of these more distant waters. 
 
 Thus began an acquaintance with this lake country that in 
 the dozen succeeding years was to grow into a warm affec- 
 tion. From the towns of Delavan and Elkhorn on the north 
 to Harvard below the state line, from Sharon on the west to 
 the outlet of Lake Geneva on the east, there was scarcely a 
 farmhouse or a byroad with which he was not familiar. 
 
 Among the individuals of every generation there is a feel- 
 ing of superiority over the generations that have gone before. 
 It is colored by a sense of generous pity that their forbears 
 had been denied so many of the advantages that are their 
 own. They feel a hint of the ridiculous in the ways of life of 
 their ancestors. For no good reason the period of the eighteen- 
 nineties has been singled out for more than its share of the 
 amused comment upon the times past. To this youth that 
 was, life in the nineties was life in this enchanted lake coun- 
 try. Far from having any sense of inferiority for his generation 
 he feels that it should be greatly envied. To quote some of his 
 words: 
 
 Mention the years of the nineties and the word "gay" comes at 
 once to mind. Despite the four bleak years of depression that 
 marked the decade, it has indeed been hailed as a light-hearted 
 era, a time of good living, of jovial laughter and of social serenity. 
 However, the term "gay" as applied to those years has come to 
 
Troy Valley 81 
 
 have a meaning quite at variance with this estimate. Its applica- 
 tion is usually ironical, implying that the people of that time re- 
 garded themselves as living lives full of spice and adventure, 
 whereas in the light of later experience they had but a drab 
 existence. This may be a natural conclusion when one lists the 
 absolute necessities of a tolerable life at the present day and then 
 checks off those that were not available a half-century ago. 
 
 To the indictment of gaiety we of our small world would plead 
 neither "yea" nor "nay" without reservations. The word "gay" had 
 too many meanings and too many implications. If by it is meant 
 that we were light-hearted, that the smile came easily to our 
 features and as easily broke into laughter, then we were gay. If 
 to the word are given the various shades of meaning carried by 
 merry, blithe, airy, sprightly, vivacious, frolicsome, jolly and 
 jovial, it can be admitted that most of us had some combination 
 of these qualities. But when the term carries the implication of a 
 loose or licentious way of life, we admit of no such type of gaiety 
 in our community. Indeed our respectability was beyond ready 
 belief. No woman used tobacco until of an age when it was her 
 only solace, and then only in the chimney corner. Indeed it was 
 well toward the middle of the next decade when a daring actress 
 shocked a New York theatre audience by smoking a cigarette on 
 the stage. A youth of that period would have thought it as rash 
 and daring to offer to his girl companion a drink of liquor as a 
 cup of poison hemlock, and would as soon have expected its 
 acceptance. And he himself could show few evidences of drinking 
 without clouding his social standing. Of the playing of cards and 
 of dancing there were those whose church affiliations did not 
 permit of such things and those who might do both without sense 
 of sin or shame. In fact, outside the most strict church circles, 
 dancing was widely popular, though its practice was not as com- 
 mon as it latterly became. The difficulty was of the music. For 
 dancing parties there were orchestras, of course, but music for 
 informal dancing was not easily available. If casual dancers would 
 have music they must make it for themselves. There was no 
 
82 Sinnissippi 
 
 juke-box into which a coin might be dropped, no radio that could 
 be tuned in on dance music from afar, nor phonograph records 
 to be ground out. This was that primitive world in which even 
 the rubber bone for the gratification of the house-dog had not yet 
 been thought of. 
 
 There were dancing parties aplenty, sponsored the more often 
 by the local fraternal lodges or by such civic units as the volunteer 
 fire company. There were ample dancing floors and good orches- 
 tras, whose string music, accurately timed, would certainly sound 
 tame to ears attuned to the trombone and saxophone. Quadrilles 
 alternated with round dances, the waltz, schottische, polka and 
 galop, to which list was later added the two-step. Variety was 
 furnished by a Virginia Reel or the Money Musk. Quadrilles, alas, 
 are gone among sophisticated dancers, and only the waltz, much 
 changed, survives. In skill and grace dancing changes little from 
 one generation to another. Then as now, there were those individ- 
 ualists of antisocial habits, who with steps all their own brought 
 confusion to the dance floor. 
 
 Philadelphia has its yearly Assembly and Baltimore its Bache- 
 lor's Cotillion. With the same impatience and expectation that 
 devotees of these gatherings await their coming, the quality of 
 Harvard looked forward in the old days to the ball of the Order 
 of Railway Conductors. These elite of the railroad world came 
 with their ladies from Chicago, from Milwaukee, from Janesville, 
 from Madison, from far-away Baraboo, Fond du Lac and Green 
 Bay, bringing their brightest uniforms and their gayest gowns. 
 There was a floor a hundred by sixty feet with balconies. The 
 music was brought in from Chicago. There was dancing from 
 nine o'clock until the hours of morning, with a halt for supper 
 at the Ayer Hotel. It was a gathering sparkling beyond descrip- 
 tion. These parties leave a memory of pomp and circumstance 
 that no metropolitan ball has been able to erase. 
 
 The rules of the age-old game of "keeping company" 
 change little through the centuries. What gives the appear- 
 
Troy Valley 83 
 
 ance of change are the accessories involved. The horse and 
 buggy of the nineties would not carry a young couple inter- 
 ested in each other, either as fast nor as far as the automobile, 
 but neither would the old-time conveyance call for so much 
 of their attention. The livery horse required some urging 
 and guidance outward bound, but when turned homeward, 
 could be relied upon, despite any blackout, to bring his 
 charges to the vicinity of his stable door. The buggy ride, 
 however, was a formal affair, calling for prearrangement and 
 a considerable period of freedom. This was the time when 
 everybody rode a bicycle, a vehicle that could be halted and 
 parked at any shaded turn of the road or wherever running 
 water flowed near its pathway. By virtue of long-established 
 custom, strolling couples on Sunday afternoon, followed the 
 path to the community cemetery, where the hours could be 
 happily spent in light conversation and the reading of epi- 
 taphs. 
 
 The methods by which the graduated emotions of interest, 
 tender liking, and devotion are registered are standard for all 
 time, and need not be dwelt upon. In one period more 
 emphasis will be put upon certain rites than in another. At 
 this time great faith was placed in flowers, sweets, sheet 
 music and reading matter as aids. Sacrifices of substantial 
 food to the fair one were seldom made except as incidents 
 of the day-long buggy rides. On the other hand, a suitor was 
 likely to gauge the progress of his suit upon the frequency 
 with which he was bid to sit in at the family board. 
 
 Music personally performed played a great part in all 
 social affairs. Every home had its piano, and every maid could 
 make music of a sort upon it. Every youth sang, whether or 
 
84 Sinnissippi 
 
 not he had a voice or an inclination for it. In the competition 
 for feminine favor any superficial skill upon the guitar or 
 mandolin was a great help, while a tenor voice was priceless. 
 He who made issue with such a voice had two strikes upon 
 him before he started. The situation would have been dark 
 indeed except for the tenor's urge for more and greater con- 
 quests. For these gifted youths there were few bits of music 
 that so well served their talents as the strains of Beauty's Eyes. 
 
 Kings must play a weary part, love 
 Thrones must quake with wild alarms, 
 But the kingdom of my heart, love 
 Lies within your loving arms. 
 
 No one can question the appeal of an earnest voice carrying 
 such a message of devotion. 
 
 For him with a voice of limited compass, but who could 
 summon depths of feeling into it, there was the ballad com- 
 mencing: 
 
 I wandered down by a little babbling brook 
 Its every ripple speaks of thee 
 
 and culminating in the devastating lines: 
 
 If this bright world were all of mine to give 
 I would proudly lay it at thy feet. 
 
 With the background of a canoe on a moonlit lake, and the 
 accompaniment of a few chords upon a guitar, no suit was 
 hopeless. 
 
 Nothing in all this is to imply that the maidens of that 
 period gave no thought to economic security, nor that its 
 weight was negligible in the scales against the tenor voice 
 
Troy Valley 85 
 
 and the vibrating strings. However, as in the days of the 
 Pharaohs and again in those of the dictators, there were those 
 who saw two living as cheaply as one, without real thought as 
 to whether the one had a means of living. Plainly the mating 
 situation was entirely normal. 
 
 Sports and games have undergone great changes in fifty 
 years. They had no place in the public school system in the 
 old days, and a comparatively minor one in the colleges where 
 football was in its infancy. Tennis had hardly more standing 
 as a competitive sport than had croquet. Both were played on 
 side yard lawns, incident to the serving of tea and cakes. 
 
 Baseball and horse racing were in their heyday. Every 
 town had its race track and every village and farm community 
 its ball team. The race tracks were given over largely to har- 
 ness races of trotters and pacers, with running races inci- 
 dental. No great money, either in bets or purses, was involved. 
 The great race-meet of the section was the Walworth County 
 Fair, an autumn feature held at Elkhorn. In these parts of 
 southern Wisconsin and northern Illinois there were hun- 
 dreds whose boast it was that they had not missed a meeting of 
 the Elkhorn Fair since it was started. Perhaps on account of a 
 shorter playing season the baseball played in this section was 
 not notably skillful. Only the name of Clarence Beaumont, 
 who shone in Pittsburgh's center field comes to mind as a 
 star from these sand-lots. Following one upon the other, the 
 vogue of roller-skating and cycling swept the country in the 
 early nineties and nowhere were they more popular than here. 
 
 The man of middle age who later took up golf at this time 
 found his exercise in the care of a garden and in pushing the 
 lawn-mower over the home grass plot. Though no scores 
 
86 Sinnissippi 
 
 were kept of these gentle pastimes there was no lack of the 
 competitive spirit in them. 
 
 Boating on the lakes was very popular. There were many 
 more water-craft upon the lakes then than at any time since 
 the automobile came into general use. Every landing had its 
 covey of rowboats and canoes, and every summer home of 
 pretension had its steam launch, these of greatly varying size. 
 Public steamers made regular runs of the principal landings, 
 led, on Lake Geneva, by the great side-wheeler, Lucius 
 Newberry. 
 
 The abrupt drop of the lake banks into deep, clear and cool 
 water, made for skill in swimming. Beaches were few and of 
 no great extent. There was little opportunity for lying around 
 on beds of sand and taking on a suntan, if such had been the 
 vogue, which it was not. Women and children waded in the 
 shallow water off the beaches and there did such swimming 
 as was within their powers. The women were necessarily wad- 
 ers on account of their bathing dress. Except that the skirts 
 were moderately shortened and the corset, hat and shoes put 
 aside, they went into the water quite as fully dressed as for a 
 shopping tour. 
 
 Thus is brought up the topic of the dress of the period in 
 general. Our narrator said: 
 
 It is quite true that clothes were different in the nineties, but 
 in what decade have they not been? Those whose profit it is that 
 styles shall change have seen that they did change. The ladies of 
 the period under scrutiny looked back thankfully to their escape 
 from the cumbersome hoopskirts and bustles. The vogue for the 
 sinuous lines of the aesthetic damozel which had touched the 
 eastern cities found no response in this hinterland. But conserva- 
 tive fashion having decreed that they should wear trailing skirts, 
 
Troy Valley 87 
 
 sweeping hat brims and leg-of-mutton sleeves, they put them on 
 without question or protest. The hour-glass figure being the ideal 
 of the day they submitted themselves to their corsetiers to do with 
 them what they would. The young men favored high, straight 
 collars, multicolored Ascot ties, braided seams on their trousers, 
 the cutaway coat, the derby hat, and pointed patent leather shoes, 
 the latter with cloth tops. We were close enough to Michigan 
 Avenue to keep along with its styles. There was a liking for hair 
 parted down the middle, for the wearing of gloves and for walking 
 sticks. The libel that the handle-bar moustache and the startling 
 checked suit were typical of these times scarcely deserves a denial. 
 While the evil-sounding word "dude" was known among us, the 
 living species existed only in faraway eastern cities. No pictured 
 scene of the nineties is complete without its group of cyclists of 
 both sexes and their costumes. As this was the short-lived "bicycle 
 age" the startling road dress of the period was like nothing worn 
 either before or since. 
 
 There being a crushed fly in every pot of ointment, however 
 closely guarded, the question arose in what form this intruder 
 took in this most favored of lands. 
 
 Our climate was far from perfect. The winters were long and 
 harsh, and spring held off its coming interminably. When spring 
 did come it was the gayest of its kind, but it merged quickly into 
 summer. The summers were the best in the Mississippi valley, 
 which is not claiming overmuch. There were periods of hot days, 
 but they did not persist. A colorful, bracing autumn might last 
 well into December. The unforgettable climatic feature of this 
 section is the thunderstorm. The popular idea that the tropical 
 storm is a terrifying electrical display is a mistake. The hurricane 
 of the southern seas is made up of a devastating wind and con- 
 tinuing torrents of rain. But for the ultimate in electrical storms 
 one need go no further than the upper Mississippi valley. With 
 the usual setting of a hot summer afternoon, with no breath of 
 air stirring, there is a gathering of thunderheads in the southwest. 
 
88 Sinnissippi 
 
 As they advance to blot out the blue of sky a weird dusk descends 
 upon the land. The cloud bank separates into a forward-rolling 
 black rim above a gray curtain of rain clouds. From out of the 
 gray mass come bolts of forked lightning. There is a terrifying 
 period of absolute quiet as the clouds settle lower and darker. 
 There comes a gust of wind carrying dust and leaves before it 
 and a few heavy drops of rain. Then follows a blinding flash of 
 lightning, a crash of thunder, and the wind-driven rain is wiping 
 out all view of the surroundings. The quick succession of light- 
 ning flashes and thunder claps is beyond belief of any who have 
 not experienced such a storm. The violence precludes any long 
 duration, and it is over as suddenly as it began. Then goes around 
 the anxious query whether there was a tornado in its midst, and 
 if so, where had it struck. 
 
 Despite the handicap of a climate none too good, he who 
 was the youth of our narrative looks with wistful eyes toward 
 his old homeland. What is it that has awakened within him 
 this enthusiasm for his old haunts? It is not the ordinary 
 call of homesickness, else he would have felt and answered it 
 long ere this. It is something in relation to the disturbed peace 
 of the world. True it is that in the war of 1917-18, when he 
 was in the years of his greatest strength, he went to Europe 
 in one of a convoy of twenty troopships, spent a year in 
 France and with the Army of Occupation in Germany, and 
 returned without loss of his reason or his illusions. He had 
 the unique experience of finding his post-war world quite the 
 same as the one he had left to go to war. Paris did nothing to 
 him, perhaps because it was anticlimax to Chicago. But the 
 present gathering of war clouds on two horizons, with the 
 nation arming and casualty lists beginning to come in, finds 
 him outside the categories of those picked for war service. 
 
Troy Valley 89 
 
 His role is reduced to that of keeping from being an air-raid 
 casualty and avoiding the busy feet of those with an active 
 part in the nation's effort. 
 
 With drawing compass, scale, and protractor he went to 
 work on a map of the country to locate the place to which he 
 could journey and be the safest from enemy sky raiders. It 
 was fortunate chance that he should find it in the lake country 
 of his early years. He knows well the hazards of association 
 with military objectives, and knows equally well that there 
 are none in the Troy Valley. From the threatened banks of the 
 Potomac, the old home country shines as a vision in the north- 
 west sky like one of Maxfield Parrish's dream towns. He has 
 plans in the making for an underground shelter, suitable for 
 light housekeeping. This he hopes to locate, when the time 
 for moving comes, in some side-hill, from which the amenities 
 of the Big Foot Country Club will be available. He was a 
 man of mature years when he first felt the spring of the club's 
 peaty fairways under his feet and the memory lasts. 
 
 He has misgivings anent the deep snows and the bitter cold 
 of the months of winter in this north country. But security 
 cannot be had without cost of some kind, and he obtains 
 what reassurance he can from the knowledge that the Potta- 
 wattomie chief and his fellows, with their wives and children, 
 lived in their huts of matting and bark on the hillside across 
 the valley, through many winters reputedly more severe than 
 those of the present age. 
 
. 
 
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THE LEAD COUNTRY 
 
 v/ut of the driftless area of southwestern Wisconsin comes 
 the Pecatonica River, joined from the same region near its 
 mouth by the Sugar River. The name of the larger of the two 
 is the Indian equivalent of "crooked stream/' and well it 
 merits its title. It winds its way on an unbelievably tortuous 
 course, generally eastward in Wisconsin, then southward 
 across the state line and again to the east, to its junction with 
 the Rock at Rockton, south of Beloit. The two streams flow 
 lazily in narrow low-banked courses through wide low val- 
 leys. They go out of their banks readily in summer storms 
 and in the thawing weather of spring. When at any time the 
 eastern journals flash news of flood in the middle west, it is a 
 fair inference that the Pecatonica and its unruly offspring 
 are spreading their waters over the state-line counties. 
 
 The region of their origin in southwestern Wisconsin is that 
 surprising area that was spared from the scouring of glaciers 
 when these ice masses were everywhere around it. The ab- 
 sence of glacier action is marked in every feature of the land- 
 scape. It is a land of mounds, not the work of any prehistoric 
 people, but of countless ages of wind and water, of fierce 
 heat and freezing cold, giving new shapes to masses of Ni- 
 agara sandstone. The mounds rising hundreds of feet above 
 the surrounding plain and exceptionally with square miles of 
 summit surface, stand as giant detached sentinels, with an 
 escarpment of the same hard rock surrounding the area that 
 
 91 
 
92 Sinnissippi 
 
 it once covered. There are cave-mouths in the rocky rim, 
 entrances to a vast subterranean river system which underlies 
 this region at a great depth, and the outlet of which can only 
 invite speculation. At a depth of a few feet below the surface 
 there is throughout the area a layer of Galena limestone with 
 frequent outcroppings. This rock bears rich lead-ores, in the 
 form of flakes of soft metal and in cubes and masses of harder 
 combination. 
 
 The rivers of this driftless area are not fed by lakes as are 
 the nearby Rock and Yahara. From the bases of the mounds 
 and of the extended sandstone ridge, springs well up from 
 the earth and join their waters to those from other springs, 
 forming rivulets which in turn unite to make the main con- 
 tributors to the Pecatonica water system and to the smaller 
 rivers that flow to the Wisconsin and the Mississippi. Once 
 free of their hilly origin, they all meander with uniform 
 sluggishness on their way. 
 
 Within the widely curving stony ridge and between its 
 rugged mounds the valley is an expanse of prairie land, 
 broken by frequent groves of hardwood timber and by 
 fringes of woods along the larger water courses. In the early 
 days when lead was the lure of the land and wood for its 
 smelting a necessity, the possession of a forested tract was of 
 prime importance for business success. This influence ac- 
 counts for such names as Gratiot's Grove, Meeker's Grove, 
 and Dodge's Grove among the first settlements of the area. 
 Deep black soil in the stream bottoms made it a good land 
 for corn, the staple food of all pioneer people. This favored 
 land was the home of the Sac and Fox tribes. They had 
 previously been neighbors for a century in the country around 
 
The Lead Country 93 
 
 Lake Winnebago and Green Bay. The Fox people, who called 
 themselves Outagamies, were the only ones of Algonquin 
 stock with whom the French could not establish a friendship. 
 They were equally haughty and truculent with their Indian 
 neighbors. Their exactions upon white and Indian alike, 
 drew upon them the vengeance of the French and their 
 Chippewa and Ottawa allies. After repeated defeats of their 
 warriors and devastation of their villages, the remnant of the 
 tribe joined the Sacs and fled their old homeland. Up the 
 waters of the Fox they went, across the portage and down the 
 Wisconsin until they came to a place that has ever since borne 
 the name of the Sauk prairie. Here they established villages, 
 the Sacs on the right bank, their allies lower down on the left 
 bank. Their sites are marked today by the towns of Prairie 
 du Sac and Muscoda. Their destiny carried them southward, 
 first into the coveted lead-bearing country where they drove 
 out a band of Kaskaskias and took over their crude mining 
 operations. They cleared rival tribes away from the banks of 
 the Mississippi from the mouth of the Wisconsin to the Des 
 Moines rapids. Near the junction of the Rock and the Missis- 
 sippi Rivers, the tribes built each its own principal village, 
 the Sacs on the north bank of the Rock, and the Foxes on the 
 Mississippi only a few miles away. They were again in a 
 permanent home. This tribal migration began in the thirties 
 of the eighteenth century and ended some decades later. 
 
 Lead was a scarce and precious article in the early years of 
 this country. A scant supply was found in Virginia soon after 
 the Jamestown settlement, but it was two centuries later be- 
 fore there was an American source that was equal to the 
 demand for the metal. In a time when every man, soldier and 
 
The Lead Country 95 
 
 civilian, had his rifle, and every rifle a need for bullets, lead 
 was an important article of commerce. There were times and 
 places when pig-lead and leaden bullets were accepted as 
 legal tender. In the movement toward the west, there was 
 always an eye directed toward possible lead deposits. The 
 French early introduced firearms into the western country, 
 and early located the lead field in the Pecatonica valley. They 
 instructed the Indians in a crude method of mining and smelt- 
 ing, and pig-lead from this source was finding its way to 
 French traders for a century before it was commercially 
 mined. Jonathan Carver passed through this section in 1766 
 and saw lead and lead-ore in quantities in the Sac village on 
 the Wisconsin. The tribesmen took him to view their mining 
 operations in the vicinity of the Blue Mounds. Julien Dubuque 
 arrived in 1788, and obtained from the Sac and Fox tribes 
 permission to mine the metal on the western bank of the 
 Mississippi near the present site of the city of Dubuque. He 
 gained the friendship of the Indians, and worked the mines 
 with Indian labor until his death in 1810, gaining a fortune. 
 His product went to lower Canada. 
 
 The first Americans in the lead country came up the Missis- 
 sippi River and gained the privilege of working the mines by 
 marrying women of the tribes. Certain ones who thought to 
 do without this aid lost their lives. Even the fortunate ones 
 were permitted to mine only in places assigned to them by 
 the Indians. In 1816 Colonel George Davenport, Indian trader 
 at Rock Island, shipped to St. Louis the first flat-boat load 
 of lead from Fever River. It remained for Colonel James 
 Johnson, a Kentuckian, to break the Indian's grip on the lead 
 fields. Before going there in 1822 he applied to Washington 
 
96 Sinnissippi 
 
 for military protection for his enterprise. Colonel Willoughby 
 Morgan, the district commander, was directed to furnish a 
 detachment of soldiers and send them to Fever River. John- 
 son arrived with his own "company ," consisting of a group of 
 white laborers and negro slaves, and began the first mining 
 and smelting on a commercial basis. He was soon followed by 
 Moses Meeker with a party from Cincinnati and by others 
 until a colony had been well established. 
 
 By the experience of a century or more the mining opera- 
 tions of the Indian had become well standardized. He built 
 a fire of logs beside the mass of Galena rock, and when it was 
 well heated, dashed cold water upon it. The shattered rock 
 was then broken up further by improvised crowbars. The ore 
 was carried in baskets of bark or deerskin to the log furnace 
 which was built on a slope with a rock basin to catch the 
 molten metal. For long it was work for the women, but with 
 increased demand for lead and higher prices, the Sac and 
 Fox tribes largely gave up their seasonal hunting, and turned 
 to mining and smelting. The coming of the white miner 
 changed these methods in detail only. There were better tools 
 and there were early attempts to substitute a brick furnace 
 for that of logs. 
 
 News of easy fortunes in the lead fields spread fast in the 
 sections from which the early arrivals had come. They were 
 mainly from southern Illinois and from Kentucky, from which 
 state Illinois itself had been peopled. The earliest came up 
 the Mississippi by keel-boat, one month from St. Louis to the 
 Fever River, two from Cincinnati. It was a laborious voyage 
 by oar and sail, by poling and warping. The return trip, with 
 only a little work with the oars and tiller, was easy. It was 
 
The Lead Country 97 
 
 not until 1825 that the first overland trail was opened from 
 Peoria on the Illinois River to the town of Galena on the Fever 
 River. This was followed by others from the south and later 
 by the Kishwaukee trail from Chicago. Started as mail routes, 
 they became the avenues by which household goods, live 
 stock, and current supplies came into the country. 
 
 The Pecatonica country began the commercial mining of 
 lead with a sturdy rival in the Potosi field in Missouri. This 
 section was near the St. Louis market, but this advantage was 
 more than balanced by less rich deposits and more difficult 
 transportation. In 1827 the northern field was away in the 
 lead with an output of over five million pounds of metal. Two 
 years later, with an output of thirteen million pounds, it had 
 a practical monopoly of the country's supply. By this time 
 the whole lead-bearing area had been taken over by the white 
 settlers. Galena in Illinois was the local market and the port 
 of shipment by keel boat to St. Louis. From here a wagon 
 road ran northeast through Elk Grove and Belmont to 
 Mineral Point, the mining center, and thence on to Dodge- 
 ville and Blue Mounds. Down this deeply rutted prairie road 
 heavy wagons passed carrying pig-lead and drawn by four 
 to eight yoke of striving oxen. 
 
 In the thirties of the past century this small southwestern 
 section of Wisconsin contained a majority of the population of 
 the territory and completely dominated its political and 
 economic life. Later with a wave of immigration sweeping 
 over the country, it kept its distinct character by reason of the 
 origin of its people. There was a French element in the Green 
 Bay region, Germans were coming into the upper Rock valley, 
 and the native immigration to the eastern part of the territory 
 
98 Sinnissippi 
 
 was New York and New England stock. But here the pre- 
 dominant element called themselves Kentuckians, which 
 meant that their ancestors were from the south Atlantic sea- 
 board, from Virginia and North Carolina mainly, and had 
 came by way of Cumberland Gap and the Wilderness Path 
 into Kentucky, from whence later generations had made their 
 way through southern Indiana and Illinois to this new fron- 
 tier. They were sons and grandsons of the men who had 
 fought with Boone, Kenton and Logan, against the Cherokees 
 from the south, and later against the raiding Shawnees and 
 Wyandottes from Ohio. Their young minds had been filled 
 with stories of the old Allegheny frontier, of forays upon 
 Indian villages, and of hairbreadth escapes from capture and 
 torture. They knew the part their kindred had taken in the 
 defences of Boonesborough and Bryant's Station and of their 
 losses sustained at the Blue Licks. There were among them a 
 surprising number of military titles, a circumstance which has 
 been ascribed to a custom of the Kentucky militia authorities 
 of assigning a full quota of company officers and perhaps a 
 field officer to each hamlet that furnished a group to the state 
 troops. It is said that a war party starting upon a foray into 
 Indian country in the old days would be made up of practical- 
 ly equal officer and enlisted strength. Some of the Kentuck- 
 ians, like Colonel Henry Dodge, were Indian fighters in their 
 own right, which may have been the case of Nathan Boone, 
 son of the pathfinder who was among the early comers to 
 the mines. They all carried an inherited hatred of Indians. 
 The Winnebago outbreak of 1827 and the Sac and Fox war 
 of 1832 proved them eager, not only to defend their homes, 
 but to wage the traditional war of extermination against the 
 
The Lead Country 99 
 
 Indian race. In 1832, after Black Hawk had hidden the wom- 
 en and children in the northern swamps, he sent scattered 
 bands to harass the section from which they had been evicted. 
 Practically all of the engagements of this miniature war took 
 place in the lead country. Fierce fighting between small com- 
 mands took place on the banks of the Pecatonica, at Kellogg s 
 Grove and at the Blue Mounds. Two regiments were raised 
 in the lead country. These troops were notable for the grim 
 ferocity with which they fell upon Black Hawk's helpless fol- 
 lowers, sparing neither age nor sex, a reflexion of the fear 
 and hatred generated by a century of border warfare. It is 
 told of a doctor, recruited for one of these regiments, that he 
 vied with the riflemen in the killing of Indians and in the 
 collection of scalps, and only reluctantly was turned aside 
 for any surgical work. 
 
 The Galena Advertiser of February 23, 1835, while com- 
 menting on social conditions in the section, says: 
 
 Kentucky has yielded to us many of her choicest men; and Vir- 
 ginia and North Carolina have sent to us from their barren coast 
 and worn-out fields men who were the pride of their native states. 
 
 Ignoring the slur upon their former homes it was true that 
 from the then heart of the old South, there came many men 
 of high character and of proven ability, who took high places 
 in the affairs of their new home. They would have been lead- 
 ers in any community. They were physically impressive and 
 mentally keen. In many of them however, inherited tendency 
 and frontier conditions produced the characteristic vices of a 
 new land. They were given to heavy drinking, gambling, 
 quarreling, and fighting. They were quick to resent slights, 
 real or fancied, and among the leaders who wished to be 
 
100 Sinnissippi 
 
 known as southern gentlemen there was the usual willingness 
 to meet insult with a challenge to the dueling field or by the 
 summary use of firearms. The carrying of concealed weapons 
 was common practice in the lead fields, a situation severely 
 condemned in other sections of the territory. It was one of 
 these swashbuckling gentlemen, from Grant county, who 
 shot to death in the capitol building a fellow legislator with 
 whom he differed over a political appointment, and who was 
 freed in a Monroe courtroom on a plea of self-defense by a 
 jury of his gun-toting peers. 
 
 The majority of the so-called Kentuckians, as with those 
 from other sections of the country, were men of common 
 stock, adventurers hurrying to get whatever advantages there 
 were out of this new land. There resulted in the mining towns, 
 in Galena, in Mineral Point, in Dodgeville and at the Blue 
 Mounds, scenes such as were thereafter re-enacted in the 
 mushroom towns of the gold fields, in the early days of the 
 rich finds in California, Colorado and the Klondike. The 
 scanty accommodations for lodging and food were taxed to 
 the utmost, men were content if their sleep could be taken 
 under any protection from the weather, and ate what was set 
 before them without question. Drinking places called "gro- 
 cerys" were everywhere, providing whiskey, gambling, and 
 dancing, at all hours of the day and night. There were com- 
 peting brands of local whiskey, called for some unknown rea- 
 son "Pecatonica" and "Rock River," both cheap and potent. 
 Brawls, individual and by gangs, were ordinary events, at 
 times ending in tragedy from the use of knife or pistol. Thiev- 
 ing was to be guarded against at all times, and highway rob- 
 bery was a constant menace to travel. Local law enforcement 
 
The Lead Country 101 
 
 was lax and lenient, and town jails easy to force. A missionary 
 of the day made a discouraged report upon the evils of Sab- 
 bath-breaking and profane swearing, of the use of strong 
 drink and of gambling, which were everywhere prevalent in 
 the mining country. 
 
 An English traveler and writer, Charles A. Murray, made a 
 visit to the lead fields in 1834. He found Galena and Dubuque, 
 with down-river Keokuk, the most "low and blackguard" 
 towns he had seen in America. What with the "coarse and 
 ferocious" workers with the keelboats and the "thieves, 
 pirates, and deserters" that made up a large share of the lead 
 workers, the two principal towns of the section were full of 
 men engaged in their unoccupied hours "chiefly in drinking, 
 gambling, quarreling, dirking and pistolling one another." 
 "This picture" he adds "is rather more faithfully descriptive 
 of Dubuque than Galena," in which latter town he found a 
 considerable element of serious and law-abiding citizens. He 
 characterized this collection of rough humanity as "experi- 
 enced and notorious blasphemers." 
 
 From the first, farming was carried on alongside of mining. 
 The owner of a lead mine farmed the remainder of his acres, 
 and the settler who took a farm began mining lead if a deposit 
 was found on his holdings. All were miner-farmers or farmer- 
 miners, according to the relative importance of farm or mine. 
 By 1845 wheat was bringing more returns to the valley than 
 was lead. Before this time the Erie Canal and the Great Lakes 
 had begun to cut deeply into the traffic of the Mississippi 
 waterway. Supplies coming in at Milwaukee or Racine re- 
 quired wagon transportation to the western towns, and lead 
 and wheat went back on the return loads. Prairie schooners 
 
102 Sinnissippi 
 
 with three to six yoke of oxen carried this heavy traffic at 
 snail pace over the worst of roads. As a result St. Louis lost 
 its place as the lead market. 
 
 Settlers too were coming in by this northern route, not 
 only from the eastern states, but miners from Cornwall and 
 Wales and farmers from Ireland. The section maintained its 
 character as a community of English-speaking descent. 
 
 By 1850 the decline in lead mining was well under way. 
 Many factors contributed to this end. The surface diggings 
 had been worked out and the opening up of deeper strata was 
 beyond the means of the owners. The gold finds in California 
 cleared the valley of its adventurers, but also took away in- 
 dispensable miners of experience. Other new fields added to 
 the exodus. The basic reason for the practical abandonment 
 of so rich a lead deposit was the discovery of lead in silver 
 working in the western country. As a biproduct of silver min- 
 ing, it could be sold at a price at which no mine, exclusively 
 of lead, could compete. There is at least one mine at the pres- 
 ent time in the old lead field, working deep deposits of lead 
 and zinc. There was a small, but important, foreign invasion 
 of the valley in 1845. It was a government-supported emigra- 
 tion of Swiss farmers from the canton of Glarus. Agents sent 
 ahead found land and a site for their settlement on the east- 
 ern edge of the lead fields, in the upper valley of the Sugar 
 River. They began wheat farming, but like their fellow farm- 
 ers found no profit in it by reason of the heavy charges for 
 transportation to a market. They obtained cows from Ohio 
 and began dairy farming, the type of husbandry for which 
 their experience had fitted them. In time they introduced into 
 New Glarus the processes of making the kinds of cheese for 
 
The Lead Country 103 
 
 which their native country is noted. The fame of Wisconsin 
 cheese is nation-wide, and that fame is based on products 
 perfected by these Swiss dairymen. The state produces two- 
 thirds of the American Swiss cheese made in the country, and 
 Green County, in which is located New Glarus, produces the 
 bulk of the state's output. Monroe, the county seat, is the 
 cheese center of the country. 
 
 Unlike the typical worked-over mining section, the Peca- 
 tonica country has no ghost towns. True, Belmont, the first 
 state capital, is only a vacant site, but it never was a mining 
 town. The decline of lead production was coincident with an 
 expansion of agriculture and the transition of the former min- 
 ing camps to market towns for a farmer community was 
 gradual and easy. The Brown Swiss cow has replaced Galena 
 rock as the basic wealth of the valley and the importance of 
 pig lead has been completely over-shadowed by giant discs 
 of whitish cheese, the form in which the bulk of it goes, by 
 carload, to the market. The place in the landscape of the 
 lead furnace and its refuse pile is taken by the roadside cheese 
 factory, where the passerby may see the farmers waiting their 
 turn to unburden their light trucks of their cans of milk. 
 There is always a welcome to the curious who would see 
 cheese in the making, and the stock-room of ripening discs, 
 with a hope that the curious one will be stirred to make a 
 trial purchase and thus become an added devotee. 
 
 This old section of Wisconsin, once its center of population 
 and industry, has become somewhat of a backwater. Through 
 lines of railroad only skirt its borders as do the main routes of 
 automobile travel. In early days a road was built along the 
 Military Crest to connect Fort Winnebago at the portage with 
 
104 Sinnissippi 
 
 Fort Crawford at Prairie du Chien. This road later carried the 
 lead and wheat of the district to the Milwaukee market. The 
 old military road has been made a good cement highway, and 
 there are other good roads crossing the district in all direc- 
 tions, but these roads lead only from one market town of 
 shady streets to another of the same kind. It would be diffi- 
 cult and time-consuming to get into the upper Pecatonica 
 valley by rail and the routes of the bus lines pass by at a 
 distance. 
 
 Perhaps on account of its freedom from the hurry and bus- 
 tle of transient traffic, it has an intangible charm that is lack- 
 ing in busier sections of the state. The way to see it is from 
 an automobile under low speed and with time to stop at what- 
 ever catches the eye. It is geologically an old country and this 
 sense of age intrudes itself into the landscape and into the 
 towns. These latter do not carry the age marks peculiar to 
 New England towns, nor yet of the old South. They are per- 
 haps a compromise between the two with an added influence 
 from the south of Britain. 
 
 The countryside is marked by well-built farmhouses and 
 large barns with their silos, all well painted, the white of 
 house and silo contrasting with the red of the barns. Cows 
 of Holstein and Brown Swiss stock dot the fields. Markers 
 along the roadsides and in the towns call attention to the loca- 
 tion of points of local historic interest. These refer mainly to 
 incidents of the Sac and Fox war, the sites of blockhouse forts, 
 the scenes of bloody skirmishes, and the routes of Indian 
 travel and of troop pursuit. These and a few place names are 
 all that remain to recall that there was the home of these 
 luckless tribes. From their Iowa lands they were moved first 
 
The Lead Country 105 
 
 to Kansas and later to a prairie home between the Canadian 
 River and its north fork in the Indian territory. A small group 
 of Sacs obtained a tract of land in central Iowa, where they 
 are still located, near the town of Tama. 
 
 Further word of them comes only from the pages of the 
 reports of the Indian Bureau. It is a drab story of uneventful 
 years, with a mode of life as nearly like that of the old days as 
 is permitted by fixed habitation and a dependence on crude 
 agriculture and a government bounty. Something of the 
 spirit of Black Hawk is recalled, however, in the athletic 
 career of Jim Thorpe, the Sac, of the Carlisle school. To any- 
 one who has seen this superman of the football field and wit- 
 nessed the havoc he could make in an opposing line, there 
 will come an idea of what formidable opponents these tribes- 
 men could be on the field of personal combat. 
 
o 
 
 u 
 
 tt 
 
 « 
 
DEPRESSION TEAR IN 
 THE METROPOLIS 
 
 In 1893 rockford in Illinois, which shared with some others 
 the title of the Forest City, was as definitely the metropolis 
 of the valley as it is today. The population of 30,000 of that 
 year gave it the same relative superiority as its 85,000 in 1940. 
 Not only was it metropolitan, it was likewise cosmopolitan. It 
 is true that of its 10,000 foreign-born 7,000 were natives of 
 Sweden living in a compact colony east of Seventh Street, 
 while a large majority of the remainder were Irish residing 
 in the hilly district south of Kent's creek. It was no longer a 
 new town. Sixty years had passed since Germanicus Kent 
 and Thatcher Blake had tired of the lead country and come 
 down to locate at the ford of the Rock, at the mouth of the 
 stream coming in from the west. Kent started a ferry and 
 gave the name Midway to the new settlement. The interven- 
 ing time had brought steady growth and substantial pros- 
 perity, along with a change in name. Its location at the rapids 
 had guaranteed its permanence. After several failures a dam 
 800 feet long was thrown across the river in 1853 and the 
 mass of factory buildings which grew up west of the dam 
 came to be generally known as the Water Power. The early 
 settlers were from New England and the northern and west- 
 ern counties of New York, and they knew well the value of 
 falling water. On the Water Power sprang up factories for 
 
 107 
 
108 Sinnissippi 
 
 making agricultural implements, pumps, saddlery and har- 
 ness and for the knitting of hosiery and woolen garments, all 
 products of vital importance to an expanding agricultural 
 community. The road paralleling the river on its west bank 
 became Main Street, passing the Water Power near its south 
 end and leading directly to North Main Street, where the 
 Emersons, the Forbes, the Talcotts and the other more sol- 
 vent heirs of the river's bounty built their substantial homes, 
 fronting the street from a discreet distance and backed by 
 spacious lawns sloping down to the river, deep and full- 
 banked above the dam. The Traherns, the Grahams, the 
 Tinkers and others had chosen to build their homes on the 
 beautiful knolls of South Rockford, but even in 1893 their 
 choice was recognized as unfortunate. 
 
 In house design these early homes harmonized ill with their 
 beautiful settings. Whether from forbears harried by maraud- 
 ing neighbors, or from those who watched the sea for the 
 landfall of their ships, the valley's early settlers were haunted 
 by an atavistic sense of need for watch-towers, atop their 
 dwellings, serving no purpose except to deface the scenery. 
 Notably was the Swiss chalet of Mr. Tinker an exception. 
 
 The first foreign-born attracted to this river town were Irish 
 and Scotch, beginning with the famine year of 1846 and in- 
 creasing in the years following. The flood of German immigra- 
 tion, commencing in 1848, passed to the north onto the farm- 
 ing lands of Wisconsin, leaving only an occasional stray 
 craftsman to ply his special trade. It was not until after the 
 close of the Civil War that the influx of Swedish immigrants 
 began, their coming coincident with the development of a 
 furniture industry to make of Rockford a rival of Chicago and 
 
Depression Year in the Metropolis 109 
 
 Grand Rapids in that field. In the meantime a demand for 
 luxury goods brought new industries, including a watch fac- 
 tory and a plant for silver-plated ware. Industrialization of 
 the country called for machine tools and for shops for their 
 manufacture. Graham's distillery was built on the river bank 
 south of town and the brewing of beer was begun early. Four 
 of the West's greatest railroads built into the town to compete 
 for its heavy traffic. Business starting in the usual small way, 
 had expanded along State Street to the east and west of the 
 river and along South Main beyond the Water Power. An 
 attractive shopping center on Seventh Street served the 
 Swedish section fully and well. 
 
 The leading element in the early population was serious- 
 minded, highly literate and devoted to the culture of their 
 eastern homeland. Rockford was still a village when in 1847 
 the Seminary was opened for the education of its daughters. 
 In 1893 it had just taken on the dignity of a college. A factor 
 in New England culture was the Congregational form of 
 worship and as might be expected the First Church on the 
 east side of the river and the Second Church on the west side 
 were not only architecturally dominant, but membership up- 
 on their rolls carried a certain social distinction. The other 
 orthodox groups were well represented. An Episcopal congre- 
 gation, relatively small but socially pretentious, occupied a 
 beautiful edifice on Church Street. The Methodist Church on 
 Court Street was highly popular with the younger people. 
 St. Mary's and St. James', one on either side of the river, 
 ministered to the Catholic population. Italian immigration, 
 which was later to make South Rockford its own, had hardly 
 begun, and the Catholic people of northern Illinois had not 
 
110 Sinnissippi 
 
 yet reached the numbers to make of Rockford the see of a 
 bishop. Spires of numerous small Lutheran and Calvinist 
 churches pierced the sky of the Swedish section, each flock 
 separated by synod and doctrine from the others. 
 
 The Church of the Christian Union, with Dr. Robert Kerr 
 as its pastor, upheld the banner of liberal Christianity, and 
 with a fine centrally located house of worship, it attracted a 
 devoted following of people of local distinction. 
 
 Of whatever denomination the church congregation was 
 the unit upon which the city's social and literary life was 
 built. Fraternal societies had a similar but secondary part. 
 
 The town had grown up in the traditions of the Republi- 
 can party, had voted consistently for its candidates and only 
 asked of it more and higher tariffs and pensions to satisfy the 
 veterans of the Grand Army. With these it could take care 
 of itself in the highly competitive world of which it was a 
 part. 
 
 The comparatively lean years following the Civil War had 
 been succeeded by two decades of prosperous years for the 
 Forest City. There was no apparent' reason why this should 
 not continue. It was a rosy picture of a prosperous and con- 
 tented community that was drawn in Industrial and Pic- 
 turesque Rockford, published in 1891. There were listed 174 
 industrial plants employing nearly 8,000 hands. Furniture was 
 the dominant item, but heavy metal industries turned out 
 agricultural implements, machine tools, pumps, milling ma- 
 chinery, electrical supplies, and scores of other items. A fair 
 number of the largest plants were under a cooperative plan 
 where management and the worker shared in the interest 
 and profit. The brochure pridefully gives in resounding fig- 
 
Depression Year in the Metropolis 111 
 
 ures the yearly and weekly payrolls of the city's industrial 
 workers. Impressive in totals, when broken down these show 
 that about $550 was the average yearly pay, and that $10.60 
 was the amount in the average pay envelope on Saturday 
 night. Scant as these figures appear a large share of these 
 workers owned modest homes, each with its garden. The 
 recital goes on to say that "the great diversity of the city's 
 manufactures places her beyond the reach of market fluctua- 
 tions or climatic influences" and that "there are no enormous 
 factories in the city where labor troubles may foment or 
 business depression affect an entire community." The situa- 
 tion is summed up with the statement that 'Tier institutions 
 are as immovable as the hills and as regular as the hour- 
 glass." 
 
 The year '93 began in the midst of a winter of unusual 
 severity. There were days when sleet turned the city streets 
 into lakes of ice, with the fine old trees breaking down under 
 the weight upon their branches, with the communication 
 lines down in wreaks of broken poles and tangled wires and 
 with travel barred to anything but the wariest of feet. There 
 were weeks of freezing temperature with piercing northwest 
 winds but with little snow. There was twenty inches of ice in 
 the river. When it went out suddenly late in the spring, the 
 State Street bridge shook and trembled as the rapidly ad- 
 vancing fields of ice shattered themselves against the sharply 
 pointed concrete piers. Its north rail held a line of excited 
 spectators, while other shifting groups watched from points 
 of vantage the ice floes crashing thunderously over the Water 
 Power dam, half a mile downstream. 
 
 However spring came along in its season with bud and 
 
112 Sinnissippi 
 
 blossom giving promise of their usual bountiful gifts and 
 with its assurance of another normally happy year. But over 
 the nation storm clouds were gathering. In the early days of 
 1893 crop prices were low, and farm mortgages were high. 
 It was a time of reckless railroad financiering and of highly 
 unsound banking throughout the country, and financial diffi- 
 culties hung heavily over Europe and the Argentine. The 
 newly elected Cleveland was preparing his inaugural address 
 dealing with remedies for the country's ills and promising 
 lower taxes and a balanced budget. His administration was 
 ushered in by one of those economic phenomena come to be 
 known as a depression, or more delicately, a recession. In that 
 year it was identified as a panic and so branded. The Reading 
 Railroad went into receivership in March, closely followed by 
 the collapse of the National Cordage Company, a recently 
 organized trust. Then followed the sound of closing bank 
 doors all over the country. Commercial failures multiplied. 
 The Water Power found itself with curtailed orders and 
 slowed down its machinery. The populace suddenly stopped 
 buying furniture and the East Side soon quit making it. 
 
 North Main Street was of course concerned but not 
 alarmed. Some of the older executives had steered their com- 
 panies through the crisis of 1873, and knew with the French 
 that "this too will pass." The long-established companies had 
 their reserves to fall back upon and hoped that they would 
 not become too badly depleted. On the East Side the furniture 
 industry was caught badly extended. Only prompt aid from 
 the banks saved the situation, though Mr. Peterson, the 
 Swedish king of the industry, lost his throne. Business failures 
 in the town were few and unimportant, and the banks, held 
 
Depression Year in the Metropolis 113 
 
 in conservative hands, remained solvent. But by midsummer 
 hardly an industrial wheel was turning in the town. Of the 
 situation the History of Winnebago County (1916) says: 
 "Few cities of the country were more seriously affected by the 
 financial stringency of 1893 than was Rockford. Manufactur- 
 ing was almost completely paralyzed for several years/' 
 
 Members of the North Main Street colony realized that 
 dividends were going to be few and small, but that need not 
 interfere with the summer plans for the Wisconsin lakes or 
 the eastern mountains and seashore. European trips and 
 world tours might have to be postponed. Otherwise no change 
 in their plan of living. 
 
 But what about plain Joseph Doe, living south of the creek 
 and of his job in the pump factory? If he was a newcomer to 
 the payroll he was let out indefinitely, and if he was an old- 
 timer he was put on part time. His first realization was that 
 the money he had thought to spend on a week at the World's 
 Fair in Chicago would now be required for the purchase of 
 staple groceries. And his second was that his savings were 
 not going to last very long if there was no work for him. Being 
 of the plain people his wants were modest and his needs even 
 more so. He may have been a home owner as many of his 
 fellows were, but if not, his rent was moderate. Food he must 
 have for his family, and now the garden back of the house 
 must be made to do its utmost. A smoker, of course, if he were 
 heretofore an addict of Sweet Caporals he must confine him- 
 self to a pipe and to tobacco bought in a yellow paper wrap- 
 per. No more extras at the barber's, only the periodic haircut 
 and shave, now at longer spaced intervals. Singularly enough, 
 only the more prosperous did their own shaving in those days. 
 
114 Sinnissippi 
 
 Along with Mrs. Doe and the children he could always get 
 along another season with the clothes on hand. Only shoes 
 cried for replacement and even here the cobbler could pro- 
 long their usefulness unbelievably. 
 
 He had no worries about keeping up payments on the car 
 or about the purchase of gasoline. The automobile was still 
 in the experimental stage. True, he suffered an occasional 
 heartache when in riding up South Main on his old bicycle 
 he saw the latest Rambler model in the hardware window 
 and realized that he must make the old wheel do for another 
 year even though it was definitely outmoded. He did not 
 need to have his telephone taken out because that facility was 
 still a luxury which had not yet seeped down to Mr. Doe's 
 economic level. Nor was it necessary for the family to prac- 
 tice unwilling forbearance in the matter of a radio set, an 
 electric refrigerator or washing machine. All these items were 
 in a distant future. It may well be that the Doe home was not 
 wired for electricity, for it was a recent innovation, and gas 
 was cheaper. It is not beyond reason that it still depended 
 upon the kerosene lamp which was yet cheaper. Fuel for the 
 kitchen range was not a difficult matter, but coal for the 
 base-burner that must be set up in the living room not later 
 than November was a problem second only to that of food. 
 But it is still early summer, and if enough work at the plant 
 for this need does not come, then there must be a further 
 raid upon savings. 
 
 The girls in the knitting mills mainly lived at home, help- 
 ing thus the family upkeep. Few of these workers were mar- 
 ried. They now had their personal renunciations to make, but 
 these were neither numerous nor serious. Silk stockings, in 
 
Depression Year in the Metropolis 115 
 
 the seclusion of long and heavy skirts, were worn only by 
 sybarites, an element unknown on the Water Power. Nor had 
 these young women to forego their permanent waves or their 
 beauty treatments, for the shops of the coiffeur and the beauty 
 specialist were still confined to a few metropolitan centers 
 and their aid to feminine attracton thus definitely limited. 
 The temptation of the neighborhood movie theatre was still 
 many years away. 
 
 What a world these people inhabited, lacking in all the 
 facilities necessary to make it happily habitable! And in addi- 
 tion they were a long way from that economic security, with- 
 out which, according to considered modern opinion, life is 
 not worth the living. 
 
 Fortunately this mass of workers, more or less unemployed, 
 had no realization of the piteous nature of their plight. No- 
 body had yet died of starvation, and there was no fear of 
 deaths from freezing in the coming winter. Everybody still 
 had a roof above his head, though the landlord was sharing 
 worries with the neighborhood grocer. The economist was 
 still an instructor in a college and a writer of books. His 
 science still a mystery to the public, there was general ac- 
 ceptance of the theory that panics were natural phenomena, 
 to be expected once in a generation and that they were self- 
 limiting ills like the measles. A panic was one of the proverbial 
 rainy days against which something must be laid by. The 
 only questions were how long the wait and how tight the belt 
 must be drawn. 
 
 What public aid was available to these unfortunates? Very 
 little. There were even in the best of times families that were 
 "on the town," but this sort of aid carried a stigma not to be 
 
116 Sinnissippi 
 
 borne by any self-respecting worker. The churches had their 
 aid societies that ministered to the more sorely tried of their 
 flocks, and there was much individual charity, but the help 
 of these agencies could hardly be called substantial. Govern- 
 ment assistance did not go beyond the township and city 
 authorities, though the county maintained the so-called poor 
 farm, housing only unemployable derelicts. Apparently there 
 was no organized recognition of destitution except as a result 
 of drink. There were seven organizations of women devoted 
 to the cause of temperance, and these supported the Ladies 
 Union Aid Society, founded for the assistance of families 
 made dependent through intemperance. 
 
 Where was the public conscience that permitted such pas- 
 sive acceptance of these conditions? It was entirely absent. 
 It requires the whip and spur of the social worker by trade to 
 arouse a public conscience on such an issue and to keep it 
 active and at this time the workers in this field were still 
 amateurs. Rockford was the birthplace and home of Julia 
 Lathrop, and only a few years before this time Jane Addams 
 and Ellen Starr had left Rockford Seminary to take up their 
 life's work at Hull House in Chicago. But such spirits were 
 few and the nature of their work, even in their own minds, 
 was still vague. The myriads of associations with titles indi- 
 cating national or international scope, dedicated to the sup- 
 pression of this and the promotion of that, all in the name of 
 social betterment, were still unborn. 
 
 However, there was no lack of private consciousness, the 
 inheritance from New England forbears and from the Old 
 World. These shared principles not to be surrendered and felt 
 responsibilities not to be avoided. For example, not only was 
 there the parental responsibility for the care and education 
 
Depression Year in the Metropolis 117 
 
 of their children, but the latter, when grown, had the recipro- 
 cal responsibility of caring for the needs of their elders. Too, 
 the responsibility for kindred went far beyond this close 
 relationship. And there was an alert public opinion in regard 
 to those that shirked their bounden duty to their family and 
 kindred. As long as there was a job in the family the proceeds 
 were regarded as available for all. Whether times were good 
 or bad, there were always the sick, the aged, the blind and 
 those crippled in body or defective in mind. If the family 
 was not able to provide for these at home, there was no re- 
 course except the county poor farm or the state asylum. And 
 quite aside from the drifters, called tramps, who rode the 
 country's freight trains and lived off individual charity, there 
 were the usual percentage of unemployables, who remained 
 as charges upon their families. A large class of these was 
 made of mild mannered individuals, devoid of energy or 
 ambition and callous of criticism, who did not intend to 
 work, or only long enough to supply their minimum wants 
 in tobacco and liquor. The other large class were those un- 
 stable persons, who for one cause or another, were unable 
 to find employment, or finding it, were unable to keep it. A 
 changing national economy would materially change the 
 proportion of these two classes. In the period of this chronicle 
 the willingly idle predominated. These categories were never 
 counted among the unemployed. The number of these latter 
 was found by a comparative check upon pre-panic and cur- 
 rent payrolls. 
 
 During these troublesome times there was singularly little 
 criticism of government or of industry. These factory workers 
 saw themselves as a part of each. Nothing was expected of 
 the national government except efforts to bring about general 
 
118 Sinnissippi 
 
 recovery. As for local industries they were operating to the 
 extent that their orders justified. The workers were without 
 class consciousness and probably were unfamiliar with the 
 term. They had no thought of themselves as a proletariat, 
 separated by a gulf from a bourgeoisie of bankers and mill- 
 owners. They had no thought that they were being exploited. 
 There was undoubtedly wishful speculation relative to shar- 
 ing the wealth of North Main Street, with a realization that it 
 would mean little in the long run. They never really cared 
 for the responsibility of running the Water Power. They were 
 thus inarticulate perhaps on account of a lack of vocabulary. 
 "Right" and "left" meant to them only what "gee" and "haw" 
 had meant to their forbears. The word "relief" was applied 
 chiefly to the abatement of physical pain and had no applica- 
 tion to the supply of economic needs. There were references 
 in current social literature to a "submerged tenth," either a 
 gross understatement at the time, or the basis for a discourag- 
 ing comparison with the present one-third, officially rated 
 as lacking in adequate food, clothing and shelter. 
 
 There were no food riots nor talk of them. Rockford had 
 no equivalent of Union Square, nor need of it, for of incen- 
 diary speakers there were none. Porter's Corner, the town 
 center, remained as peaceful and much more quiet than 
 when life was easier for the city's workers. Labor except in 
 the railroad field had little organization in this section of the 
 country, and the factory workers of the Water Power and 
 the Southeast End were banded together only for local 
 mutual assistance. Nearby Chicago saw the Pullman strike 
 and rioting in the summer of 1894, with the city in control of 
 Federal troops, but these disorders had no repercussion in 
 Rockford. 
 
Depression Year in the Metropolis 119 
 
 Despite the hard times many were able to see the wonders 
 of the Chicago fair. The staunch little steamer Arrow carried 
 good loads of people between the city dock and the newly 
 built amusement center at Harlem Park and the other picnic 
 ground up the river. A horse and rubber-tired buggy could 
 be hired for a day in the country for three dollars. The waters 
 of the Rock ran just as joyously under the summer moon of 
 1893 as in the prosperous times that were passed, and the 
 wooded glades of Black Hawk Springs on the lower Kish- 
 waukee were just as inviting. And for all these diversions, 
 there were youths quite as handsome and gallant and maids 
 quite as gracious and personable as at any time. For North 
 Main Street the theatre had a season program not now 
 equalled by a dozen cities of the country. There was much 
 music in the homes everywhere and frequent concerts at 
 moderate cost. Balancing these meager blessings against their 
 accumulated ills, all but a very few elected to live out their 
 allotted span of years. 
 
 It is a natural and pertinent question whether in the 
 parlous state into which the city had fallen there were not 
 outstanding men of stout heart and fertile resourcefulness, 
 who if they could not stem the tide of disaster, could turn 
 the current into the least destructive channels. Of a host of 
 public-spirited men, none was conspicuous above his fellows. 
 Through the mists of a half century, however, there stands 
 out in memory, a few figures, not in any way as popular 
 leaders or as of high helpfulness in the distress of the times, 
 but as solid unchanging bulwarks of the system as it was and 
 around whom the future would be eventually reassembled. 
 There was Colonel Thomas Lawlor, the postmaster, who with 
 Major Patrick Flynn kept the Union soldiers in solid front. 
 
120 Sinnissippi 
 
 There was Officer Mike Golden who saw that the orderly 
 decorum around Porter's Corner was not disturbed and Kate 
 O'Connor who managed the Court House without stint of 
 energy or industry. In their hostelry at the Elm Street corner 
 Tom and Lena Chick lavished an unfailing kindness upon a 
 clientele which, though less numerous than in prosperous 
 times, was not to be led astray by the luxurious furnishings 
 of the newly opened Hotel Nelson. There was John R. (The) 
 Porter, whose name was fixed upon Rockford's busiest street 
 intersection, and Chris Henry whose business place faced 
 him across the corner. 
 
 Any other observer of the period under scrutiny would 
 without doubt carry memories of an entirely different group. 
 If there sounds a Gaelic echo from the list of names here 
 given, it need be understood that your observer was closer 
 to the residents of South Rockford than to those of Seventh 
 Street or North Main. 
 
 To this true tale of depression in an industrial town in a 
 past age there well may be a moral to be drawn and conclu- 
 sions to be adduced. If there are such, they are left to the 
 readers, each for his own. There might be drawn a compari- 
 son of the impact of unemployment upon this relatively primi- 
 tive community of a half century ago with conditions in years 
 lately past, but that is a task not to be lightly undertaken. 
 
 How did it all come out? Conditions were not materially 
 changed when early in 1894 your historian lost his white- 
 collar job. He returned to his home village, where in a com- 
 munity closer to the soil, he rode out the storm. Rockford 
 was its own pre-panic self when after a lapse of years, he saw 
 it again. History relates that there were four hard years for 
 the country before times were again good. 
 

 
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LAND OF MUCH MILK 
 AND SOME HONEY 
 
 A he small area drained by the Kishwaukee River in 
 northern Illinois could well be contained in one of the state's 
 larger counties. Emptying into the Rock a few miles below 
 Rockford the Kishwaukee has its beginnings in widely sepa- 
 rated areas east of the parent stream. The valley lies to the 
 south of the terminal moraine, and is thus entirely devoid of 
 lakes. It is a region of numerous isolated boglands through 
 which the small branches of the Kishwaukee wend their slow 
 devious ways. Follow up any of the scores of these small 
 streams and it will be found to originate in a small pond in 
 the center of an area of bogland. These spring-fed pools 
 contain water of crystal clearness. Except for a rim of cat- 
 tails and scattered beds of white pond-lilies they are free of 
 vegetation. They are inhabited only by frogs and the smallest 
 of fish. In the spring and fall they are night refuges for 
 migrant ducks. Outside the area of wild rice, they offer no 
 inducements for the birds to stay. In the winter they are used 
 for skating by the youth of the neighborhood and for an ice 
 harvest by their owners. The creek that emerges from such a 
 beginning is likely to be called by the name of the owner of 
 the pond of its origin. It flows in a sluggish winding course 
 through low-lying pastures until by its union with fellow 
 streams it reaches a volume to attract the attention of the 
 
 121 
 
122 Sinnissippi 
 
 geographer. It then becomes Kilbuck Creek or Coon Creek, 
 Beaver Creek, Rush Creek, or Piscasaw Creek or this or that 
 branch of the Kishwaukee itself. There still may be a stray 
 raccoon in the scant woods of the valley, but the beaver and 
 the buck have long since disappeared from the shores of these 
 waters. Only an occasional muskrat family in the stream banks 
 remains of the originally teeming wild life. Even these 
 primary tributaries are sluggish winding streams, slow-mov- 
 ing currents between low, overhanging banks except for the 
 infrequent gravelly stretch where the water rushes hurriedly 
 from one dark pool to another. Quiet as is their flow these 
 streams are not without their menace. They can go out of 
 their banks quickly in the downpour of a summer storm, 
 covering the adjacent lowlands with their waters and isolat- 
 ing communities by their damage to roads and bridges. Ex- 
 cept at such times they make little erosion upon their grassy 
 banks and carry little sediment. Fully as much as the main 
 stream they merit the Algonquin name of Kishwaukee, which 
 means "clear water." Though at one time there may have 
 been good fishing in their waters, it is long since they have 
 furnished other than shiners, chubs and bullheads. Perhaps 
 still, as at no great distant time, they may be swarming in the 
 early spring with red-horse suckers come up from the Missis- 
 sippi River to spawn wherever gravel bottoms are found. 
 Snapping turtles and water snakes are found in their waters. 
 The bogland on their shores harbors the massasauga, a small 
 rattlesnake more dreaded than dangerous. 
 
 The Kishwaukee, gradually swollen by its tributaries, 
 maintains their character and appearance. It is only in the 
 last score of miles of its course that it takes on sweeping curves 
 
Land of Milk and Some Honey 123 
 
 and hilly banks. It carries to its junction with the Rock the 
 clear water which gives it its name. 
 
 In the time when the valley was Indian country, it was a 
 land of prairie broken by areas of bogland and by consider- 
 able tracts of hardwood timber— white and burr oak, walnut, 
 hickory and wild cherry. Wild plums grew in their depths, 
 and wild grapevines festooned their branches. Thin fringes 
 of low willows marked the water courses. Nowhere did the 
 boglands take on the character of swamps. They were always 
 wet, but rarely inundated, the type of ground known in cer- 
 tain sections as meadowland. But the general character of the 
 country was prairie, slightly rolling land covered with a 
 wealth of waving grass and wild flowers. 
 
 The first glimpses we have of this section come from the 
 pages of Mrs. Kinzie's Wau-Bun. The evening of the second 
 day of their journey from Chicago to Fort Winnebago in 
 June of 1831, brought the Kinzie party to "the shores of a 
 beautiful sheet of water now known as Crystal Lake. Its 
 clear surface was covered with Loons and Poules d'Eau, a 
 species of Rail, with which, at certain seasons, this region 
 abounds/' The two following days were occupied by the 
 travel northwest from Crystal Lake to the head of Lake 
 Geneva. Of the intervening night's camp Mrs. Kinzie has 
 this to say: 
 
 We had traveled well this day and were beginning to feel 
 somewhat fatigued when just before sunset, we came upon a 
 ridge, overlooking one of the loveliest little dells imaginable. It 
 was an oak opening and browsing under the shade of the tall 
 trees which were scattered around, were the cattle and horses of 
 the soldiers who had got thus far on their journey. Two or three 
 white tents were pitched on the bottom of the valley, beside a 
 
124 Sinnissippi 
 
 clear stream. The camp-fires were already lighted and the men, 
 singly or in groups, were dispersed at their various preparations 
 for their own comfort or that of their animals. 
 
 Anyone familiar with the route of the party will fix this 
 camp site upon the Nippersink in the vicinity of Greenwood. 
 
 The narrative goes on concerning the travel of the follow- 
 ing day: 
 
 We now found ourselves in a much more diversified country 
 than any we had hitherto traveled. Gently swelling hills, and 
 lovely valleys, and bright sparkling streams were the features of 
 the landscape. But there was little animate life. Now and then, a 
 shout from the leader of the party (for according to custom we 
 traveled Indian file), would call our attention to a herd of deer, 
 "loping" as the westerners say, through the forest; or, an additional 
 spur would be given to the horses on the appearance of some 
 small dark object, far distant on the trail before us. But the game 
 invariably contrived to disappear before we could reach it, and 
 it was out of the question to leave the beaten track for a regular 
 hunt. 
 
 It was on the evening of this day that they came upon 
 Lake Geneva near Glenwood Springs and that night they 
 spent in Chief Big Foot's Pottawattomie village at Fontana. 
 
 In speaking of Indian occupancy of a country it is always 
 necessary to give a date. At the beginning of white immigra- 
 tion into the upper Mississippi valley, the section bordering 
 on the western banks of lower Lake Michigan and its hinter- 
 land was Pottawattomie country. From their villages near 
 the great lake they used the Kishwaukee valley as one of 
 their hunting grounds. At this time the buffalo had long dis- 
 appeared from the valley, but deer were abundant, and 
 wolves and foxes roamed the countryside. Raccoons and 
 
Land of Milk and Some Honey 125 
 
 squirrels thronged the woodlands, while the prairie gave 
 sustenance to flocks of grouse and prairie chickens. Never 
 good homes for the fur bearers, the streams held a fair share 
 of muskrat and mink. Their waters, too, attracted ducks in 
 the migratory seasons, when also geese spent their nights 
 among the prairie food stores. Indian corn grew well in the 
 black soil, and could be counted on to mature before the com- 
 ing of frost. Altogether it was a fair country that the Potta- 
 wattomies held as their homeland. The tribe, one of the 
 Algonquin nation, has a varied record, mostly bad. From the 
 time of the French explorers, it gave but fickle friendship to 
 the white man, a friendship in direct proportion to the ad- 
 vantages to be derived from it. On the other hand, it had little 
 part in any of the campaigns which proved the skill and 
 courage of the Algonquin tribes of the old northwest, the 
 defeat of Braddock, the successes of Montcalm around Lake 
 Champlain, and the defeats of General Harman and General 
 St. Clair in Ohio. In the War of 1812 they were responsible 
 for the treacherous attack upon the little garrison of Fort 
 Dearborn, and they gave some aid to the British around 
 Detroit. When Black Hawk brought his people across the 
 Mississippi in the spring of 1832, the young men of the 
 Pottawattomie villages were bent on joining him. It took the 
 advice and threats of the wiser chiefs to keep Big Foot from 
 leading to the warpath his band from their home on the 
 western end of Lake Kishwauketoe. The names of Shaubena 
 and Sauganash are honored for their efforts to keep the tribe 
 peaceful and to protect settlers. Despite their efforts the tribe 
 furnished a number of fierce scalping parties, and it was one 
 of these that made the descent upon the settlers of the pres- 
 
126 Sinnissippi 
 
 ent La Salle county, carrying murder, arson, and abduction 
 into the unprotected community. Schoolcraft, the Indian 
 agent, said of the Pottawattomie tribe that "they were fore- 
 most at all treaties where lands were to be ceded, clamoring 
 for the lion's share of the presents and annuities, particularly 
 where these last were the price of other lands than their own." 
 Following the Black Hawk campaign the Pottawattomies, 
 along with the other tribes of the section, sold the title to their 
 lands between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi, and by 
 1836 they had all been removed to new homes in the Mis- 
 souri valley. They had left no trace along the Kishwaukee 
 waterways except as arrow heads or other articles in flint are 
 turned up by the plow or are dug up on the sites of old 
 Indian villages. This section saw but one scene of the tragic 
 War of 1832. After the fight at Sycamore Creek, Black Hawk 
 led his band up the north bank of the Kishwaukee River, 
 pursued by Whiteside's Illinois militia. When the trail turned 
 north up the course of Piscasaw Creek, soon to be out of the 
 state, the Illinois militia felt their responsibility to have ended, 
 and gave up the pursuit. The war party went north by way of 
 Big Foot's town to the White Water and down that stream to 
 the fancied security of the Koshkonong Swamps. Up to the 
 third decade of the nineteenth century the upper Mississippi 
 valley was nearly as unpeopled as when Marquette and Joliet, 
 La Salle and Tonti first explored its waters. But the returning 
 soldiers of General Atkinson brought back with their experi- 
 ences in the Black Hawk campaign glowing accounts of the 
 beauty and richness of the northern country over which they 
 had marched. By treaties following the close of warfare, the 
 lands east of the great river were freed from Indian title and 
 
Land of Milk and Some Honey 127 
 
 made subject to settlement. With the beginning of the great 
 western migration in 1834, trains of six or eight ox-drawn 
 covered wagons began coming into the Kishwaukee valley. 
 The groups were made up of those who had been neighbors 
 in the east. Whereas the early settlers of southern Illinois had 
 come from the southeastern seaboard by way of Kentucky, 
 these migrants to the northern country came from upstate 
 New York, from southern Vermont, from western Massachu- 
 setts, and from northern Pennsylvania. They came down the 
 lakes from Buffalo and overland from Milwaukee, Southport 
 or Chicago. 
 
 The earliest arrivals beat the surveyors into the country and 
 could but fix upon tracts of land of their choice, and plow 
 furrows around them or hem them in with identifying stakes. 
 These pioneers had the choice of the land, and they took the 
 prairie ready for the blade of the plow, with a woodlot if pos- 
 sible, and a corner of meadow to include a stretch of the 
 brook which ran through it. Only enough of the bogland to 
 furnish a place where the future farm stock could drink and 
 find relief from summer heat in running water and willow 
 shade. 
 
 Where section lines converged these groups built their log 
 houses adjacent to each other, and called their settlement 
 Ayer's Corners or Burton's Grove, in recognition of the 
 priority or leadership of one of their number. As these ex- 
 panded into villages, their people went back to their old 
 homes for names: Chemung from the river and county in 
 southern New York, Harvard from the village of the maple- 
 shaded square in Massachusetts, and Woodstock from the 
 town in the shadow of the Green Mountains in Vermont. 
 
128 Sinnissippi 
 
 This earliest migration was of old English stock. Their 
 names testify to their origin. When the Norman conquest in 
 England resulted in the need of surnames, they took them 
 from the town or county of their residence, from their occu- 
 pation, from factors of their life or condition, or they became 
 fixed on one on account of a personal quality or defect. Thus 
 the pioneers of the Kishwaukee were the Coven try s, Bing- 
 hams and Dunhams, the Tylers, Carpenters and Wheel- 
 wrights, the Smalls, Gayes, and Browns. Patronymics were 
 relative rare, but were represented in the families of Harri- 
 son, Thompson, and Edwards. 
 
 Whether from New England or New York they were of 
 the same stock, with the same mental equipment, and the 
 same standards of character and conduct. Their Puritan heri- 
 tage had left them a coldness and a severity of manner. An 
 austere people, they were easily kindled to noble enthusiasms. 
 A writer has said of the man of this stock that "it was a point 
 of honor to maintain his family and to pay his debts. This he 
 could do only by persevering industry and a methodical and 
 prudent management of his affairs. He must be economical if 
 he would be generous, or even just, for extravagance sooner 
 or later weakens the sense of moral obligation." 
 
 To the migrating generation of these people the Kishwau- 
 kee never became a homeland. A country of prairie land was 
 well enough for the raising of crops, but to one from the 
 eastern country it had few other attractions to compensate 
 for the cherished hills of back home. The talk of the gather- 
 ing around the glowing stove of the village general store 
 came around to the nostalgic narratives of days in the Berk- 
 shire hills, along the Mohawk valley, or among the hill- 
 hemmed lakes of western New York. 
 
Land of Milk and Some Honey 129 
 
 On a late spring morning in the thirties of the last century 
 this Kishwaukee country may well have looked like a land 
 of great promise to the new settlers. But the fulfillment was a 
 long way off, and only to be reached by hard and endless 
 work. There was prairie land to be broken, forest groves to 
 be felled and stumps to be grubbed, there were cabins and 
 barns to be built, followed by roads, schools, and churches. 
 The familiar story of American pioneering repeated itself 
 here, with its minor variations, as in a thousand other locali- 
 ties. The hasty breaking of ground to get a food crop at 
 the earliest possible day and the felling of trees for logs were 
 the urgent items of work. These were closely followed by the 
 neighborhood collaboration in putting up the one-room 
 cabin of logs to replace the makeshift shanty that had fur- 
 nished the first shelter. 
 
 Corn was the staff of life in this new country and furnished 
 the bulk of every meal, whether as mush, Johnny cake, hoe- 
 cake, or pone. Pumpkin and squash, from seed obtained from 
 the Indians, with wild fruit from the groves, furnished the 
 first vegetable variety. Venison and the flesh of the raccoon, 
 squirrel, and rabbit, with duck, grouse and prairie hen were 
 the meat supply, until the time came when farm stock was 
 ready for slaughter. There were maple trees for the making 
 of sugar and wild honey to be had for the following of bur- 
 dened bees. 
 
 If one end of the cabin must be given over to the fireplace 
 for cooking, a corner must be found for the flax-wheel and 
 spinning-wheel and perhaps a loom. Flax was an early neces- 
 sity to furnish the tow and linen for warm weather clothing, 
 and sheep were vitally important for the material for pro- 
 
130 Sinnissippi 
 
 tection against the piercing cold of the northern winter. A 
 blending of white and black wool gave a material of satisfy- 
 ing appearance, and the bark of the walnut tree could pro- 
 duce any shade of brown. 
 
 With shelter, food, and clothing thus obtainable by the 
 labor of ones hands, the essentials of a modest security were 
 in sight. Furnishings for the home, necessarily simple and 
 crude, were the work of the householder. Much could be 
 done with the pioneer's kit, an axe, a hammer, a draw-knife, 
 and an auger. Every man a jack-of-all-trades, the blacksmith 
 was indispensable for the supply of hoes, spades, and shovels, 
 and a crude type of plowshare. The shoemaker, too, to make 
 and repair the footwear, worn only in the depth of winter by 
 the young and with a keen eye to economy by the elders. 
 
 The first foreign-born to join in the settlement of the Kish- 
 waukee country came from the south and west of Ireland. 
 The first of these followed close upon the heels of the native- 
 born migrants, and fared well in the distribution of the broad 
 acres. The depression years of the forties in Ireland hastened 
 the influx of these people, who contrary to general under- 
 standing, flocked to the farming lands of the newly opened 
 western country. Partly by choice and partly by necessity 
 they formed into colonies of their own race. By the time these 
 later immigrants came into the country the better lands had 
 already been taken, and they had to fall back upon the less 
 coveted tracts of bog and timber land. Such were the com- 
 munities that settled Hartland along the north branch of the 
 Kishwaukee and the Island on the middle reaches of Rush 
 Creek. They brought with them the manner of life of their 
 native land and the practice of its dominant religion. At 
 
Land of Milk and Some Honey 131 
 
 Donnelly's Grove in Hartland was organized the first Catholic 
 congregation in the country west of Chicago. This church 
 built in 1840 for years served a parish extending in every 
 direction well beyond the county boundaries. In the ceme- 
 tery adjoining the church are buried practically all of the 
 pioneer Catholics of this section of Illinois. Even after 
 churches were built in Woodstock, in Harvard, in Marengo, 
 and in Lake Geneva, the dead of these parishes continued to 
 find sepulchre in the country cemetery in Hartland. In the 
 homes of these settlers the soft accents of the Gaelic tongue 
 were frequently heard between couples married in the old 
 country or between those who had been neighbors in Clare or 
 Mayo. Mixed too with their English were the abounding 
 Gaelic terms of endearment, addressed to the children, and 
 other native words for which no English equivalent could 
 be found. They called their neighbor's sons Danny's Tim and 
 Thomasheen Murt after the manner of their native villages. 
 Their problems in making a home in the new country were 
 in no way different from those of their neighbors from New 
 England, only a little harder from the character of their land 
 holdings. 
 
 It would be well if it could be said in truth that the settlers 
 of the Kishwaukee after their first months of labor and hard- 
 ship quickly went on to a lasting prosperity. It must be re- 
 corded to the contrary that their labors and privations had 
 only begun and that new and strange troubles were to de- 
 scend upon them. It was indeed well that they were able to 
 provide for themselves their few simple but urgent needs. It 
 was a land for the raising of corn and oats, of cattle and hogs, 
 but it was long before they had any surplus to sell, and then 
 
132 Sinnissippi 
 
 they had no market. There was no security for any crop until 
 it was harvested and stored in the barns. Any midsummer 
 darkening of the southwestern sky carried the threat of tor- 
 rential rains and the destruction of the oat fields. Always an 
 anxiety was the advent of frost before the corn was fully 
 matured. On a season of scant rainfall there was constant 
 danger of prairie fires, which swept over hay and grain fields, 
 destroying fences and threatening the farm buildings. If the 
 elements were favorable, there were still to be reckoned with 
 the blackbirds, which, like the locusts of Egypt, swarmed 
 over the ripening crops to the ruin and despair of the planter. 
 Sheep, young pigs, and poultry must be protected from wild 
 animals. The fierce ingenuity of mink and fox prohibited the 
 raising of poultry except within tight walls. The quiet of the 
 nights was broken by the constant barking of prairie wolves, 
 a menacing sound, answered by their domesticated cousins 
 from every farm within earshot. 
 
 The crowning misfortune in any household was the com- 
 ing of the "fever and ague". There were days or weeks of 
 recurring fever and then the shock of the chill. Followed 
 months of disablement and a long period of semi-invalidism. 
 The disease was not to be avoided. It was accepted that it 
 came with the turning up of prairie land, that the plow re- 
 leased a miasm that had been held pent up beneath the sod. 
 
 The railroads came into the country bringing new oppor- 
 tunities for employment, and wider markets. The Civil War 
 came and went, leaving gaps in many households and bring- 
 ing politically-minded Grand Army posts to the towns. The 
 lot of the farmer was still an unhappy one. A convention of 
 old settlers held in 1869 voiced a general sentiment of pessi- 
 
Land of Milk and Some Honey 133 
 
 mism. The farmer had accumulated only a debt, and was 
 without an adequate market for his goods. Cattle and butter 
 were being shipped to the eastern market, where these articles 
 were held in low esteem, and brought prices well below those 
 of the eastern products. 
 
 The change to the dairy country that the Kishwaukee val- 
 ley is to-day came gradually. The first cheese and butter 
 factories were built soon after the close of the Civil War, 
 and at about the same time there began the demand of Chi- 
 cago for milk. In the eighties there were a hundred or more 
 cheese factories in the valley, and the number of cows had 
 doubled in the decade past. There was a change, too, in the 
 grade of cattle. Holsteins, Alderneys, Herefords, and Jerseys 
 were replacing the mongrel stock. The shipment of milk to the 
 Chicago market became a big item of railroad business. Milk 
 trains left DeKalb, Belvidere, and Harvard each morning, 
 stopping at way-stations and milk-platforms to pick up the 
 ten-gallon cans from the neighboring farms. 
 
 Came concrete roads and new regulations of the Chicago 
 Board of Health, and associations of milk producers and dis- 
 tributors. With them all came a revolution in the dairy in- 
 dustry of the valley. The dairy barn must be as one's kitchen, 
 cows must be tested for this and for that, the milk must be 
 pasteurized and might no longer be shipped in the old type 
 can. Bottling plants arose in the towns, with equipment for 
 turning the surplus supply into condensed, evaporated, or 
 powdered milk. The Chicago supply goes now to market in 
 cases of quart bottles or in the enamel tank-trucks of the dis- 
 tributors. The milk train is gone, though milk for the market 
 may go forward in cars attached to fast freight or passenger 
 trains. 
 
134 Sinnissippi 
 
 The valley has not been without its share in the industrial 
 advance of the country. With the years the name of DeKalb 
 has become associated with barbed-wire, the name Wood- 
 stock brings visions of typewriters, and Belvidere of sewing 
 machines. Harvard has done more than its part in providing 
 the dairy barns of the valley with the furnishings to meet the 
 demands of critical government inspection. But these indus- 
 tries, locally important though they are, are far from making 
 of the valley an industrial center. The majority of the towns 
 and villages have been practically static in the matter of 
 population for the last quarter century. 
 
 The valley is farming country and above all a dairy coun- 
 try. Its miles of low meadow land stretching along its slow- 
 moving streams make it that. A dependable rainfall keeps its 
 pastures high and green. Its cultivated fields furnish the 
 filling for the white silos that stand beside every dairy barn. 
 Its proximity to the midwest metropolis on the lake assures it 
 a market, though that market is made less secure by the ad- 
 vent of concrete roads and tank-trucks. 
 
 The troubles that plagued the early settlers have mainly 
 gone with the years. The menace of prairie fire is gone, and 
 the coming of blackbird and grasshopper is no longer 
 dreaded. The summer storms send their waters over the low- 
 lands as of old, but their force is spent upon pasture land 
 rather than grain crops. "Fever and ague" have long since 
 disappeared from this northern country. Wild animals no 
 longer raid the poultry houses or the stock shelters, but their 
 places have been taken by truck-driving marauders, whose 
 visitations are likely to be much more costly. Trouble in new 
 and stranger forms has come among them. Into the terminol- 
 
Land of Milk and Some Honey 135 
 
 ogy of the dairy industry have come the words "base" and 
 "surplus," which applied to milk, mean a prized possession in 
 the one case, and a burden to be borne in the other. They 
 are the product of a limited market, and serve to curb the 
 ambition of newcomers into the dairy field. Inspectors and 
 inspections are what they are everywhere. Implied obliga- 
 tions to find something faulty, and to bring about its correc- 
 tion is recognized here as elsewhere even though flaws be 
 found to-day in that which received approval yesterday. The 
 industry is plagued by the conflicting interests of producer, 
 distributor, and consumer, with the added elements of labor 
 unions and politically-minded persons who see the milk in- 
 dustry in the light of a public utility to be further regulated. 
 
 All this provides subject for thought for the dairy farmer 
 as he milks his cows in the dark of a winter morning. This is 
 the time when he is inclined to envy the easy life of his for- 
 bears of a century ago, who had only prairie wolves and 
 prairie fires, flood and drought, blackbirds and malaria to 
 disturb their dreams of a Utopia in the valley. 
 
 There is no hint as yet of a laboratory produced milk from 
 coal-tar or slash pine or other unexpected source. Such a 
 product may come, but until such time the Kishwaukee 
 farmer will continue to turn his meadow pasturage into milk, 
 and to fight for a fair price for it in the market. With this fair 
 price he can relieve the burdened agricultural barons of 
 Washington from any anxiety as to his lot. 
 
 The mental association of milk and honey is as old as his- 
 tory. It is not clear how this association had its beginning. 
 
136 Sinnissippi 
 
 There is no bond of common interest between the dairy cow 
 and the honey bee and no association of bee-hives with pas- 
 ture land. Bee-keeping teams up better with the growing of 
 orchards, and fruit-laden boughs can hardly be imagined 
 without the accompaniment of the hum of bees. It is well 
 known that orchards are most fruitful and the quality at its 
 best when bees are most numerous among the blossoms. 
 
 The early comers of the valley were not long content with 
 the output of the capricious wild bee, for the hoard of honey 
 in the tree hollow was usually disappointing in amount and 
 in quality. They sent back east for colonies of the gentle, 
 industrious and prolific Italian brown bee and set the hives 
 out in the young orchards. The cycle of nectar-bearing blos- 
 soms was then the same as now, but maple and basswood 
 trees were at that time more numerous in the groves and 
 contributed a greater share to the honey. But even then wild 
 clover blossoms were the mainstay of the hive. 
 
 The commercial production of honey came along after the 
 dairy industry was well established and never has taken any 
 such place in the economy of the section. If there were a 
 bee-swarm for every cow in the valley it would be indeed a 
 land of milk and honey, but the proportion is far from that. 
 It is not at all an orchard country and likewise not a land of 
 abounding bee hives. The keeper of bees in the Kishwaukee 
 country is the holder of a place too small for grain or a dairy 
 farm. He is a fruit grower and probably a market gardener 
 and the number of his bee colonies is not great. There are not 
 a great number of his kind. His hives are seen in orderly rows 
 in the shade of his apple trees. Little special provision need 
 be made for foraging fields for his charges, at most a patch 
 
Land of Milk and Some Honey 137 
 
 of white clover, or alfalfa if the fields of his neighbors do not 
 provide them. Elsewhere a patch of buckwheat is planted for 
 the foraging of the bees, but not in this section where honey 
 must be light in color so that it can be marketed as the 
 product exclusively of white clover blossoms. 
 
 In fact the valley is in the center of what is known in bee- 
 keeper's parlance as the white clover region. But the season 
 of profitable yield from the white clover is too short, not for 
 the needs of the bee, but of his human task-master. The bee 
 after emerging from his winter's sleep, begins his season's 
 work in mid- April upon the green flowers of the maple. At 
 the end of a month this source is gone, but it is providentially 
 replaced by fruit blossoms and the dandelion. The early days 
 of June form a period of poor return for the bee's industry, 
 but the middle of the month brings in the blossoms of the 
 white and alsike clover, and a fortnight later those of the 
 sweet clover. This period of lavish harvest lasts until the 
 middle of August when the sweet clover produces no more. 
 During the first half of July the yellow blossoms of the bass- 
 wood are adding the delicacy of their flavor to the honey 
 crop. For hives that mischance or the bee-keeper's greed has 
 robbed of their store, there is still a month from mid-August 
 to mid-September when first the golden rod and then the 
 aster give up their nectar for what it is worth. 
 
 The gathering season is thus about four months of the 
 spring and summer, the bulk of the supply coming in the six 
 weeks of the clover season. There is a saying to the effect that 
 the bee is priceless in April but worthless in August. By early 
 November she is in winter quarters and in this northern 
 country must be protected from the winter cold. The hives 
 
138 Sinnissippi 
 
 are either stored in cellars or they are protected where they 
 stand by tar-paper and insulation of sawdust. In either case 
 there is a definite mortality among the colonies, greater in 
 those stored in the cellars. 
 
 This industry too has its inspectors and inspections. Even 
 as in human communities, there are "foul fellows" who get 
 among the bees to the quick undoing of the swarm. They 
 must be discovered at the beginning of their mischief and 
 dealt summary justice. 
 
 Always as "pure white clover honey" the harvest is sold in 
 the local food-stores and in a few roadside stands. Even 
 though the nectar from the white clover may be somewhat 
 diluted from less appreciated sources, the honey of the valley 
 rates with the best on the market, making up in its high 
 quality for its limited quantity. 
 
 The keeper of bees either is a philosopher before he takes 
 up the avocation or he soon becomes one. Daily contact with 
 the bee world is likely to profoundly affect the observer's out- 
 look on life. It is not a favorable occupation for one habitually 
 low in spirits. There is an aura of sadness enveloping the bee 
 city. One is likely to be impressed with a sense of futility in 
 the world of the bee and to see in that futility an analogy to 
 the world in which he himself is living. On the other hand, 
 one more optimistic might find in these selfless communities 
 material for thought upon the lessons applicable to man's 
 conduct to be drawn from their habits. What an example of 
 industry is the ardent and disinterested labor of the worker- 
 bee, alternating between the flashing sunlight and the abso- 
 lute darkness of the hive! Strange to record the latter situa- 
 tion is the one of her choice. An acquaintance with the life 
 
Land of Milk and Some Honey 139 
 
 of the worker-bee is well calculated to give the observer a 
 fuller appreciation and a keener savor for his hours of leisure. 
 
 For heroic abnegation nothing can surpass the phenomenon 
 of bee-swarming. Forsaking the comfort and security that 
 they have just attained in their full-stocked hive, the swarm 
 fares forth to begin entirely anew to build a new home or to 
 perish. In the building of their new city they employ unerr- 
 ingly the combined skill of chemist, geometrician, architect, 
 and engineer in a structure of changeless perfection. 
 
 The marvelous artistry of the honey-comb has been the 
 subject of wonder since the days when the details of its struc- 
 ture were carved in stone in the sarcophagi of the earliest 
 Egyptian times. It was the thoughtful observation of an old 
 Irish cottager that "there is nothing to beat the arts of man 
 barrm' the bees." 
 
GANYMEDE'S SPRING 
 AND EAGLE'S NEST 
 
 J\ short mile up the river on its left bank from the town of 
 Oregon in Illinois rises the steep sandstone bluff which has 
 been given the name of the Eagle's Nest. From its summit is 
 seen stretching out below the most exquisite expanse of river 
 view to be met with in the valley. Here the broad river passes 
 between banks that rise sharply into hilly heights covered 
 deeply with green forest growth. Margaret Fuller Island, 
 down the river, evenly divides the stream by its long wooded 
 length. Other islands of less size add to the variety and charm 
 of the river's attractions. Along the opposite bank stretch the 
 concrete miles of the Black Hawk Trail. But it was up the 
 left bank of the river, under the shadow of Eagle's Nest, that 
 the Sac leader led his followers in the spring days of 1832. A 
 dozen miles farther up the river, the muddy Sycamore Creek 
 flows in from the eastward. In a large grove on the north 
 bank near its mouth Black Hawk established his camp and 
 here he parleyed with a delegation of Pottawattomies looking 
 for allies. The nearby prairie was the scene of the foray on 
 May 14 resulting in the rout of a detachment of Illinois militia 
 and rendering impossible further efforts at peace. 
 
 The decade following the close of that conflict changed 
 this section, as it did the whole valley, from a land inhabited 
 
 141 
 
142 Sinnissippi 
 
 only by beast and bird to one of scattered farms and budding 
 settlements. Into this pioneer community there came in the 
 summer of 1843 a visitor from the eastern seaboard, Sarah 
 Margaret Fuller, poet and literary critic. A gifted writer of 
 imaginative verse and pungent prose, she was a contemporary 
 and friend of Emerson, Hawthorne, and Channing. After a 
 boat trip from Buffalo to Chicago, her small party traveled 
 by wagon west by way of Geneva to the Rock River at 
 Dixon's Ferry. From here she followed up the course of the 
 river approaching Oregon by way of "an Indian trail— Black 
 Hawk's! How fair the scene through which it led! How could 
 they let themselves be conquered with such a country to 
 fight for!" 
 
 The account of her stay in the valley is told in her book 
 Summer on the Lakes published in Boston the following year. 
 She was a woman of enthusiasms, but in this trip which cov- 
 ered the length of the Great Lakes, she found nothing further 
 to call for any such praises as those which she had heaped 
 upon the Rock valley. She writes: 
 
 At Oregon the beauty of the scene was even of a more sumptu- 
 ous character than at our former "Stopping place." Here swelled 
 the river in its boldest courses, interspersed by halcyon isles on 
 which nature has lavished all her prodigality of tree, vine, and 
 flower, banked by noble bluffs three hundred feet high, their 
 sharp ridges as exquisitely definite as the edge of a shell; their 
 summits adorned with those same beautiful trees and with but- 
 tresses of rich rock, crested with old hemlocks, which wave a 
 touching and antique grace amid the softer and more luxuriant 
 vegetation. Lofty natural mounds rise amidst the rest with the 
 same lovely and sweeping outline, showing everywhere the plastic 
 power of water— water, mother of beauty, which by its sweet and 
 
Ganymede's Spring and Eagle's Nest 143 
 
 eager flow has left such lineaments as human genius had never 
 dreamt of. 
 
 Among the motives for Miss Fuller's long trip to the Illi- 
 nois country was a visit to her uncle, William W. Fuller, who 
 had shortly before this time established himself in Oregon 
 for the practice of law. His bachelor quarters afforded no 
 accommodations for the party, so they found food and lodg- 
 ing at the Henshaw home on the east side of the river. From 
 here Miss Fuller made frequent crossing of the stream by 
 ferry, and on foot and in her wagon she covered the country 
 district around Oregon. With a boat she followed the winding 
 course of the river above and below the village. She con- 
 tinues: 
 
 The aspect of this country is to me enchanting, beyond any I 
 have ever seen; from its fullness of expression, its bold and im- 
 passioned sweetness. Here the flood of emotion has passed over 
 and marked everywhere its course with a smile. The fragments of 
 rock touch it with a wildness and liberality which give just the 
 needed relief. I should never be tired here, though I have else- 
 where seen country of more secret and alluring charms, better 
 calculated to stimulate and suggest. Here the eye and heart are 
 filled. 
 
 If the style of these excerpts seems florid and marked with 
 affectation it may be argued that such was the style of Boston 
 in its literary flowering. But among her friends of the New 
 England literati, all more or less given to a mystical senti- 
 mentality, Miss Fuller was regarded as outstanding in that 
 quality. She was of that group that called its system tran- 
 scendentalism, a term which has come to mean something 
 
144 Sinnissippi 
 
 "fancifully speculative" and which implies vagueness of 
 imagination and diction. She was, however, America's fore- 
 most literary critic of her day, and its first newspaper col- 
 umnist, on The Tribune newly launched in New York. Poe, 
 the most finished stylist of his time, calls her style "singularly 
 piquant, vivid, terse, bold, luminous ... all that a style need 
 be". She says of herself that she was "only the prophesy of a 
 poet". America's pioneer feminist, she was highly critical of 
 the lot of the women of this western country. She saw them 
 tied to a comfortless life of drudgery. She searched this 
 western land, not for an honest man, but for a contented 
 woman and at last found one— one only— whose cause of con- 
 tentment was her escape from worse conditions in her native 
 England. 
 
 The commanding height of the Eagle's Nest could not but 
 attract her footsteps and direct her pen to new enthusiasms. 
 
 Two of the boldest cliffs are called the Deer's Walk and the 
 Eagle's Nest. The latter I visited one glorious morning. Woe to all 
 country folks that never saw this spot, never swept an enraptured 
 gaze over the prospect that stretched beneath. I do believe that 
 Rome and Florence are suburbs compared to this capital of 
 natural art. 
 
 This was from one who was a great admirer of Italy and 
 who was to know it better a few years later. She was struck 
 with the brilliant coloring of the purple cone-flower "sprung 
 from the blood of Indians as the hyacinth did from that of 
 Apollo's darling". She writes of the scarlet variety of the 
 milkweed which decorated the hill with its flowers of cut- 
 coral, and the lupine and phlox that disputed with it for 
 supremacy of the ground. It was on the occasion of this visit 
 
Ganymede's Spring and Eagle's Nest 145 
 
 to the summit of the Eagle's Nest on July 4, 1843, that she sat 
 down with the valley stretching away before her and wrote 
 the poem Ganymede to His Eagle, a poem suggested by a 
 work of the sculptor, Thorwaldsen. 
 
 Upon the rocky mountain stood the boy, 
 
 A goblet of pure water in his hand, 
 
 His face and form spoke him one made for joy, 
 
 A willing servant to sweet love's command. 
 
 But a strange pain was written on his brow 
 
 And thrilled throughout his silver accents now. 
 
 "My bird," he cries, "my destined brother friend, 
 
 O whither fleets today thy wayward flight? 
 
 Hast thou forgotten that I here attend 
 
 From the full noon until the sad twilight? 
 
 A hundred times at least from the clear spring 
 
 Since the full noon o'er hill and valley glowed 
 
 I've filled the vase which our Olympian king 
 
 Upon my call for thy sole use bestowed; 
 
 That at the moment when thou should'st descend, 
 
 A pure refreshment might thy thirst attend. 
 
 "Hast thou forgotten earth, forgotten me, 
 Thy fellow bondsman in the royal cause, 
 Who, from the sadness of infinity 
 Only with thee can know that peaceful pause 
 In which we catch the flowing strain of love 
 Which binds our dim fates to the throne of Jove. 
 
 "To wait, to wait, but not to wait too long, 
 
 Till heavy grows the burthen of a song 
 
 O bird! too long hast thou been gone today, 
 
 My feet are weary of their frequent way 
 
 The spell that opes the spring my tongue no more can say. 
 
146 Sinnissippi 
 
 "If soon thou comest not, night will fall around, 
 
 My head with a sound slumber will be bound 
 
 And the pure draughts be spilt upon the ground. 
 
 Remember that I am not divine. 
 
 Long years of service to the fatal Nine 
 
 Are yet to make a Delphian vigor mine. 
 
 "O make them not too hard, thou bird of Jove, 
 Answer the stripling's hope, confirm his love, 
 Receive the service in which he delights 
 And bear him often to the serene heights 
 Where hands that were so prompt in serving thee 
 Shall be allowed the highest ministry, 
 And Rapture live with bright Fidelity." 
 
 There is much evidence that Miss Fuller visited the group 
 of springs which at the time gushed from the riverside base 
 of the hill upon which she wrote this poem of the water- 
 bearer to the gods. The name of the hill and the nearby 
 presence of the springs may have had much to do with 
 bringing to the mind of the poetess the sculptured group of 
 the fabled bird and its cup-bearer. But there is no mention 
 of the springs in Miss Fuller's book, a strange omission if she 
 knew of them. A canoe traveler down the river nearly half a 
 century later, R. G. Thwaites, writes thus of the hill and 
 spring. 
 
 Ganymede Spring is on the southeast bank, at the base of a 
 lofty sandstone bluff, a mile or so above Oregon. From the top of 
 the bluff, which is ascended by a succession of steep flights of 
 scaffolding stairs, a magnificent bird's-eye view is attainable of 
 one of the finest river and forest landscapes in the Mississippi 
 basin. The grounds along the riverside at the base are laid out 
 in graceful carriage drives; and over the head of a neatly hewn 
 
Ganymede's Spring and Eagle's Nest 147 
 
 basin, into which gushes the copious spring, is a marble slab thus 
 inscribed: 
 
 Ganymede's Springs, 
 
 named by 
 
 Margaret Fuller (Countess D. Ossoli) 
 
 who named this bluff 
 
 Eagle's Nest 
 
 and beneath the cedars on its crest wrote 
 
 "Ganymede to his Eagle" 
 
 July 4, 1843. 
 
 From Miss Fuller's written reference to the Eagle's Nest, 
 it appears as if it bore that name prior to her coming. The 
 springs could only have been named by her, or later in recog- 
 nition of the topic of her poem. Few persons ever did or could 
 come into a community, spend but a few days and leave be- 
 hind such a lasting memory and such keen appreciation as 
 did this vivid personage from the east in this quiet valley. 
 For nearly a century the largest island in the river, in full 
 view below as she sat writing on top of the Eagle's Nest, has 
 borne her honored name. 
 
 Succeeding decades of the nineteenth century brought 
 profound changes throughout the valley. The primitive shel- 
 ters of the early settlers gave way to well-built farmhouses, 
 flanked by substantial outbuildings. Cultivated fields ex- 
 panded, herds of cattle filled the meadowlands, and forests 
 were converted into scattered wood-lots. Railroads came, 
 conferring permanence and growth upon certain villages and 
 dooming others to decay and oblivion. The aspect of the 
 valley was in a manner changed, but its charm has remained 
 untouched. Among the multitudes who have visited this sec- 
 
148 Sinnissippi 
 
 tion of the river, many have coveted a home upon its banks, 
 and a few have had the means to make their dreams come 
 true. Foremost of the show places of the section is Sinnissippi 
 Farm, the home of Governor Frank O. Lowden, on the left 
 bank, a few miles down the river from Oregon. Mr. Lowden 
 came here from Chicago, built his home, became the dis- 
 trict's representative in Congress, governor of the state, and 
 was barely beaten for his party's nomination for the presi- 
 dency of the nation. 
 
 In the year 1897 there came to Oregon the first of a group 
 which has brought fame to the town and to it frequent refer- 
 ence as the American Barbizon. This group of artists and 
 writers established themselves on the summit of the Eagle's 
 Nest, with a cluster of buildings for their quarters and work- 
 shops. Here they have come since, year after year, for the 
 months June to October, to write, paint, draw, carve, and 
 play their music, in their own congenial company and in the 
 stimulating air and the surpassing loveliness of the valley. 
 From the first, a leading spirit in the Oregon colony was Mr. 
 Lorado Taft, the sculptor, from his Midway Studio in Chi- 
 cago. The spirit of the valley, with its rich traditions of In- 
 dian occupancy, could not fail to make its impress upon this 
 group of sensitive-minded men, and early the sculptor saw 
 the hill upon which they worked, as a pedestal, predestined 
 by nature, from which an effigy of its former over-lord could 
 keep constant vigil over his valley kingdom. His vision be- 
 came reality in 1911, when the statue of Black Hawk, the 
 work of Mr. Taft and his assistant, Mr. Prasuhn, was com- 
 pleted. It stands forty-eight feet high on a six-foot base, a 
 
Ganymede's Spring and Eagle's Nest 149 
 
 restful, reverent figure, with folded arms, looking off into the 
 westward distance. 
 
 The statue was unveiled on July 1, 1911 before a gathering 
 made up largely of the so-called "cliff dwellers" of the Eagle's 
 Nest colony and their friends, with Mr. Lowden presiding. 
 The exercises were begun with a reading of a poem, speaking 
 the voice of the vestigial pine forest that stands a few miles 
 to the west, jealously protected by the state's conservation 
 service. 
 
 We are old and wise— aye, old and free 
 We saga-men of the plains 
 We hold the earth and the sky in fee 
 Ours are the winds and the rains. 
 
 We taught our songs to the copper-skinned man 
 We gave him shelter and fire; 
 Water he drew from the streams that ran 
 Beneath the tower and spire. 
 
 Of our castled rocks. He rested here 
 
 After the hot day's chase 
 
 And through our branches the dawn-light clear 
 
 Fell on his sleeping face. 
 
 The pine trees spoke their keen regret for the departure of 
 the bold race they had known and its replacement by the 
 "timid men with the plow". 
 
 The address of the day was given by Mr. Edgar A. Ban- 
 croft, his subject, The Indian. He spoke with much under- 
 standing and with merited sympathy of the Indian's centuries 
 of struggle to maintain the right to existence. He spoke with 
 knowledge of those high qualities of the Indian character 
 
150 Sinnissippi 
 
 that no unprejudiced writer of history can deny them. He 
 quoted from Franklin, the wisest of all Americans. "Savages 
 we call them because their manners differ from ours, which 
 we think the perfection of civility and they think the same of 
 theirs." He might have gone farther and quoted the reply of 
 the council of the Five Nations to the Pennsylvania authori- 
 ties upon the value of white civilization to the Indian. To an 
 offer to take a number of young men of the Confederation 
 and give them an education, the council made answer that 
 youths from among them had been so educated before and 
 that they returned to their villages 
 
 poor runners, ignorant of every means of living in the woods, 
 unable to bear either cold or hunger, knew neither how to build 
 a cabin, take a deer or kill an enemy, spoke our language imper- 
 fectly, were therefore neither fit for warriors, hunters or counsel- 
 lors, they were totally good for nothing. 
 
 The speaker recalled the names of the predecessors of the 
 man whose memory they were gathered to honor, men of 
 heroism who in defense of their ancestral lands had faced 
 with bow and arrow, or with other inferior arms, the best 
 trained and best armed soldiers of their day. He quoted the 
 language of King Philip's early biographer as fitting for them 
 all. 
 
 He fought, and fell— miserably, indeed but gloriously— the 
 avenger of his own household, the worshiper of his own gods, the 
 guardian of his own honor, a martyr for the soil which saw his 
 birthplace, and for the proud liberty that was his birthright. 
 
 Of the statue that was being unveiled he said: 
 
 There the sculptor has placed, imperishably, the Indian; not 
 
Ganymede's Spring and Eagle's Nest 151 
 
 sullen, not resentful, not despondent, not surrendering; but sim- 
 ple, unflinching, erect; with the pathos of the past in his face, 
 the tragedy of the future in his eyes; but with the dauntless cour- 
 age of a man in his whole figure and attitude. 
 
 In this sublime art, there is no uncertainty of line, no mere 
 suggestion that loses itself in mystical significance, which many 
 have sought in their separate ways. This is not of that symbolic 
 art which tries to suggest what it is not competent to portray. As in 
 the Moses of Michael Angelo and the Lincoln of Saint Gaudens, 
 so here, in the Indian of Lorado Taft, there is seen the man, not 
 alone in his figure and features, but the man as he was in his 
 very heart and soul. Many artists have painted, sketched, and 
 modeled an Indian. Only today, the artist has created, forever- 
 more, the Indian. 
 
 We can read a tragedy there, but it is a tragedy that does not 
 depress, that does not appeal for your sympathies; it is a hopeless 
 fight, not a surrender; it is a lost cause, but not a lost leader. It 
 stands there not only as monument to a simple, kindly, faithful, 
 virile race, but also, I hope, as a reminder to those of a different 
 blood of the perfidy which marked our contact with them through- 
 out their history. I trust it stands there, not merely to rebuke our 
 sins of the past, but to point the way to a different and far more 
 humane and intelligent treatment of this noble race. 
 
 Then spoke in turn, Ohiyesa, the Sioux and Wynnogene, the 
 Oneida, each with their expressions of gratitude and pride 
 for even this belated recognition which had come to the In- 
 dian people through their Algonquin brother. The first Indian 
 speaker closed his address with these words: 
 
 This monument stands, as every day no doubt, Black Hawk 
 stood, in silent prayer to the Great Master at sunrise and at sun- 
 set. So may this monument stand in silent prayer, proclaiming to 
 generations to come, that after all we are children of the same 
 Maker and we are all brothers. 
 
152 Sinnissippi 
 
 "Like the faint whispers of the last leaf upon the oak, when 
 the northwest winds have done with summer, is the Indian's 
 message to you." Thus Wynnogene, the daughter of the Iro- 
 quois, began her discourse. She regretted that the privilege 
 given to her to represent her people could not have fallen to 
 one of the great orators of her nation, to Red Jacket, to 
 Deoadilun or to Oskanundunah, and that the whole Indian 
 race was not there to rejoice with her for the great hour that 
 had arrived. 
 
 But the Indian had chosen well his speaker whose words 
 even on the printed page make music and logic. She spoke 
 of the character, qualities and aspiration of her people in the 
 language and spirit of Hiawatha, putting aside all references 
 to past injustices and rejoicing only in the honor that was 
 being done them in the hour at hand. She closed with a 
 tribute to Black Hawk the patriot-warrior and to the work of 
 the patient sculptor. 
 
 Perhaps it is worth a national tragedy to go down to posterity 
 an inspiration to all men. As I look upon him for the last time, my 
 heart within me says: "Amen: there let him stand, defying the 
 very elements, defying injustice, defying defeat, so upright, so 
 self-contained, so self-sufficient." 
 
 Mr. Hamlin Garland, a charter member of the Oregon 
 colony, followed with a poem, The Trail Makers, written 
 for this occasion. 
 
 When from their small, smug fields, in other lands 
 Our Pilgrim fathers, minded to be free, 
 Set eager feet to alien sands 
 Between the forest and the sea. 
 They faced the somber, chartless deep 
 
Ganymede's Spring and Eagle's Nest 153 
 
 Of elm and pine, with curious care 
 
 Timid as wolf -confronted sheep 
 
 Their hands were bent in piteous prayer. 
 
 To them the thicket was a snare; 
 The red men Satan's sons of hell; 
 Witches rode the midnight air 
 And every tarnlet held a spell. 
 And when the west grew dark with rain 
 And winds came roaring through the oak, 
 They longed for home with poignant pain- 
 Poor tender-footed urban folk. 
 
 At last the wilderness became a friend 
 Hell's minions brought them meat and corn 
 And necessary woodcraft, in the end, 
 Conveying knowledge of the snake and thorn. 
 The sachem gave his peaceful pipe 
 His warm skin coat, his silent shoes, 
 And when the wildling fruits were ripe 
 The red babes taught them which to choose. 
 
 * # * 
 
 One by one, all tribal lines were crossed, 
 One by one, opposing chieftains fell 
 Word by word, their very speech was lost 
 Till not one singer lived to tell 
 The story of the vanished race. 
 The trails they made grew dim with grass, 
 And roaring cities filled the place 
 Where red-brown maidens loved to pass. 
 
 # # # 
 
 Aye, they are gone, those strong brave men! 
 No more the Pawnee sweeps the sod 
 On bold, swift raid! Never again 
 
154 Sinnissippi 
 
 Shall trail of Kiowa be trod. 
 Corralled are Cheyenne, Wichita and Ute 
 In scattered huts, debased and grey, 
 Lakotan singers, sorrowful and mute 
 Await the coming of a better day. 
 
 # « « 
 
 Without his legends, wars and creeds, 
 Our Nation's story would be thin and dry, 
 Our heroes stripped of half their deeds- 
 Selfish and mean and small, shall we deny 
 So much of justice to their warrior dead? 
 Black Hawk, Tecumtha, Roman Nose- 
 Did they not fight for home? Their blood was shed 
 To check the march of paleface foes. 
 
 * # » 
 
 And so today, freed from all hate and dread 
 Here, midway of the land they fought to save, 
 We meet, in tribute to the storied dead 
 Whose ashes mingle in a common grave. 
 To him who died in exile, chieftain still, 
 A victim of our greed, with broken heart, 
 We raise this sentinel of the hill, 
 This splendid symbol of remorseful art. 
 
 O splendid, vast, primeval land! 
 O men of plain and wood and peak! 
 To you I raise the signal hand 
 To you I call, for you I speak! 
 O kingdom of the sunset glade, 
 The swift wild horse, the birch canoe, 
 For you this halting verse is made, 
 To you this statue, over-due. 
 
 Long after our short course is run, 
 
 When not one red maid's cheek shall glow 
 
Ganymede's Spring and Eagle's Nest 155 
 
 Beneath the kiss of prairie sun. 
 When Sauk and Fox and Navajo 
 Have merged in one composite race, 
 The wondering traveler will scan 
 This vast and brooding face 
 And say, "This was the first American." 
 
 The decades that have passed since that summer day have 
 blurred the whiteness of the figure, bringing to its compara- 
 tive newness an aspect of beginning age. The vegetation that 
 was cleared away to make space for the sculptor's work has 
 closed in around it again. The stone of the statue appears 
 hardly less the work of nature that do the sandstone palisades 
 on the river's bank. The process of amalgamation of the In- 
 dian into the composite citizen of the country goes on apace. 
 It was no mere figure of speech of the poet when he visualized 
 a day that one might see only in such works as Taft's Black 
 Hawk, a true representative of the original occupants of the 
 country. 
 
 The business street of Oregon runs parallel with the river, 
 a short distance away. The neat homes of its people cover 
 the hill slopes to the west. A bridge connects the town with 
 its eastern tributary farmlands. It is a somnolent town, its 
 quiet only mildly disturbed by the periodical terms of court, 
 the spice in the life of all county-seat towns. In front of the 
 Union Station in Washington stands the Columbus Fountain, 
 wrought by the same hands that fashioned the statue on the 
 Eagle's Nest and in Chicago's Lake Front Park stands the 
 exquisite group, The Great Lakes, by the same genius. Ore- 
 gon in its Soldiers Memorial possesses a gem of this master 
 sculptor's skill, a work to bear comparison with the best of his 
 
156 Sinnissippi 
 
 handiwork. As long as it stands and as long as Black Hawk 
 looks down from the hill across the river, Oregon will warrant 
 a stop in any traveler's journey. 
 
 Taft, the great sculptor, is gone, and Garland, the poet of 
 the middle border. At each such loss the colony on the Eagle's 
 Nest closes its ranks and renews its pledges to the ideals of 
 its founders. 
 
It Was Called Sinnissippi Meaning Rocky Water 
 
GRAND DETOUR 
 
 J? rom the vicinity of Oregon to the end of the northern 
 swing of the Grand Detour, the valley is unlike itself in any 
 other of its reaches. This is the section, more than any other 
 that merits for the river its Algonquin name. This is the real 
 Sinnissippi, the river of rocky banks. The river itself is still a 
 broad flowing, swift, bubble-dancing stream, sweeping along 
 in broad curves, except at the great bend where it doubles 
 upon itself in short abrupt turns. But instead of the grace- 
 fully rounded hills that mark its banks for miles above, the 
 country here faces the river with an aspect abrupt, rough, 
 broken, and deeply timbered. The hills too have closed in on 
 the stream, sharply narrowing the width of the valley. The 
 traveler on the motor road along the river's right bank finds 
 himself on a shelf of varying width between eroded rocky 
 bluffs on the one side and the river on the other. These mas- 
 sive outcroppings of Trenton limestone and St. Peter sand- 
 stone take on bizarre shapes in places and elsewhere form 
 themselves into sheer palisaded walls. A traveler by the river 
 in an earlier day found that swallows in colonies of hundreds 
 had made their homes in the hollows which marked the face 
 of the palisades. The grotesque shapes into which wind and 
 water have formed these masses of rock have brought to 
 them names such as Indian Pulpit, Castle Rock, and the 
 Devil's Backbone. A detached boulder by the roadside in- 
 forms the passerby that here during the campaign of 1856 
 
 157 
 
158 Sinnissippi 
 
 Abraham Lincoln and Long John Wentworth addressed a 
 gathering of country people. Through these rocky walls, small 
 streams from either side hurl their waters, by courses cut deep 
 by centuries of flow. It is only by way of these breaks that 
 vistas may be obtained of the prairies which lie but a short 
 distance back from the river. It is in this stretch of the river 
 below Oregon that lie the myriad of islands that with the 
 rocky shores give this section its unique character. Some of 
 these are high and rocky, but in the main they are elongated 
 combinations of hillock, forest, and meadow, beautiful and 
 spacious. They afford pasturage for the cattle which swim or 
 ford the intervening channels. It is a constant matter for won- 
 der by passing strangers that these beautiful islands are not 
 made the sites for country homes. For the answer to the ques- 
 tion it is only necessary to see the valley in the midst of a 
 spring thaw. It is an awesome sight to view the breakup of 
 the ice in a northern river after a long cold winter. The 
 massive ice-breakers in the upstream buttresses of the bridges 
 give some idea of the force of ice pressure when spring loos- 
 ens it in the river. The journals of early travelers speak of the 
 river as "the dark and raging Rock" and it is only necessary to 
 see this section in a spring flood to realize the application. 
 The islands are periodically left in tangles of uprooted vege- 
 tation, with marks a dozen feet high in the trees, where the 
 ice-floes have swept over them. It is only a marvel of re- 
 cuperation by nature that they regain their former verdant 
 beauty. 
 
 A boat in the river is the place from which to get a truly 
 satisfying view of the shores. From this distance the color 
 effects are at their best— patches of brown, white, gray and 
 
Grand Detour 159 
 
 gold, and everywhere the varying tones of iron-red. From this 
 vantage point too is seen the rocky top of a bluff above the 
 trees that line its base and the vines that climb its sides. Or a 
 bare face of limestone, covered half way to the summit, with 
 the talus of ages. 
 
 A dozen miles below Oregon the river now flowing south, 
 turns sharply to the west, and then again to the north, form- 
 ing a small peninsula with a base half a mile across. From its 
 northern course it turns again sharply to the west, and then 
 after a few miles swings in a half-circle to the south and 
 east, forming a much larger peninsula than the first. These 
 sweeps of the river early were given the name of Grande 
 Detour. The river banks in these windings are much of the 
 same character as higher on the river. It is not the custom to 
 credit the Indian with a developed sense of beauty, but in 
 the half-circle of the first bend, a band of Winnebagos had 
 from earliest white explorations, a village upon a site that 
 draws admiration from every visitor. It is the site of the 
 Grand Detour of today. There are reports of fur traders lo- 
 cated at this Winnebago village as early as 1803, but no 
 names have come down to us. To this place there came from 
 Canada in 1822 a Frenchman named La Sallier. He built 
 himself a log cabin on the east side of the river near the 
 mouth of Franklin Creek across from the Indian village, and 
 began business as a fur trader. In the following winter Lieu- 
 tenant James Webb was despatched from Fort Dearborn to 
 warn the garrison at Rock Island of an anticipated Indian 
 uprising. He spent an anxious night in the garret of La Sal- 
 lier 's home while Winnebago malcontents filled the store- 
 room below. In 1825 O. W. Kellogg drove from Fort Clark 
 
SO 
 
 o 
 
 C/3 
 
 § 
 
 CO 
 
Grand Detour 161 
 
 at Peoria to the lead-mining village of Galena crossing the 
 Rock River from La Sallier's place to the Winnebago village 
 and charting the so-called Kellogg Trail, which was to see 
 great activity in the following years. But for only one year 
 was the river crossing to remain at Grand Detour. In 1826 
 John Boles following the Kellogg route in the main, short- 
 ened it by crossing lower down the river which was soon to 
 become Dixon's Ferry. 
 
 But Grand Detour maintained for a time its place as the 
 Indian trading post. In October 1823 a license was granted to 
 Stephen Mack to trade here and his license was renewed the 
 following year. Letters and reports of that period speak of 
 "Rock River" as if it were a definite spot, and it is evident that 
 Grand Detour was the place meant. In 1825 Governor Lewis 
 Cass issued a license to Bernard Laughton to trade one year 
 at "Grand Detour on Rock River". In 1826 a license of similar 
 wording was issued to Maurice Lozon. Cole Weeks was li- 
 censed to trade here at about the same time. In February 
 1829 Stephen Mack married Hononegah, daughter of an In- 
 dian chief, variously reported as a Pottawattomie and as a 
 Winnebago, and bought the La Sallier place. 
 
 But fur traders are not to be counted on as permanent set- 
 tlers. These came and went, and left no sign or trace, except 
 that the hut of La Sallier existed as a pile of logs in 1835. 
 The Indian war of 1832 passed quickly to the north, but it 
 caused the disappearance of the Winnebago village and with 
 it the trading post. Stephen Mack moved to another Winne- 
 bago village at Bird's Grove near the point, where the Peca- 
 tonica River joins the Rock near the Wisconsin line. With the 
 settlement of that section he became a large land-owner and 
 
162 Sinnissippi 
 
 a prominent citizen. His good wife, Hononegah, gained honor 
 and esteem for her generosity and good works among the sick 
 and destitute of her white neighbors. The remains of this 
 worthy couple lie in the cemetery at Harrison, Illinois, while 
 the memory of Hononegah is honored by naming for her the 
 high school and a park in the town of Rockton. 
 
 In 1834 Leonard Andrus came to Grand Detour, saw the 
 possibilities of water power there, and made claim to the land 
 upon which the Indian village had stood. With other settlers 
 who followed closely after him, he organized a power com- 
 pany and laid out the town. In the following year a dam was 
 thrown across the river, a mill-race dug and a saw-mill 
 erected. With the settlers arriving in 1837 there came a 
 blacksmith by the name of John Deere from Middleburg, 
 Vermont. He arrived with a full kit of smithing tools, opened 
 a shop and sent back east for his wife and children. He was 
 a master craftsman in iron, and soon had his shop busy ham- 
 mering out lap-rings for chains, forging clevises and laying 
 down plowshares for the pioneer farmers. He evolved a plow 
 with a mould-board of sheet steel and a wrought-iron land- 
 side. The feature that set it apart was that it would scour 
 clean. It had an enthusiastic local reception and the black- 
 smith shop could not keep up with the demands upon it. 
 With the fame of the plow spreading throughout the western 
 country, Deere in 1841 joined with Andrus to organize the 
 Grand Detour Plow Works. The output of the works reached 
 a thousand plows in 1846 and the business was still growing. 
 Other industries had come to the town, and its streets were 
 crowded by the wagons of the farmers of the surrounding 
 country. In 1850 Grand Detour had as good prospects for 
 
Grand Detour 163 
 
 growth and permanence as any town in northern Illinois. 
 About this time it built the finest school-house of that section 
 of the state. Its citizens were serious minded and religious. 
 They were advocates of rum-exclusion and of the abolition of 
 slavery. Societies, active in the work of these two causes, were 
 formed early in the town and carried weighty influence in its 
 life. 
 
 Fate hit the town hard when in the summer of 1853 a rail- 
 road was carried north through the center of the state and 
 crossed the Rock River at Dixon. Later in the same year a 
 second railroad, building from Chicago to the Mississippi, 
 passed it by to the south, headed also for Dixon. The town 
 could not survive the competition of its highly favored near 
 neighbor. A county historian writing in 1886 says of the re- 
 sult: 
 
 How changed the scene now! The building of the railroads 
 through nearby towns killed Grand Detour. The manufacturers 
 all closed up and shipped away their machinery. The houses are 
 falling down and all is dreary indeed. And yet all could be 
 changed by enterprise and pluck. A finer water power does not 
 exist upon the river. 
 
 The same historian listed Daysville, Old Buffalo and Water- 
 town, all in the same vicinity as other villages that looked 
 back wistfully upon their departed greatness. 
 
 John Deere took his plow-making skill to Moline, near the 
 mouth of the river, where with his Grand Detour plow, he 
 kept alive the name and fame of the dying town up the river. 
 
 Another writer of history, R. G. Thwaites, stopped a night 
 at Grand Detour on his canoe trip down the river in the 
 summer of 1887. After paying a just tribute to the beauty of 
 
164 Sinnissippi 
 
 the river scenery of the bend and of the village site, he con- 
 firms the low state into which it had fallen. 
 
 It is a little tumble-down village of one or two small country 
 stores, a church and a dozen modest cottages; there is also on the 
 river front a short row of deserted shops, their paintless battle- 
 ment-fronts in a sadly collapsed condition, while hard by are the 
 ruins of two or three dismantled mills. 
 
 It has been common experience as the settlement of the 
 country progressed westward that a fair proportion of the 
 migrants were found to have no thought of sharing in the 
 labors and hardships that must precede any security and 
 comfort in a new country. Aside from the common ne'er-do- 
 well, there were those who joined the westward movement 
 to gain its advantages by the quickest and easiest way, with 
 no scruples as to method. In a pioneer agricultural com- 
 munity, such as this, the takings of a professional gambler 
 would be scant. Opportunity pointed to the theft of horses 
 and cattle, highway robbery and the making and passing of 
 counterfeit money with any incidental personal violence to 
 be accepted as part of the day's work. 
 
 The Illinois counties of the Rock Valley drew many of these 
 men to their earliest settlements, but it was the ill-fortune of 
 Ogle County, in which lies this section of the valley, to at- 
 tract the most vicious of these lawbreakers. This group, some 
 with records of prison service, came practically all from Ohio. 
 Whether any of them were associates in that state does not 
 appear. From the beginning of the settlements they not only 
 held the community in a state of chronic anxiety and fear, 
 but they defied any attempt to have justice upon their mis- 
 deeds. They might be arrested but indictment and conviction 
 
Grand Detour 165 
 
 were practically impossible. By the combined means of de- 
 lays, insecure jails, changes of venue, hung juries and per- 
 jured evidence, they made a mockery of the law. Such con- 
 ditions could only have occurred with the connivance of 
 officers of law enforcement, many of whom were not only 
 friends but even accomplices of the bandits. These latter, it 
 should be understood, were farm owners and citizens of the 
 community. Some had considerable personal influence in the 
 affairs of the county. The situation came to a climax when 
 in the spring of 1841 a band of marauders burned the court 
 house and jail in Oregon to free a group of their comrades. 
 To the law-abiding element of the community, the situa- 
 tion became intolerable. It was determined that if the crimi- 
 nals could not be reached with lawful punishment, then 
 means without the law must be invoked. They organized 
 themselves into companies of Regulators, each with a cap- 
 tain at its head. Thus organized they took the known of- 
 fenders out and gave them a horse-whipping. With these, the 
 lesser members of the gang and the suspects were served 
 with notices to quit the country. The warnings were heeded 
 in part, but the more determined bandits defied them and 
 answered with threats of their own. The situation culminated 
 in the summer of 1841 with the murder of Captain Camp- 
 bell, head of one of the Regulator companies. He was called 
 to his door one Sunday evening and shot to death out of the 
 darkness outside. Though positive identification of the mur- 
 derers was not made, a farmer of the neighborhood, John 
 Bristol and two of his sons, were taken into custody by the 
 Regulators. The elder man was one of the foremost in the 
 criminal clique and the family was one of the most dangerous 
 
166 Sinnissippi 
 
 in the whole section. The three men were hurried south to 
 Washington Grove, where in a gathering estimated at from 
 three to hve hundred men, they were given a trial which 
 lasted the greater part of a day. In the end the elder man and 
 one son were found guilty of murder and sentenced to death. 
 The other son was acquitted. Within the hour of the finding 
 of a sentence the two men were shot to death with the massed 
 gunfire of the entire assembly. In the gathering were clergy- 
 men who gave their ministrations to the two convicted men 
 before execution. This was a crushing blow to local banditry, 
 but its terrorism was not to end for another five years. 
 
 Margaret Fuller, the literary discoverer of the valley, vis- 
 ited the vicinity of Grand Detour in 1843 before going up 
 the river to Oregon. Her party was entertained at the home of 
 "an Irish gentleman", absent in the East at the time, whose 
 estate bordered on a bend of the river, probably near the 
 point where Pine Creek flows down from the pine woods to 
 the north. She wrote with enthusiasm of the beauty and order 
 of the house and place, and of the gracious hospitality shown 
 her. An interesting item is the mention of clouds of wild 
 pigeons seen each afternoon as they returned to their roosting 
 places. To this place, Hazelwood, she dedicated a verse in 
 praise of its scenic charm. She called it The Western Eden. 
 
 Blest be the kindly genius of the scene 
 
 The river, bending in unbroken grace 
 
 The stately thickets, with their pathways green 
 
 Fair lovely trees, each in its fitting place. 
 
 Those thickets haunted by the deer and fawn 
 
 Those cloudlike flights of birds across the lawn 
 
 The gentlest breeze here delights to blow 
 
 And sun and shower and star are emulous to deck the show. 
 
Grand Detour 167 
 
 She contrasted this place with the dwellings of the settlers 
 "which showed plainly that they had no thought beyond 
 satisfying the grossest material wants. Sometimes they looked 
 attractive, the little brown houses, the natural architecture 
 of the country, in the edge of the timber. But almost always 
 when you come near, the slovenliness of the dwellings and 
 the rude way in which objects around it were treated, when 
 so little care would have presented a charming whole, were 
 very repulsive." This was the environment in which thrived 
 the banditry of the time. 
 
 A year before Miss Fuller's observations, Charles Dickens 
 made an extended visit through the midwest country. In his 
 American Notes he was as critical of its inhabitants as Miss 
 Fuller had been of their homes. He says, in opening the 
 subject, that the American people are "by nature, frank, 
 brave, cordial, hospitable and affectionate." But, except in 
 urban communities of the eastern seaboard, where he formed 
 many lasting friendships, he found little expression of these 
 natural qualities. Instead he found universal jealously and 
 distrust, one man for another, and everywhere a definite 
 pride in this state of mind. Naturally following these quali- 
 ties was a fickleness of mind, since any one-time friend by 
 success in any venture became by that very fact a subject 
 of dislike. He considered this changeable attitude particularly 
 evident in relation to the political outlook of the people. He 
 found them inclined to favor the smart man in business or 
 politics the one who could put over a deal by whatever means 
 over the man of honest intention. He found the people of 
 the country districts gloomy and over-serious of character and 
 without humor in their lives. Apparently dull, he found fre- 
 
168 Sinnissippi 
 
 quent unexpected intelligence of high order in the conver- 
 sation of these people. He was shocked by the number of 
 crimes of violence reported in the journal of the country. 
 Despite their grievous failings in his eyes he found them 
 convinced of their sagacity and acuteness as a people and 
 proud of their vaunted shrewdness and independence. 
 Strangely enough he attributes the defects of the American 
 character to the effects of slavery and a vicious press. 
 
 If this seems a harsh indictment of American character 
 and customs it will be seen as almost complimentary when 
 compared with the observations of other English writers of 
 about the same time. Thomas Ashe, Basil Hall and Mrs. 
 Frances Trollope found the language scarcely adequate to 
 express the degradation they found among their transplanted 
 cousins. They were found "mercenary and ignorant" as well 
 as "cold, unfriendly, unfeeling, callous and selfish". The "po- 
 litical licentiousness" of the American nation was producing 
 "turbulent citizens, abandoned Christians, inconstant hus- 
 bands, unnatural fathers and treacherous friends". Much of 
 this criticism is found amusing today, however far removed 
 it was at the time. Consider the following: "One nasty custom 
 however, I must notice. Eggs, instead of being eaten out of 
 the shell, are poured into a wineglass and after being duly and 
 disgustingly churned up with butter and condiments, the 
 mixture according to the degree of fluidity is forthwith 
 spooned into the mouth or drunk off like a liquid." Speaking 
 of the writings of Basil Hall and Mrs. Trollope, Josiah Quincy 
 says "These birds of passage have skimmed over the country 
 like vultures over the surface of the Carolinas, pouncing upon 
 whatever is corrupt and passing by whatever is sound and 
 healthful, as adapted neither to their taste or scent." 
 
Grand Detour 169 
 
 It was a time of Tory ascendency in England and criticism 
 was bitter and brutal of democracy and liberalism and of 
 America as the world's great object lesson in their effects. 
 The pages of The Quarterly and of Blackwoods were not 
 only open but were avid for word of America of the kind 
 furnished by these writers. Dickens and Captain Marryat 
 were of those who gave the more moderate and considered 
 type of criticism. While the American reading public might 
 ignore the coarse abuse of an Ashe, it writhed under the 
 more judicial appraisal that Dickens made of the shortcom- 
 ings of the nation and people. 
 
 This period was in truth a time when the manners of an 
 arrogant Jacksonian democracy was displacing the studied 
 gentility of Federalist times and were being carried by west- 
 bound migration into the Mississippi valley. One cannot deny 
 that it was a crude civilization that filled the middle west in 
 the year of 1842, and the Rock river valley was a far outpost 
 in that year. 
 
 The century since that time has made this region the heart 
 of the country. It is now a land of well-built towns and vil- 
 lages, of railroads and cement highways, of farms with sub- 
 stantial buildings and fruitful fields. The only unchanging 
 feature is the river which still carries the somewhat lessened 
 waters of its tributaries toward the southern seas. 
 
 Somewhere toward the end of the last century a more 
 hopeful spirit stirred in Grand Detour. The canoe-traveler of 
 the eighties found here a good dinner and a comfortable bed, 
 Somewhat later the young people of Dixon found it a con- 
 venient drive by buggy to the old village and good food at 
 the end of the drive. The so-called "gay nineties" saw many 
 such visitors to Grand Detour and occasional evening parties 
 
170 Sinnissippi 
 
 not particularly gay. The village became sensitive and tore 
 down the evidences of its great past. With the coming of the 
 automobile and hard roads, there was increased business at 
 the general store and the village inn, and new enterprises de- 
 pendent upon the traveler and his car came into being. The 
 Black Hawk Trail, along the river's course, was carried 
 through the village street and brought to Grand Detour that 
 contact with the great world that the railroads had denied to 
 it. Prosperity came to its modest business places and was 
 reflected in new carpentry and paint on its buildings. Today 
 it is not unlike a hundred other villages in the state except 
 for its fortunate site in the bend of a beautiful river. A small 
 park on the river front has a stone that marks the spot upon 
 which the first plow works was built. In it too is a monument 
 to Leonard Andrus, founder of the village, "adjudicator of 
 land claims, ferry operator, carrier of mails and traveler and 
 first commissioner of schools in Ogle County, manufacturer, 
 vestryman, legislator''. Andrus shared the town's adversities 
 as he did its prosperity and tried to maintain its place in the 
 plow-making world, but was compelled to close in 1867. A 
 plow carrying the Grand Detour name is still being made and 
 marketed. 
 
 A few blocks back from the river and highway stands the 
 old home of the Andrus family, a symbol of rural prosperity 
 and propriety, and of the substantialities that were expected 
 of the town. It is today the Colonial Inn, famous the country 
 round for the good things it sets before its patrons. Roadside 
 signs tell of the hundreds of thousands who have dined in its 
 rooms during the forty years of its existence. It has given to 
 Grand Detour a wide reputation as a place where good food 
 
Grand Detour 171 
 
 may be had in the midst of scenic beauty. A short distance 
 away stands the playhouse of the Grand Detour Players, a 
 company bringing drama to the valley during the summer 
 months. The village thus serves in its section the function of 
 Provincetown on Cape Cod, Ogunquit on the Maine coast, 
 and Pittsfield in the Berkshire hills. 
 
 The old village is of course glad of its awakening in a new 
 world. It is pleased that people see in its charming setting a 
 place for a pause in the day's journeying. If its fortune is to be 
 a quiet place of refreshment and entertainment for passing 
 pilgrims, that is not a hard lot, but the dream will not pass of 
 what it might have been if it had held its place as the plow 
 center of the country. 
 
On the Grand Detour 
 
DIXON'S FERRY 
 
 At the time, in 1818, when the dignity of statehood was 
 conferred upon the territory of Illinois, practically the whole 
 population was located in the southern third of the state. 
 Peoria with Fort Clark was a northern outpost. A few cabins, 
 clustered around Fort Dearborn, formed the village of Chi- 
 cago. Central Illinois was the domain of the Kickapoo tribes; 
 the Pottawattomies held the territory north of the Illinois 
 River, while the confederated Sacs and Foxes with the Winne- 
 bagoes roamed over the northwestern part of the state. In 
 this latter section, however, there were forming settlements 
 attracted by the deposits of lead which extended well beyond 
 the northern limits of the state. Galena in Illinois was the early 
 center and the shipping point for the lead field. From south- 
 ern Illinois and Missouri came the first settlers into this bo- 
 nanza field and their route was by way of St. Louis and the 
 Mississippi River. The shorter overland route must have been 
 often considered but it was not until 1825 that O. W. Kellogg 
 left Peoria to make his way across country to Galena. He 
 followed the right bank of the Illinois River up to Bureau 
 Creek, thence due north across the prairies to Rock River at 
 the Grande Detour where he was ferried across by Indians. 
 From here it was but sixty miles to the settlements on Fever 
 River. This was the beginning of the so-called Kellogg Trail, 
 which for years thereafter was a thoroughfare for travel be- 
 
 173 
 
174 Sinnissippi 
 
 tween the down-state country and the lead fields. In the fol- 
 lowing year John Boles, also of Peoria, took the Kellogg trail 
 to the north, but shortened it somewhat by crossing the Rock 
 some miles below the Kellogg crossing at the point which 
 was later to be known as Dixon's Ferry. The route thus charted 
 soon became the common route of travel. Under favorable 
 conditions of low water, the Rock might be forded here by 
 the wagon-trains, but such times were rare. The opportunity 
 for gain attracted an encampment of Winnebagos to the ferry 
 site and they and their canoes were for some time the only 
 means of ferrying the river. The method is thus described by 
 an early traveler over the trail: 
 
 On arriving at the place of crossing the wagons were unloaded 
 and the loads carried over in canoes by the Indians. The wagons 
 were then driven with the side to the stream, two wheels lifted 
 into a canoe which was shoved a little out into the river and an- 
 other canoe received the other wheels, when the double boat was 
 paddled or poled to the other side. Horses were held by the bridle 
 and made to swim by the side of the canoe. Cattle swam loose. 
 Once across the wagons were lifted from the canoes, reloaded and 
 the journey was resumed. 
 
 The Indian ferry men belonged to the band of White Cloud 
 from down the river. They were totally unreliable, likely to be 
 absent when their services were wanted and always arbitrary 
 in their demands upon those seeking to cross the river. So 
 uncertain was the service that at times, during a moderate 
 stage of water, more adventurous spirits swam their teams at- 
 tached to their wagons across the river. 
 
 In pioneer countries, the ferry is the first public utility to 
 be installed. Wherever public road meets running water too 
 deep to be forded a ferry must be considered. Any thought of 
 
Dixon's Ferry 175 
 
 a bridge must be set aside for a future time. Routes of travel 
 often fixed the site of ferries, but perhaps quite as often an 
 early established ferry determined the travel route. A ferry 
 franchise, usually a license from some government authority 
 was a highly prized possession. Town sites on running streams 
 were in keen competition for these licenses and often to the 
 winner came permanency and to the loser abandonment and 
 oblivion. The license set forth in legal form the location of 
 the ferry, the privileges and advantages to accrue to the 
 grantee, his heirs and assignees, and their obligations under 
 the contract including the fees they might charge and the 
 persons, who, when journeying on public business, must be 
 carried free. 
 
 Whether on account of its remote location or in the ab- 
 sence of competent authority the first ferry at this river cross- 
 ing to merit the name was established without a license and 
 only at the reluctant let of the Indian canoemen. 
 
 In the early summer of 1827 J. L. Bogardus, of Peoria, sent 
 a carpenter to the ferry site to build a shanty on the river 
 bank and to hold the ferry until Bogardus himself should 
 arrive. The two men began the construction of a ferryboat, 
 but when it was half completed it was burned by the Indians 
 and the builders forced to return to Peoria. In the spring of 
 the following year, Joseph Ogee, a Frenchman from Peoria 
 came with his Pottawattomie wife and an Indian interpreter 
 and prevailed upon the Winnebago tribesmen to permit the 
 erection of a cabin and the construction of a ferryboat. This 
 man has received much disparaging notice, carrying the im- 
 plication that he was a semi-savage half-breed. On the con- 
 trary he was a respected citizen of Peoria where he was the 
 
176 Sinnissippi 
 
 agent of the American Fur Company, his log home the most 
 substantial building in the village, serving as an inn and the 
 public meeting place. 
 
 The river crossing became Ogee's Ferry. The ferryboat was 
 propelled by the old-fashioned "setting pole". It had its point 
 of starting on each side of the river, but its place of landing 
 was wherever the struggle between the pole and current 
 ended. Beginning in 1827 the Kellogg Trail saw much travel 
 over its rutted roadways and with the coming of easy transit 
 of the river it increased rapidly. From five to twenty wagons 
 crossed daily in April and May mostly going north, with a 
 similar movement, but in the southern direction, September 
 and October. On rush days in these seasons as many as a 
 hundred wagons would be put across the river in a single 
 day. It is said that this seasonal migration coincided with 
 the movement of the redhorse sucker in the neighboring 
 streams and thus the name of "sucker" became attached to 
 the residents of Illinois. The hardy souls who stayed in the 
 lead regions through the cold winters were credited with 
 digging themselves in well and thereby got the name of 
 "badgers", a name which attached itself to Wisconsin and 
 its people. In response to the needs of this road traffic a series 
 of places for overnight accommodation sprang up, notably 
 Dad Joe's place on Bureau Creek a score of miles south of 
 the ferry and Buffalo Grove and Kellogg's Grove to the north. 
 
 Realizing the value of his establishment, Ogee sought to 
 validate his holding with a license. In the winter following 
 completion of the ferry he filed a petition with the state legis- 
 lature that he be granted the "privilege of building houses 
 and establishing a Ferry on Rock River at the common cross- 
 
Dixon's Ferry 177 
 
 ing place upon the road leading from Fort Clark to the Fever 
 River lead mines." No action was taken on this petition and 
 so Ogee turned to the commissioners of Jo Daviess County 
 whose records contain the following entry dated December 
 7, 1829: "On the application of Joseph Ogee it is ordered that 
 a license be granted to keep a tavern at his house on Rock 
 River by his paying into the County Treasury the sum of 
 twelve dollars and the fees of the clerk and entering into 
 bond in the penal sum of three hundred dollars." On the 
 same day a license for the ferry was issued and an order was 
 entered by the county court fixing the following schedule of 
 fees for the ferry: 
 
 Crossing footman $ .12?2 
 
 Man and horse 25 
 
 Horse or cattle per head other than cattle yoked 25 
 
 Each yoke of cattle 37& 
 
 Road wagon 1.00 
 
 For each horse hitched to said wagon 25 
 
 For two-horse wagon 75 
 
 Each two-wheeled carriage or cart 1.00 
 
 One-horse wagon 75 
 
 Each hundred weight of merchandise, etc 06 
 
 There was already in force a court order fixing the follow- 
 ing tavern rates: 
 
 Each meal $ .37?2 
 
 Horse feed 25 
 
 Horse per night, at corn and hay 62M 
 
 Man per night 12?2 
 
 Each half pint of French brandy or wine 25 
 
 Each half pint of whisky or other domestic liquors 12?2 
 
178 Sinnissippi 
 
 Each half pint of Holland gin 25 
 
 Each quart of porter, cider or ale 25 
 
 If it is asked why these inconvenient schedules of charges 
 in the currency of today, the explanation will begin with a 
 reminder that the pattern of the American dollar was the 
 Spanish "piece-of -eight", the peso of eight reales, which cir- 
 culated extensively in this country in colonial times. Even 
 after the American silver dollar had been introduced, small 
 change was almost entirely in British pence and Spanish 
 reales and half-reales. The real had a value of 12/2 cents as 
 did a Canadian shilling which had also a circulation in this 
 country. The real and the shilling were colloquially known 
 as a "bit" and the half -real with a value of 6/4 cents as a "half- 
 bit". The charges fixed in these schedules for tavern and ferry 
 service were all in multiples or fractions of the real. 
 
 The charge for ferrage of goods was probably intended to 
 be a "half-bit" per hundred weight. It was some time later 
 that coins in decimal parts of the dollar had any wide circu- 
 lation. Relics of the old currency names persist in the terms 
 "two bits" and "two shillings" as applied to the quarter dollar. 
 
 In September 1829 the postoffice of Ogee's Ferry was es- 
 tablished in the tavern with a Mr. Gay as postmaster. This 
 office was to serve a section to include the settlements grow- 
 ing up around the rapids of the Illinois River. Before this time, 
 in 1827, the Government asked for bids for carrying the mails 
 on a new route from Peoria to Galena. John Dixon, a trader of 
 Peoria, obtained the contract which called for biweekly de- 
 liveries in each direction. He moved his home to Boyd's Grove 
 on Great Bureau Creek and in 1830 to Ogee's Ferry, where 
 
Dixon's Ferry 179 
 
 he set up as a trader. The mail route was changed to a weekly 
 schedule in 1828 and a passenger stage run when the weather 
 permitted. 
 
 The business of Ogee's tavern and ferry were prospering, 
 but the affairs of his household were in troublous times. 
 Whether on account of the tavern's liquor or of bad tempers, 
 or of both, Madeline, his Pottawattomie helpmeet, left his 
 bed and board and went back to her people taking her chil- 
 dren with her. In January 1832 Ogee sold to John Dixon the 
 ferry and the tavern building. The first printed mention of 
 the change of name of the ferry was in the Galenian of May 
 16, 1832, in a statement that "An express has just arrived from 
 Dixon's Ferry across Rock River." Dixon had succeeded Mr. 
 Gay as postmaster in 1830 and now the name of the office 
 was changed to Dixon's Ferry. Joseph Ogee remained in the 
 vicinity and died there about 1836. 
 
 Dixon, an Indian trader by career, had established a thriv- 
 ing business with the neighboring Winnebagos, and had won 
 their full confidence and esteem. From the fact of his flowing 
 white hair they gave him the name Nachusa. The records of 
 his books show that he furnished them with clothing, food 
 and hunting supplies and received from them peltry and furs, 
 skins of racoon, mink and otter, of wolf, wild cat, deer and 
 beaver, but above all of the teeming muskrat. 
 
 Closely following upon Dixon's purchase of the ferry, a 
 portentous gathering took place there. It was still winter 
 early in 1832 when Black Hawk and another Sac chieftain, 
 possibly Peopope, accompanied by White Cloud, the Winne- 
 bago prophet, met here with chiefs of the Pottawattomie tribe 
 to bargain for turning over to the Sacs a village near the 
 
180 Sinnissippi 
 
 junction of the Kishwaukee river with the Rock. During the 
 days of their stay, the chiefs of the council fire were regularly 
 invited as guests at the Dixon's table. Mrs. Dixon served as 
 waitress and then sat down and ate and drank with them. 
 The chiefs were profuse in their expressions of appreciation 
 of such hospitality. There was early reward for the Dixon's 
 kindnesses. When in the following April the Sac war party 
 was approaching up the river, warning was issued to all 
 settlers to seek safety in flight. The Dixons were given as- 
 surance of such protections as the neighboring Winnebagos 
 could give them, but they relied mainly on their faith in 
 humanity, even in Indians. They were in their home when 
 early in May, the Sacs encamped around a spring only a few 
 hundred yards above the ferry. They passed on up the river 
 without threat or damage to the Dixon property. 
 
 Closely following upon the passing of the Indians party, 
 came a battalion of mounted Illinois militia under Major 
 Isaiah Stillman. This was the beginning of the concentration 
 of troops here that made of Dixon's Ferry the advance base 
 and supply point for the Black Hawk campaign. General 
 Samuel Whiteside's army of Illinois militia followed the In- 
 dians up the river from Rock Island and the regular troops 
 of General Henry Atkinson with the supply trains came by 
 the same route. Here at the ferry was the point from which 
 all points to the north, east or west of the river could be 
 reached. A fort was immediately commenced on the north 
 side of the river to the west of the ferry, an inclosure made 
 of breastworks of earth and sod, with blockhouses at two of 
 its corners. The blockhouse at the northeast corner was two 
 stories in height, commanding the most open approach to the 
 
Dixon's Ferry 181 
 
 fort. A company of regular infantry was assigned as its per- 
 manent garrison. During the months of the Indian campaign, 
 there were always some hundreds of troops camped around 
 the fort. 
 
 Many items of fact and fable relating to Abraham Lincoln's 
 service in the Indian War of 1832 have their setting at Dixon's 
 Ferry. Here he is said to have served in the blockhouse and 
 this may well be true. And here is the locale of the wholly 
 absurd tale that he counseled with Zachary Taylor and Jef- 
 ferson Davis as to the conduct of the campaign. Practically 
 every important figure in this short war, Indian and white, 
 was at Dixon's Ferry at one time or another during that sum- 
 mer, but such future greats as Lincoln and Davis, as the two 
 Johnstons, Joseph E. and Albert Sydney, were wholly in- 
 conspicuous figures at the time. Even the future President 
 Taylor was then but a regimental commander. 
 
 A resume of Lincoln's war service will consume but small 
 space. He was twenty-three years old, recently returned from 
 a trip to New Orleans and was spreading handbills about 
 announcing his candidacy for the state legislature. He was a 
 member of the state militia as were all free white males be- 
 tween the ages of 18 and 45. In response to Governor Rey- 
 nolds' call for troops in April 1832, a company was organized 
 in New Salem and Lincoln was elected its captain. On April 
 21, the company was mustered in for thirty days of service at 
 nearby Richland and incorporated into the 4th Regiment of 
 Mounted Volunteers. The regiment marched to Beardstown 
 where it received its horses and was put into the brigade of 
 General Whiteside. The brigade marched to Yellow Banks 
 on the Mississippi River and thence by way of Rock Island 
 
182 Sinnissippi 
 
 to Dixon's Ferry. On the way it stopped long enough to burn 
 down White Cloud's village midway on the journey up the 
 Rock. Lincoln's company got up to the field of Stillman's 
 defeat, returned to the ferry and then marched to Ottawa on 
 the Illinois River where it was disbanded on May 27. Lin- 
 coln's further service is thus certified to by Lieut. Robert 
 Anderson, later commandant of Fort Sumter when the Civil 
 War began: 
 
 Lincoln was a member of two independent companies which 
 were not brigaded. I mustered him into service at the mouth of 
 the Fox River of the Illinois, May 29, 1832, in Capt. Elijah lies' 
 company. The lieutenants in the company were I. M. Harrison 
 and H. B. Roberts (his horse and equipment were listed at $120 
 and his arms $40). I mustered him out of the service at the Rapids 
 of the Illinois on June 16, and again into the service on June 20 
 in Capt. Jacob M. Early's company whose lieutenants were G. M. 
 Glasscock and B. D. Rush. (Value arms $15; horse and equipment 
 $85.) 
 
 These companies belonged to what was known as the Spy 
 Battalion, a rather free-lance organization. Lincoln said that 
 he was in no battle and that he never saw a hostile Indian. 
 His company arrived at Kellogg's Fort shortly after it had 
 beaten off the Indians' attack. He received his final discharge 
 at Whitewater creek in Wisconsin on July 10, and having lost 
 his horse, walked to Dixon's Ferry and then to Peoria, whence 
 river transport carried him back to the vicinity of New Salem. 
 The tales of his service picture him as a popular company 
 commander who looked out well for his men and who cared 
 not how they looked out for themselves. Admiring observers 
 give a probably overdrawn impression of him as a trial to 
 
Dixon's Ferry 183 
 
 his commanding officers, a leader in minor insubordination 
 and in threatened mutiny. He himself always spoke jokingly 
 of his military career, maintaining that the main lesson he 
 learned from it was the necessity for food for fighting men. 
 A speech delivered by him in the House of Representatives 
 in July 1848 shows well this attitude. General Lewis Cass was 
 the Democratic candidate for the presidency and his ad- 
 herents were making much of his military service. He was 
 said by them to have broken his sword in chagrin when Gen- 
 eral Hull surrendered the post of Detroit in 1812. Said Lin- 
 coln: "By the way, Mr. Speaker, did you know that I am a 
 military hero? Yes sir, in the days of the Black Hawk war I 
 fought, bled and came away. Speaking of General Cass's 
 career reminds me of my own. I was not at Stillman's defeat, 
 but I was about as near it as Cass was to Hull's surrender; 
 and like him I saw the place soon afterward. It is quite certain 
 I did not break my sword for I had none to break; but I bent 
 a musket pretty badly on one occasion. If Cass broke his 
 sword the idea is that he broke it in desperation. I bent the 
 musket by accident. If he saw any live fighting Indians, it 
 was more than I did; but I had many bloody struggles with 
 the mosquitoes and although I never fainted from loss of 
 blood, I can truly say I was often very hungry. Mr. Speaker, 
 if I should ever conclude to doff whatever my Democratic 
 friends may suppose there is of black-cockade federalism 
 about me and therefore they shall take me up as their candi- 
 date for the presidency, I protest they shall not make fun of 
 me, as they have of General Cass, by attempting to write me 
 into a military hero." 
 
 This is practically the only reference to this service that 
 
184 Sinnissippi 
 
 appears in his collected works. In a biographic sketch pre- 
 pared by himself in 1860 he says that he is the possessor of 
 lands in Iowa, awarded him for his military service. 
 
 John Dixon found the army a profitable customer during 
 that summer of border war. Beyond the business that came 
 to his tavern, store and ferry, there were contracts to be had 
 for substantial quantities of supplies. In the later part of the 
 campaign he had the contract for supplying the troops with 
 beef, and with a drove of cattle and his drivers and butchers 
 he followed close upon the heels of the soldiers as they ad- 
 vanced into the Wisconsin wilds. The treaty following the 
 war provided rations of flour and bacon to the Winnebago 
 tribe in compensation for the disturbance to their hunting 
 grounds. That part which was allotted to the Indians of the 
 lower Rock valley was turned over to Dixon for distribution. 
 There is never a word that in any dealing with the Govern- 
 ment or with the Indians that this efficient agent ever acted 
 other than with the most scrupulous honesty. 
 
 Back to the ferry the troops came for the general muster- 
 out, and here were collected the horses of the pack trains, 
 which were later driven south for sale in the more settled sec- 
 tions of the state. The fort dismantled, the troops gone, the 
 ferry resumed its former aspect, and its usual way of life. 
 There were still no buildings there other than those of the 
 Dixon household. The Winnebago tribesmen who had hur- 
 ried out of war's way, returned to their old haunts. The spring 
 of 1833 found them in a quite dissatisfied mood and this 
 second war-cloud caused Mrs. Dixon to leave with her chil- 
 dren for Peoria. The cloud passed and in 1836 the last of 
 the Winnebagos left the vicinity never to return. 
 
Dixon's Ferry 185 
 
 With the threat of Indian warfare gone, the land was 
 thrown open for settlement. At that time open prairie 
 stretched away to the south of the ferry, while there was 
 much woodland north of the river. Dixon obtained preemp- 
 tion of the section south of the river and in 1834 began lay- 
 ing out the town which was to bear his name. The evolution 
 of the name from Dixon's Ferry to Dixon came gradually, 
 but was soon well fixed. 
 
 There was at this time a rapid expansion of highway travel 
 and Dixon was soon a stage center. From here stage routes 
 ran north to Galena, south to Windsor, Princeton and Peoria, 
 east to Naperville and Chicago, with a line to Troy Grove 
 and Ottawa. Dixon was the transfer station on a system of 
 stage lines that served the country as railroads were to do at 
 a later day. The ferry was still the only river crossing and in 
 1835 it was improved by substituting rope for the poles which 
 had previously served. The operation of a semi-automatic 
 ferry higher up on the same stream is thus described: 
 
 A large tree, jutting out from the bank at the north end of the 
 public landing held the east end of the ferry rope which was 
 fastened to a similar tree on the west side of the river. The rect- 
 angular flatbottomed ferry boat was attached at both ends to this 
 rope by two similar arrangements of rope and pulley and grooved 
 wheel, one for each end of the boat, both wheels moving easily on 
 the long ferry rope and affording a kind of movable anchorage. 
 When the west end attachment was shortened up, making that 
 end of the scow point diagonally up stream, the force of the cur- 
 rent would slowly push the boat across to the west bank. Then 
 after the wheel rope at the west end was lengthened and that of 
 the other shortened, causing the east end of the boat to point up- 
 stream, the current flowing southward, would gradually work the 
 
186 Sinnissippi 
 
 boat back to the east bank. Only a few minutes were required, 
 with the usual stage of water, to make a crossing. 
 
 Dixon, first in Jo Daviess County, was in Ogle County after 
 its organization in 1836 and when Lee Country was organized 
 in 1839, it became the county seat. In 1840 through friend- 
 ships formed during the Indian War, John Dixon secured 
 the transfer of the Government land office from Galena to 
 the more central location at Dixon. The scenic beauty and 
 the fertile lands around Dixon attracted to the neighborhood 
 a number of families of substantial wealth who acquired con- 
 siderable estates and built for themselves substantial homes. 
 Notable among this company was Alexander Charters, who 
 lately arrived from Ireland, came to Dixon in 1838. He 
 bought a large tract of land on the right bank of the river 
 north of Dixon. For the construction of his mansion-house, 
 the first brickyard in this section of the state was opened. 
 Around his beautiful home he created a park of trees, lawns 
 and flowers. In this home he introduced the mode of living 
 of the "county people" of his native land, and dispensed a 
 hospitality that brought to his guest rooms and table what- 
 ever notable visitors came that way. The place was known as 
 Hazelwood, and here it was that Margaret Fuller made her 
 first stop in the valley in 1843 and it was of this home that she 
 wrote so enthusiastically. William Cullen Bryant, editor of 
 the New York Evening Post, and incidentally poet, made a 
 tour of Illinois during the Black Hawk War and saw much of 
 the state's citizen soldiery. Of them he writes back to his 
 paper: 
 
 "They were a hard-looking set of men, unkempt and unshaven, 
 
Dixon's Ferry 187 
 
 wearing shirts of dark calico and sometimes calico capotes" and he 
 adds that "some of the settlers complained that they were making 
 war only on the pigs and chickens." 
 
 He is said to have formed an acquaintance and a liking at 
 this time for Lincoln, whom he later warmly supported for the 
 presidency, but the story is highly unlikely. 
 
 Bryant came back to Illinois and to Dixon in 1841 and 
 stayed with Mr. Charters at Hazelwood. In adding his tribute 
 to the beauty of the valley he says: 
 
 I have just returned from an excursion to Rock River, one of the 
 most beautiful of our western streams. It flows through high 
 prairies and like most of the streams of the west, through an 
 alluvial country. The current is rapid and the pellucid waters 
 glide over a bottom of sand and pebbles. Its admirers declare 
 that it unites the beauties of the Hudson and the Connecticut. 
 The banks on either side are high and bold; sometimes they are 
 perpendicular precipices, the bases of which stand in running 
 water, sometimes they are steep, grassy or rocky bluffs, with a 
 space of alluvial land between them and the stream, sometimes 
 they rise by a gradual and easy ascent to the general level of the 
 region and sometimes this ascent is interrupted by a broad natural 
 terrace. Majestic trees grow solitary or in clumps on the grassy 
 acclivities or scattered in natural parks along the lower lands upon 
 the river, or in thick groves along the edge of the high country. 
 At the foot of the bluffs break forth copious springs of clear 
 water, which hastens in little brooks to the river. 
 
 In the History of Lee County compiled in the eighties of 
 the century past there is carried an apocryphal story which 
 has become a cherished legend of the region. It relates that 
 during Bryant's visit to the home of Mr. Charters, while walk- 
 ing in the grounds of Hazelwood, his eye was caught by the 
 
188 Sinnissippi 
 
 form of a water-bird as it winged its way up the course of the 
 valley, and that its flight inspired that exquisite gem of poetry 
 To a Waterfowl. 
 
 Whither, midst falling dew 
 
 While glow the heavens with the last steps of day. 
 Far through their rosy depths dost thou pursue 
 Thy solitary way. 
 
 Vainly the fowler's eye 
 
 Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong 
 
 As darkly seen against the crimson sky 
 
 Thy figure floats along. 
 
 Seek'st thou the plashy brink 
 Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide, 
 Or where the rocking billows rise and sink 
 On the chafed ocean-side? 
 
 There is a Power whose care 
 Teaches thy way along that pathless coast— 
 The desert and illimitable air- 
 Lone wandering, but not lost. 
 
 All day thy wings have fanned, 
 At that far height the cold thin atmosphere, 
 Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land, 
 Though the dark night is near. 
 
 And soon thy toil shall end; 
 Soon shalt thou find a summer home and rest, 
 And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend 
 Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest. 
 
 Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven 
 
 Hath swallowed up thy form; yet, on my heart 
 
Dixon's Ferry 189 
 
 Deeply has sunk the lesson thou hast given, 
 And shall not soon depart. 
 
 He who, from zone to zone 
 
 Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, 
 
 In the long way that I must tread alone, 
 
 Will lead my steps aright. 
 
 A plausible explanation would be that the compiler of local 
 history had erred only in the title of the poem and the cir- 
 cumstances. If he had cited The Fountain, the story would 
 carry conviction. These verses were written in 1841, the year 
 of Bryant's visit. They carry the description of a forest spring 
 in a country having every feature of the Rock valley of that 
 time, a spring to which deer and wolves came to drink. But 
 all uncertainty of location is put aside when we read The 
 Painted Cup, a poem painting in words the scarlet masses 
 that contrast so sharply with the copses of hazel among which 
 they grow on the Illinois prairies. This plant, whose leaves far 
 outshine its flowers in brilliancy has been called "the brightest 
 dab of red the wild palette can show." Thus the poem: 
 
 Scarlet tufts 
 Are glowing in the green like flakes of fire 
 And wanderers of the prairie know them well 
 And call that brilliant flower the Painted Cup. 
 Now if thou art a poet, tell me not 
 That these bright chalices were tinted thus 
 To hold the dew for fairies when they meet 
 On moonlight evenings in the hazel bowers 
 And dance till they are thirsty. Call not up 
 Amid this fresh and virgin solitude 
 The faded fancies of an older world; 
 But leave these scarlet cups to spotted moths 
 
190 Sinnissippi 
 
 Of June, and glistening flies, and humming-birds 
 To drink from, when on all these boundless lawns 
 The morning sun looks hot. 
 
 But the poet could not forego an allusion to the red men 
 who had at so short a time before been masters of these self- 
 same prairies. 
 
 But thou art of a gayer fancy. Well- 
 Let then the gentle Manitou of flowers, 
 Lingering amid the blooming waste he loves, 
 Though all his swarthy worshippers are gone- 
 Slender and small his rounded cheek all brown 
 And ruddy with the sunshine; let him come 
 On summer mornings, when the blossoms wake, 
 And part with little hands the spiky grass; 
 And touching with his cheery lips, the edge 
 Of those bright beakers, drain the gathered dew. 
 
 The ferryboat made its tedious crossings of the river for 
 eighteen years, until in 1846, its place was taken by a bridge. 
 Then began a long struggle between bridge-builders and 
 high water, as the structure was repeatedly washed out or 
 damaged. Even when the bridge was raised well above any 
 raging current, its misfortunes did not end. In 1866 a drove of 
 cattle, in crossing, carried a section of the bridge with its 
 cargo into the river. The crowning misfortune came in 1873 
 when the bridge was crowded with spectators of a mass 
 baptism in the river. The fall of the bridge carried thirty- 
 seven persons to death by drowning and seriously injured a 
 half hundred more, many of whom died of their hurts. Bridges 
 in those early days must provide for passage of any river 
 traffic, for was not the Rock River a navigable stream by edict 
 of the Federal Government? A century ago small steamboats 
 
Dixon's Ferry 191 
 
 from the Mississippi trade, aided by high water, traversed the 
 Rock beyond Lake Koskonong and they were fortunate 
 enough to get back down the stream. The experiment was not 
 often repeated. The river might be proclaimed navigable, but 
 no regulation could provide the depth of water to make it so 
 in fact. In broadened expanses of the river, above its frequent 
 dams, steam craft carried excursion parties to suburban parks 
 or on moonlit trips. Even this traffic, popular in the century 
 past, has had its day and public water craft has practically 
 disappeared from the river. 
 
 After laying out his town site, John Dixon built a farm- 
 house on its southern edge on a hill well back from the river. 
 From here he watched the slow but steady growth of his 
 town. It had a population of two hundred in 1840 and in five 
 years the number had doubled. By 1850 it had doubled again 
 to eight hundred. The next decade saw two railroads built 
 to cross in the town, one of them later to become the trans- 
 continental route of the Overland fleet of trains. The town 
 attracted the plow-making craftsmen of Grand Detour and 
 became a plow town in its own right. 
 
 John Dixon died in 1876, after a long life, not merely 
 blameless, but full of accomplishment for himself and of 
 usefullness to his community. To the end of his days he was 
 in truth as well as in name Father Dixon to the town to which 
 he gave his name. 
 
 The town has developed, not rapidly, but steadily and sub- 
 stantially, upon the pattern of its founder. It is a well-built 
 county town, with a wide circle of the farm country for which 
 it is the market. It has its share of small industries to keep its 
 sons and daughters at home. It has the schools and churches 
 
192 Sinnissippi 
 
 without which it could not hope to attract the farm dweller 
 when comes the time for him to quit his fields. It is a typical 
 mid-western county-seat, except that its location in the midst 
 of the scenic beauty of the Rock Valley sets it apart. 
 
 It is history-minded. The walls of the old Nachusa House, 
 "perpetually new" according to wayside signboards, carry 
 the portraits and autographs of people of distinction who have 
 visited the town. In a small park occupying the site of the 
 old blockhouse, facing south across the river, stands the 
 bronze statue of the young soldier Lincoln, by the sculptor, 
 Leonard Crunelle. The young captain stands hatless with 
 windblown hair, in a home-made uniform and high boots, 
 with a sword-belt and sabre at his waist, and a blanket or 
 cape thrown over his right shoulder. Dixon is, and its people 
 well know it, a town with a historic past. 
 
In the Prophet's Country 
 
THE PROPHET'S 
 COUNTRY 
 
 JJelow the twin towns of Sterling and Rock Falls, the out- 
 croppings of limestone and sandstone, which have become 
 fewer and wider spaced after Dixon is passed, no longer are 
 seen. The banks fall gradually away and the river takes on a 
 sinuous course which it follows through a wide flood-plain 
 for sixty miles to its mouth. Abrupt banks of no great height 
 occur in the upper reaches of this section, but they are now 
 of yellow or red clay. Elsewhere the river banks are low, 
 affording little obstacle to the spread of water into the sur- 
 rounding low-land. The aspect of this country has been 
 changed greatly by the work of ditching machinery since the 
 days of Indian occupancy. At that time great stretches of the 
 rivers bank were backed by swamps and bog-land, vast 
 quagmires miles in extent, paralleling the shores and extend- 
 ing up the tributaries that fed the main stream. These 
 branches, large in volume but of short course, had their 
 beginning in neighboring marshes, some of them, like the 
 Marais d'Ogee and Cat-tail Slough, of vast extent. This sec- 
 tion of the valley contained hundreds of square miles of 
 swamp land and quaking bogs with water just beneath the 
 surface. In a great part of this water-logged country were 
 immense deposits of peat, twenty feet thick, lying close be- 
 neath the surface of the ground. Peat is found wherever the 
 
 193 
 
194 Sinnissippi 
 
 arrangement of rock and impervious clay forms any kind of a 
 basin which holds in the water and keeps the earth sodden. 
 Here through the centuries, trees felled by tempests or by 
 age and decay together with the smaller plant life, sink layer 
 after layer into the ooze and undergo the gradual change 
 that would eventually produce beds of coal. The peat, mid- 
 way in the process, requires only to be cut out in blocks with 
 a spade, and dried to form a fuel that burns quickly with an 
 ardent heat, and gives off the bluish smoke that is a feature 
 of every peat-burning community. 
 
 Through this wilderness of marshland the river wound its 
 way, with miles of shallow rapids alternating with other miles 
 of sluggish flow of deep water. The current divided and re- 
 divided and united again to form successions of islands, some 
 large and long with heavy timber growth, others merely bars 
 of sand, upon which grew nothing but spurge and sand-burrs. 
 The valley could put on a radiant show in late spring with 
 green leaf and varicolored flower. Little else was required 
 when the wild crab-apple trees brought out their wealth of 
 pink and white blossoms. The summer, short, hot, and usu- 
 ally dry, was succeeded by a fleeting radiance in the fall, 
 when through the down of cat-tails and milkweed riding the 
 wind, flashed the gold and brown of forest leaves and the 
 flaming masses of sumac. A bleak desolation followed close 
 upon the first cold blasts of autumn, with the river's course 
 through the valley marked by an overhanging layer of white 
 fog. For chill dreariness in winter there are few equals to a 
 treeless sweep of bogland as was much of this valley country 
 in years past. 
 
The Prophet's Country 195 
 
 Such was the unattractive country that in the early years 
 of the century past was the home and the hunting ground of 
 a band of Winnebago Indians who acknowledged the leader- 
 ship of Wa-bo-kies-shiek, known to trader and settler as 
 White Cloud, but more generally known to history as the 
 Winnebago prophet. On the credit side was the river with 
 its wealth of fish of wide variety. The swampland wastes, 
 forbidding as they appeared to human beings, were as 
 though fashioned especially for stopping places for migrating 
 bird life and for habitation by the smaller fur-bearers. Back 
 from the river were islands of rich alluvial land in which corn 
 grew miraculously, as well as pumpkins and squash that 
 trailed their vines between the corn-hills. 
 
 Midway in this part of its length the river took a short, 
 semicircular bend to the south, where on a low hill back 
 from the stream on its outer ( southern ) side, stood the home 
 village of White Cloud. Detached groups of wigwams occu- 
 pied the river bank above and below the main village and a 
 few miles down the stream stood Thunderbolt Hill, named 
 for a former Winnebago chief, and occupied by the burial 
 ground of the band. 
 
 White Cloud, who claimed that one of his parents was a 
 Sac and the other a Winnebago, held high repute in both 
 tribes as a medicine man and as one gifted with prophecy. 
 His influence had spread too to the villages of the Pottawat- 
 tomies to the eastward. It is quite possible that he viewed 
 himself as the heir to the influence of Tenskwatawa the 
 Shawnee prophet, and that he came to see in Black Hawk 
 the man to take up the crusade for Indian rights that Tecum- 
 
196 Sinnissippi 
 
 seh had begun. He is known to have had emissaries among 
 tribes as far away as the Missouri and Arkansas valleys. In 
 Black Hawk and his so-called "British band" he found the 
 only tribe with a sufficiently bitter grievance to be worked 
 upon and a sufficiently resolute leader for his purpose. He 
 may not have been all malevolent in purpose. It is known that 
 he met with Black Hawk and some Pottawattomie leaders at 
 Dixon's Ferry early in 1832 in an effort to arrange for a Sac 
 haven in the Kishwaukee valley, but, even in this he was 
 planning to bring the Sacs into a section forbidden to them 
 by the government. 
 
 This Indian seer was of impressive size and physical ap- 
 pearance and acquired added effect by a studied attention 
 to dress and ornament. He was about forty years old in 1832, 
 six feet in height, stout and athletic. "He had a large, broad 
 face, a short blunt nose, full eyes, a large mouth, thick lips, 
 a full head of shaggy hair and his general appearance indi- 
 cated deliberate self-contented savagery/' At the meeting 
 with the Pottawattomies at Dixon's Ferry he is described as 
 dressed in a white buckskin suit, fringed at the seams, wear- 
 ing a towering head-dress of the same material, capped with 
 a bunch of eagle feathers. Each ankle was girt with a row 
 of small sleigh bells which jingled at every step, while in his 
 nose and ears were ponderous gold rings that gave tinkling 
 emphasis to the points of his harangue. Many of his portraits 
 show him wearing a small moustache, quite unusual in an 
 Indian. 
 
 The contemporary accounts of his character cannot be ac- 
 cepted as unbiased. He is pictured as a fanatic in his hatred 
 of the whites, as devoid of humane sentiment, as of a reck- 
 
The Prophet's Country 197 
 
 less disposition that took pleasure in sowing the seeds of 
 disorder among his people. 
 
 The home town of the prophet was of no great size nor of 
 great antiquity. It was the usual collection of semi-permanent 
 wigwams scattered over the sides and top of the low hill. In 
 its vicinity were a number of groves, not numerous in this 
 part of the valley. The cornfields of the tribe were on the 
 prairie south of the town. A county historian says: 
 
 At each successive year they pulled up the old stalks and in the 
 hole thus made, they dropped seed for the next crop. The con- 
 tinued hilling of their cornfields made them very rough, and 
 these fields are easily identified from the hillocks thickly grown 
 with bluegrass, where they have been undisturbed. 
 
 Before beginning his adventurous journey in the spring 
 of 1832 Black Hawk had been the recipient of a flood of 
 equivocal advice from agents of the American and British 
 governments, to all of which he gave the most favorable in- 
 terpretation. The most potent influence, however, in his rash 
 enterprise, was contained in the constantly assuring words 
 of his prophet adviser. 
 
 Black Hawk was the antithesis of his Winnebago friend. 
 In 1832 he was about sixty-five years old, of but medium 
 height, and slight of build. 
 
 His somewhat pinched features exaggerated the prominence of 
 the cheek bones of his race, he had a wide mouth, inclined to be 
 somewhat open when at rest, a pronounced Roman nose, fine 
 "piercing" eyes, often beaming with a kindly and always with a 
 thoughtful expression, no eyebrows, a high full forehead, a head 
 well thrown back, with a pose of quiet dignity, and his hair 
 plucked out, with the exception of the scalp-lock, in which, on 
 ceremonial occasions was fastened a bunch of eagle feathers. 
 
198 Sinnissippi 
 
 The order of events is hard to follow in the Sac chiefs 
 Autobiography. His troubles in regard to white invasion of 
 his town were well advanced when he makes his first refer- 
 ence to White Cloud. 
 
 I then started by way of Rock River, to see the Prophet, be- 
 lieving that he was a man of great knowledge. When we met, I 
 explained to him everything as it was. He at once agreed that I 
 was right, and advised me never to give up our village, for the 
 whites to plow up the bones of our people. He said that if we 
 remained at our village, the whites would not trouble us, and 
 advised me to get Keokuk, and the party that consented to go 
 with him to the Iowa in the spring, to return and remain at our 
 village. 
 
 The spring of 1831 brought serious inroads upon the Sac 
 lands at the mouth of the Rock and threats from the Indian 
 chiefs of forcible reprisals. The settler's frantic appeals 
 brought a call from the Illinois governor for troops. In rela- 
 tion to this threat the Autobiography continues: 
 
 We now resumed some of our games and pastimes, having been 
 assured by the Prophet that we would not be removed. But in a 
 little while it was ascertained that a great war chief, General 
 Gaines, was on his way to Rock Island with a great number of 
 soldiers. I again called upon the prophet, who requested a little 
 time to see into the matter. Early next morning he came to me 
 and said he had been dreaming; that he saw nothing bad in this 
 great war chief, General Gaines, who was now near Rock River— 
 that his object was merely to frighten us from our village that the 
 white people might get our land for nothing. He assured us that 
 this great war chief dare not, and would not, hurt any of us, that 
 the Americans were at peace with the British, and when they 
 made peace, the British required, and the Americans agreed to 
 it, that they should never interrupt any nation of Indians that was 
 
The Prophet's Country 199 
 
 at peace, and that all we had to do to retain our village was to 
 refuse any and every offer that might be made by the war chief. 
 
 But this war chief of the Illinois exacted that the Sac and 
 Fox people should give up their lands and their villages and 
 move to the west of the Mississippi, and that under no cir- 
 cumstances should they return. Before giving an answer 
 Black Hawk again had council with his Winnebago adviser: 
 
 I consulted the prophet again. He said that he had been dream- 
 ing and the Great Spirit had directed that a woman, the daughter 
 of Mattatas, the old chief of the village, should take a stick in her 
 hand and go before the war chief, and tell him that she was the 
 daughter of Mattatas, and that he had always been the white 
 man's friend; that he had fought their battles, been wounded in 
 their service, and had always spoken well of them, and she had 
 never heard him say that he had sold their village. The whites are 
 numerous, and can take it from us if they choose, but she hoped 
 they would not be so unfriendly. If they were, she had one favor 
 to ask: she wished her people to be allowed to remain long enough 
 to gather the provisions growing in the fields; that she was a 
 woman and had worked hard to raise something to support her 
 children. And now, if we are driven from our village without 
 being allowed to save our corn, many of our little children must 
 perish with hunger. 
 
 The daughter of Mattatas did her assigned part fully and 
 well, but the white war chief replied that he was not there 
 to make treaties with women, and that the decision of the 
 chiefs would mean whether or not force would be used. 
 Keokuk and his Fox followers were already on the Iowa side 
 of the river and on the night following the general's ulti- 
 matum, the remainder of the tribe crossed with Black Hawk, 
 to the west of the river. The following winter was a hard, 
 cruel one for the villages on the Mississippi's west bank. 
 
200 Sinnissippi 
 
 There had been no opportunity to harvest a new corn crop, 
 and the usual Indian stoicism in the face of hunger was given 
 severe trial. An incident of this winter was a Fox raid of 
 revenge upon a camp of Menomonies near Prairie du Chien. 
 Black Hawk and the Prophet had conferred with the Potta- 
 wattomies to no purpose. White Cloud had promised that the 
 Sacs might plant and harvest a corn crop on his lands in the 
 summer to come. Neopope, Black Hawk's trusted lieutenant, 
 had been to Maiden, in upper Canada, to seek aid of the 
 British authorities. On his return he stopped at the village of 
 the prophet, and of that visit Black Hawk says: 
 
 He said that he had called at the prophet's lodge on his way 
 down and there had learned for the first time that we had left 
 our village. He informed me privately that the prophet was 
 anxious to see me, as he had much good news to tell me, and 
 that I would hear good news in the spring from our British 
 Father. The prophet requested me to give you all the particulars, 
 but I would much rather you would see him yourself and learn 
 all from him. But I will tell you that he has received expresses 
 from the British Father, who says that he is going to send us 
 guns, ammunition, provisions, and clothing early in the spring. 
 The vessels that bring them will come by way of Milwaukee. 
 The prophet has likewise received wampum and tobacco from 
 the different nations on the lakes, Ottawas, Chippewas, and 
 Pottawattomies, and as to the Winnebagos, he has them all at his 
 command. We are going to be happy once more. 
 
 The prophet seems to have convinced Neopope, even be- 
 fore he had his chief, that the time was ripe for a stroke for 
 Indian interests, that all of the Indian tribes between Lake 
 Michigan and the Mississippi were ready to take part, and 
 that they would have the cooperation of the English au- 
 
The Prophet's Country 201 
 
 thorities at Maiden. Neopope sent the following message 
 to his chief: 
 
 The prophet told me that all the tribes mentioned would fight 
 for us if necessary, and the British father will support us. If we 
 should be whipped, which is hardly possible, we will still be safe, 
 the prophet having received a friendly talk from the chief of 
 Wassacummico, at Selkirk's settlement, telling him that if we 
 were not happy in our own country, to let him know and he 
 would make us happy. He had received information from our 
 British father that we had been hardly treated by the Americans. 
 We must go and see the prophet. I will go first; you had better 
 remain and get as many of your people to join you as you can. 
 You know everything that we have done. We leave the matter for 
 you to arrange among your people as you please. I will return to 
 the prophet's village tomorrow. You can in the meantime make up 
 your mind as to the course you will take, and send word to the 
 prophet by me as he is anxious to assist us, and wishes to know 
 whether you will join us, and assist to make your people happy. 
 
 Black Hawk says that he spent the night, after having 
 received this message, in deep thought, and that before 
 the dawn he had determined to "follow the advice of the 
 prophet". He sent word to Neopope that he would get all 
 his braves together, explain everything he had heard to them 
 and recruit as many as he could from the different villages. 
 He found little success in the Fox villages controlled by 
 Keokuk, but his own band was enthusiastically with him. 
 Five-hundred mounted warriors crossed the Mississippi River 
 to Yellow Banks on April 6, and another hundred with the 
 women, children, and baggage embarked in canoes for the 
 voyage up the Rock. White Cloud met the band near Yellow 
 Banks and warned them that the Illinois militia was again 
 
202 Sinnissippi 
 
 on the move. To the assembled warriors he made a vigorous 
 speech in which he told them to 
 
 follow us and act like braves, and we have nothing to fear and 
 much to gain. The American war chief may come, but will not, 
 nor dare not, interfere with us so long as we act peaceably. We 
 are not ready to act otherwise. We must wait until we ascend 
 Rock River and receive our reinforcements, and we will then be 
 able to withstand any army. 
 
 It was a long hard march for the Indian horsemen through 
 a rainy April and through the quagmires that filled the valley, 
 and a hard pull for the canoes up a river swollen by the rains. 
 It was nearly three weeks before the prophet's village was 
 reached. Here Black Hawk experienced the first of a series of 
 disillusionments. White Cloud could induce but few of his 
 band to join him, the rest after listening silently to his call 
 to war scattered as silently to join other bands of their tribe 
 farther up the river. 
 
 The army of General Atkinson started from Rock Island 
 a month after the Indians had passed that place, with the 
 Illinois militia of General Whiteside in advance. After three 
 days of wallowing through mud and water, the advance 
 units arrived in bad humor at the deserted village of the 
 prophet which they promptly wiped from the face of the 
 earth by fire. By the time Black Hawk had reached the mouth 
 of the Kishwaukee River he had found that he could count 
 on no substantial help from the Winnebagos or the Potta- 
 wattomies and that the English father had no intention of 
 furnishing him with supplies. At this time he was undoubted- 
 ly willing to treat with the government officials and to return 
 
The Prophet's Country 203 
 
 across the Mississippi, but the fateful clash at Sycamore 
 Creek made such a settlement impossible. 
 
 Faith in White Cloud and his prophetic vision must have 
 dwindled quickly and badly. But it must be said for the 
 prophet that he shared fully in the fortunes of Black Hawk 
 to the end of the campaign. He was in command of one of 
 the raiding parties that spread terror through the Pecatonica 
 valley. He was with Black Hawk in the fight at Wisconsin 
 Heights and was one of the small party that sought refuge 
 with their chief in the Wisconsin Dells. With Black Hawk, 
 his eldest son, Nasseeuskuk, and Peopope he was delivered 
 over to General Joseph Street, the Indian agent, at Prairie du 
 Chien by the Winnebago chiefs, Choetar and One-eyed De- 
 korah. Black Hawk apparently expected a quick military 
 trial and summary execution. It was under these circum- 
 stances that he made his often-quoted speech to General 
 Street: 
 
 ... I saw my evil day at hand. The sun rose clear on us in the 
 morning; at night it sank in a dark cloud and looked like a ball 
 of fire. That was the last sun that shone on Black Hawk. He is 
 now a prisoner of the white man, but he can stand the torture. He 
 is not afraid of death. He is no coward. Black Hawk is an Indian. 
 He has done nothing of which an Indian need be ashamed. He 
 has fought the battles of his country against the white man who 
 came year after year to cheat his people and take away his lands. 
 You know the cause of our making war. They ought to be ashamed 
 of it. Black Hawk is satisfied. He will go to the world of spirits 
 contented. He has done his duty. His father will meet and reward 
 him. The white men do not scalp the heads, but they do worse— 
 they poison the heart. Farewell to my nation! Farewell to Black 
 Hawk. 
 
204 Sinnissippi 
 
 The party was turned over to the military authorities at 
 Fort Crawford and Black Hawk, White Cloud and Peopope 
 were held as hostages for the good behavior of the Sac tribe. 
 The three were sent to Jefferson Barracks at St. Louis in the 
 custody of Lieutenant Jefferson Davis. They were later trans- 
 ferred to Fortress Monroe in Virginia, from whence after 
 visits to Washington and various cities of the eastern seaboard 
 they were returned to Rock Island in the summer of 1833. 
 Black Hawk was given a tract of land in Iowa near the 
 mouth of the Des Moines River and placed under the control 
 of the Fox chief, Keokuk, his rival of other days. White 
 Cloud and Peopope were set at liberty to pursue their own 
 ways. The latter joined his old tribe and played an incon- 
 spicuous part in it thereafter. 
 
 The prophet may have returned to his old home in the 
 Rock valley, but did not stay. He joined another band in 
 Wisconsin and died soon thereafter. A portion of his former 
 band returned to their old haunts and under a new chief, 
 The Crane, fished the waters of the river and hunted over 
 the boglands of the valley for a few years when they too 
 quit the valley never to return. 
 
 The snows of three winters came to cool the ashes of 
 the prophet's village, and the weed-growth of two summers 
 to obliterate traces of its site, before white settlers began to 
 come into the river bottoms. The spring of 1835 saw a re- 
 occupation of the hills where had stood the Indian village and 
 the settlement was given the name of Prophetstown. The 
 founders of the village induced Daniel Webster to lend his 
 name as one of its proprietors, probably by a gift of an in- 
 terest in the project. His interest was later sold to a Phila- 
 
The Prophet's Country 205 
 
 delphia man, but the town still clings to the claim that the 
 great stateman was one of its founders. About this time a 
 new route, the Lewiston Trail, was opened between southern 
 Illinois and Galena. It crossed the Rock a little above 
 Prophetstown, at the mouth of Watkins' Slough, where a Mr. 
 McClean put travelers across the river by means of a ferry. 
 Half a dozen other villages were laid out on islands of high 
 ground along the river. Despite the long stretches of rapids 
 to furnish water power, none of these villages developed into 
 a town of consequence. Each started with its saw-mill and 
 grist-mill, becoming each a market center for a limited area. 
 Any future that they promised was halted when the river 
 ceased to be the avenue of travel and commerce and by the 
 end of the century they had definitely taken on the timeworn 
 aspect of the river town. 
 
 In due time this section of the valley became Whiteside 
 County, honoring the Illinois militia leader. Within the 
 county there were 120,000 acres of swamp and bogland, un- 
 suitable for tillage. These acres were turned over to the 
 county by the government and ditching machinery was put 
 to work cutting scores of deep waterways leading to the 
 river. In the end the quagmires were conquered and con- 
 verted to pasture and corn land. In 1841 a ballot was taken 
 throughout the northern counties of Illinois to determine 
 their wishes in regard to being included in the state of Wis- 
 consin which was about to be formed. It is said that every 
 county voted for union with the new state, but when Wis- 
 consin was finally admitted to statehood, the northern boun- 
 dary of Illinois remained as before. 
 
 The Black Hawk Trail, Illinois state highway number two, 
 
206 Sinnissippi 
 
 begins near the river s mouth opposite Milan and follows the 
 stream's windings through Sterling, Dixon, Grand Detour, 
 Oregon and Rockford to the state line in the southern edge 
 of Beloit. Through Whiteside county the road runs through 
 a low, flat country extending miles to the right and left, with 
 the low hills which limit the river's flood-plain off on the 
 horizon. Two miles off the main road and across an iron 
 bridge spanning the river, a neat little town of a thousand 
 people is comfortably at home on the low rise formerly 
 covered by the wigwams of the Winnebago village. This is 
 the Prophetstown of today. It is the big town to a consider- 
 able area around it. But neither Prophetstown nor any of the 
 villages up and down the stream is any more a river town, 
 even though the Rock still flows nearby. Their interest in flat- 
 boat traffic has been transferred to the automobile that fills 
 the highways. They are typical villages of this midwest world 
 of farms. An evidence that the windings of the river have 
 brought us at last definitely to the corn belt is seen in the 
 row on row of bright galvanized iron tanks in which corn 
 is stored by the government against a day of higher prices. 
 The land has lost none of its fruitfullness since the days when 
 the prophet invited his Sac neighbors to share in the planting 
 of his cornfields and in the harvest that was to follow. 
 
r^ 
 
 A Descendant of Saukanuk Warriors 
 
SA UKANUK 
 
 .T or the last score of miles of its length Rock River runs 
 roughly parallel to the Mississippi at a distance of scarcely 
 a half dozen miles. About three miles from its junction with 
 the greater river, it turns sharply to the right, to break through 
 the wall of the Mississippi bluffs. The tongue of land that 
 separates the two rivers is a continuation of the range of 
 bluffs that limits on the east the flood-plain of the Mississippi, 
 here comparatively narrow. The ridge ends abruptly in a 
 sheer cliff overlooking the last miles of the Rock. The valley 
 of the smaller river remains wide and flat, almost to the end, 
 narrowing on its right bank as it becomes wider on the left. 
 In this part of its course the current is divided by a score of 
 long islands forming a labyrinth of devious channels. 
 
 One who in the summer of any year around 1780, stood 
 at a vantage point on this narrow wooded ridge, would be 
 able to see through breaks in the forest two Indian villages 
 on the lands below. On a side hill to the southwest sloping 
 down to the waters of the Rock stretches the groups of lodges 
 that make up the principal village of the Sac nation, while 
 on the bank of the Mississippi River, to the north, opposite 
 a large island, stands the smaller village of the Fox tribes- 
 men. 
 
 The beginning of these villages dates from nearly half a 
 century before, when the vanguard of the two tribes reached 
 the junction of the two rivers and saw in its protected location 
 
 207 
 
Saukanuk 209 
 
 a place of settlement. In building their villages they vowed 
 occupancy until the end of time. Other villages had been 
 raised with similar vows in the past, but Indian memory of 
 such events is short and uncertain. The Sacs chose their town 
 site near the Rock and a short distance downstream from the 
 high bluff which was to be the landmark of its location. 
 They called their town Saukanuk. Across the tongue of land, 
 facing the greater river the Foxes built their village, less 
 large because their warriors were fewer in number and their 
 women and children less. Doubtless the village was given a 
 name but it has not come down to us. 
 
 Rome was not built in a day, nor was Saukanuk, though 
 coming nearer to it. Captain Jonathan Carver visited a Sac 
 village on the Wisconsin River in 1766, a village of ninety 
 lodges, the largest and best built Indian village he had ever 
 seen. A visitor to the site twenty years later found no signs 
 of recent occupancy. Lieutenant Zebulon Pike in 1805 found 
 the Sac and Fox villages at Rock Island the principal towns 
 of the tribes. He found two smaller Sac villages on the Mis- 
 sissippi below Rock Island and two Fox villages in the lead 
 country of Wisconsin. Sometime between the two dates given 
 Saukanuk had gained primacy among Sac towns, and had 
 reached the size and taken on a permanence rarely equalled 
 in towns of the northern hunter tribes. After a half century 
 of existence Saukanuk is now a town of somewhat more than 
 a hundred lodges, with an average of three fires and six 
 families to each lodge. Indian families of these tribes are not 
 large, and the family at any one time will scarcely average 
 five individuals. The population is thus something over 
 three thousand, a metropolis as went Indian towns of that 
 
210 Sinnissippi 
 
 time and section. Its hundred lodges are grouped without 
 order on the side hill. A location is chosen for each at a place 
 where neither cut nor fill of the land is needed. The direction 
 in which the lodge is faced is subject to the same element of 
 chance. A fortunate grouping of saplings may well be the 
 determining factor in the location of the lodge. It was not 
 infrequent for Indian towns to be built as primitive fortresses 
 with close built wigwams surrounded by palisaded walls and 
 water-filled ditches. But Saukanuk on account of its location 
 and the reputation of its warriors, has no use for such pro- 
 tection. There is ample space for expansion of the town site 
 and no restrictions upon choice of location of new lodges. 
 From these conditions there results a far-flung disarray of 
 lodges, devoid of plan, deeply worn paths between the wig- 
 wams taking the place of streets. It would be a maze indeed 
 except for the wide spacing of the buildings. 
 
 The Indian "long house" is ordinarily associated with the 
 tribes of the Iroquois, but except for their lesser length, lodges 
 of similar design and structure were built in every village 
 of permanence belonging to any of the northern forest tribes. 
 The solid structure of the Saukanuk lodges was of this plan. 
 
 The raising of new lodges is communal work, a task too 
 difficult for the hands of the women and one of the few 
 that are not below the dignity of a hunter-warrior. In the 
 clear space needed, sapling poles are set in the ground to 
 stand five paces high in two rows of ten to twelve paces 
 length and five paces apart. The saplings are bent until their 
 tops meet and are lashed togedier to form the beginning of 
 a trellis. Along the outer sides other saplings are lashed with 
 even spacing. The lashings are of the inner layers of bark 
 
Saukanuk 211 
 
 and of twining roots. Over the frame thus prepared is fastened 
 an outer covering of bark of the oak or the elm. Openings left 
 at the ridge furnish some light, and provide for the escape of 
 smoke. Doorways at each end are covered with a suspended 
 slab of bark. At each end extensions of the roof and sides 
 provide a space for the storage of wood for the fires and 
 other bulky supplies. The frame completed and covered, two 
 shelves of sapling poles are run the length of each side of 
 the lodge. The lower one of four feet width is of a height 
 to serve as a bed and a seat. The upper shelf, less wide, is 
 intended primarily for the storage of the household's more 
 prized possessions. Laterally the lodge is divided by partial 
 partitions like the stalls in a stable. 
 
 The lodge is now ready for its occupants and soon the 
 center line of the lodge floor is taken up with fires, one for 
 each of the sections into which the lodge has been divided. 
 Three fires to an ordinary lodge and six families, thirty per- 
 sons perhaps, with at least one wolfish dog to each family, 
 with a right to tenancy not to be questioned. The wooden 
 beds are covered with the skins of bear and deer and the 
 white man's blankets. The ground around the fires is covered 
 with matting and the matting, by day, by family groups in 
 lying and squatting postures. Over these fires the family 
 meals are prepared and here on the matting they are served 
 and eaten. In the warmer seasons the family sleeps on the 
 shelf bed, but in the winter they are grouped, fully dressed, 
 in huddles on the matting beside the fires, with the dogs con- 
 tributing their body heat to that of the family group. The 
 bites of fleas and their like are too familiar to these sleepers 
 to disturb at all their slumbers or their dreams. The yellow 
 
212 Sinnissippi 
 
 of stripped sapling and rush matting which in the beginning 
 colors the lodge interior is changed soon to brown and then 
 to black with the accumulated deposits from wood smoke. 
 
 The village is made up of a hundred or more units like 
 the one pictured. There is no building for community pur- 
 poses. Public meetings are held in the open air, smaller ones 
 in the lodges of the chieftains. 
 
 On the flat lands along Rock River above the town are 
 the cornfields of the tribe. These cultivated fields run for a 
 full three miles to the north with varying width, a thousand 
 acres perhaps. Adjacent to them are the fields of the Fox 
 village. The agriculture is of the Stone Age. The fields are 
 the charge of the women, working with the most primitive 
 tools. But corn needs only to be planted in the black 
 bottomland and kept from suffocation by weeds. With a 
 well moistened ground and a hot daily sun, the overnight 
 growth can be measured. In the autumn the heavy ears hang 
 ready for gathering, while between the cornhills the ground 
 is strewn with yellow pumpkin and green squash. Patches 
 of beans complete the farm scene. In such surroundings the 
 shadow of famine can be kept a long way off. 
 
 On the wooded ridge north of the town and overlooking 
 the corn lands is laid out the well-tenanted cemetery of the 
 Sac nation. It shows the care and attention given to all their 
 buriel places by the Algonquin people. An early explorer 
 writes thus of a burial ground of a tribe kindred to the Sacs: 
 
 The dead are better cared for than the living. Over each grave 
 a flat tablet of wood was supported by posts and at one end an 
 upright tablet, carved with an intended representation of the 
 features of the deceased. If a chief, the head was adorned by a 
 
Saukanuk 213 
 
 plume, if a warrior, there were figures near it of a shield, a lance, 
 a war club, and a bow with arrows; if a boy a small bow with one 
 arrow, and if a woman or a girl, of a kettle, an earthen pot, a 
 wooden spoon and a paddle. The whole was decorated with red 
 and yellow paint and beneath slept the departed, wrapped in a 
 robe of skins, his earthly treasures about him for use in the land 
 of souls. 
 
 It was of the cemetery of another kindred tribe, the Chip- 
 pewas, that Longfellow wrote: 
 
 And they painted on the grave-posts 
 Of the graves, yet unf or gotten 
 Each his own ancestral totem, 
 Each the symbol of his household; 
 Figures of the bear and reindeer 
 Of the turtle, crane and beaver, 
 Each inverted as a token 
 That the owner was departed, 
 That the chief who bore the symbol 
 Lay beneath in dust and ashes. 
 
 Food and a campfire were kept at the new-made grave 
 for the four-day journey of the departed to the land of the 
 dead, which is thus no great distance away. Hunters of the 
 village have passed it closely by, sensing its near presence, 
 though none could say he had seen it. It is a place of continu- 
 ous feasting with dancing to the sound of the rattle and 
 drum, incident to the joyous welcome of friends newly ar- 
 rived from the land of the living. Compare if you wish this 
 savage Paradise to that of the great Franklin, where the 
 virtuous ones from our earth had "nothing to do but to talk 
 with one another, except now and then a little singing and 
 drinking of aqua vitae". 
 
214 Sinnissippi 
 
 The dwellers in Saukanuk are all of the Sac tribe, except 
 where a man of that people has brought to his lodge a wife 
 from the Foxes or the Winnebagos. They all speak the same 
 Algonquin tongue. But for a seemingly primitive community 
 it has a complex social structure. Like all northeastern tribes, 
 this one is divided into groups which for want of a better 
 term are called clans. Each has its emblem, the figure of a 
 bird, beast or reptile and each is called by the name of the 
 animal which it thus bears as its device. These groups are 
 six to eight in number, variable in different tribes. The mem- 
 bers of each clan are more or less related by blood, and mar- 
 riage within the clan is forbidden. It thus results that in 
 every family the husband and the wife are of different clans. 
 All children are of the clan of their mother, on the certainty 
 that they are of her blood. The head of the household may 
 wear the turtle totem of his clan tatooed upon his breast, but 
 the wife and children will give united allegiance to the clan 
 of the otter or the beaver. 
 
 In a manner every head of a family is on an equality with 
 every other. The tribe is a democracy in which all have a 
 voice and all a vote. There are chiefs of varying grades and 
 quality. The sachem or civil chief orders the general conduct 
 of the tribe and of the town. He never sets himself against 
 the popular will, which is the sovereign power. His province 
 is to advise, not to dictate. There are no laws for his guidance, 
 and no means of enforcing his will. Ancient customs and pre- 
 vailing usage are the standards of conduct. The sachem's 
 position is hereditary through the female line, but he can 
 be easily deposed for another of his blood, for cause. War 
 chiefs rank high in time of conflict and in the field. They are 
 
Saukanuk 215 
 
 self made leaders, who must maintain their leadership or be 
 set aside. They must avoid serious losses to their followers 
 or they will soon be without them. There are minor chiefs 
 for various functions, the medicine man probably the most 
 important. 
 
 The most potent influence in every individual's conduct is 
 his personal guiding spirit or manito, which is acquired in 
 the years of adolescence. No act of importance will be taken 
 without first invoking the advice and guidance of these 
 spirits. In the midst of silent solitude their help is asked to 
 be given directly or through the agency of dreams. 
 
 Such was the community of Saukanuk and its surroundings 
 at the time when a son was born to the wife of Pyesa, the 
 war chief. Indians speak seldom of their women and more 
 seldom still do they speak of them by name, so the mother 
 of the child must remain nameless. There was just a day or 
 two when her work in the field and lodge must be taken over 
 by another or remain undone. But if the birth was regarded 
 casually, there was no lack of warm affection for the young 
 warrior, nor of tender care of his young body. It is not a 
 fecund race and the little ones that come are cherished care- 
 fully. This boy is primarily his mother's child but the father 
 in the semi-privacy of the lodge is not found lacking in the 
 pride of paternity. The position of wife of a war chief car- 
 ries with it no dispensation from women's work. A cradle 
 has been carried over from a previous birth or a new one 
 is waiting the new-born. The cradle and child are slung on 
 the back of the mother and go where she goes. The cradle 
 is built to fix the spine of the child while it is still highly 
 flexible, on a firm flat surface. The child is thus deprived of 
 
216 Sinnissippi 
 
 movement. It is bound down and its head protected by a 
 hoop. The cradle is well calculated to give the child those 
 lessons in endurance so necessary in its later hunter and 
 warrior life. The cradle may be hung upon a tree trunk or 
 from a wall-peg in the lodge. In due time the child is released 
 from the strappings of the cradle and for a time follows his 
 mother with uncertain steps, while she works in the fields 
 or about the lodge. 
 
 The mind of the mother in the meantime is weighing a 
 choice among the aged men of her kindred for one who shall 
 be asked to put a name upon the young son. The choice is 
 important, and the responsibility placed upon the chosen one 
 is heavy and not to be avoided. The aged one will retire 
 into solitude and there invoke the guidance of his manito 
 in the choice of a name. When the choice is made it will have 
 been suggested by some manifestation of nature or by the 
 association of some animate object. The name may be the 
 Algonquin rendering of Passing Cloud or West Wind, of 
 Jumping Fish or Blue Heron. A family gathering is called 
 for a feast, and a ceremonial announcement and bestowal of 
 the name. Pyesa's son is given the name Makatawimeshekaka. 
 It will not soon be heard again nor often repeated. A name 
 thus bestowed is of such significance that it will never be 
 pronounced needlessly, lest the spirits that influenced its 
 selection be displeased. When the boy is old enough to under- 
 stand, his name will be disclosed to him by his mother. In 
 the meantime she has spoken of him and to him by a pet 
 name, perhaps calling him "my little owlet" as did Nokomis 
 to Hiawatha, the offspring of her daughter Wenonah and the 
 West Wind. From this childhood name or from other cir- 
 
Saukanuk 217 
 
 cumstance he will acquire a sobriquet by which he will be 
 called commonly through life. When asked his name he will 
 give the one by which he is generally known. This duality 
 of names has caused much confusion in establishing Indian 
 identity. 
 
 Meanwhile Pyesa, the war-chief, is observing his son for 
 the time when he will give over clinging to his mother's skirt 
 and will join in the play of the village children. Now is come 
 the time to take over his instruction to fit him for a man's 
 part in the life of the town and of the tribe. He is taken for 
 walks in the neighboring woods and told the names and the 
 habits of the wild life and is shown his father's skill in their 
 pursuit. He is called upon for admiring approval of exhibi- 
 tions of cunning by the fox, of strength and agility by the 
 forest cat, and of the perseverance of the hungry wolf. He is 
 shown where he may look with hope of finding trees of 
 purple plums and festoons of grapevines with their fruit. He 
 is shown where grow the blackberry and the raspberry, and 
 where nuts will be found in the autumn. There are tempting 
 looking fruits such as the nightshade that he must shun. In 
 walks along the river and in canoe rides along its channels he 
 learns the ways of fishes and the manner of their capture. 
 Swimming he learns early in the Rock and soon is among the 
 most fearless in breasting the drive of the waters toward the 
 Mississippi and the sea. 
 
 He sees something of the making of traps for birds and 
 small animals and of their use. He is now furnished a bow 
 adapted to his strength, and arrows, and is encouraged to 
 fare into the woods with others of his years. A feigned im- 
 portance is given to these hunting parties by the elders. When 
 
218 Sinnissippi 
 
 Pyesa's son brings home the first small animal that he has 
 taken, be it a baby rabbit, a gopher, or a robin, there is simu- 
 lated excitement, but real interest, in the lodge of the chief. 
 The boy's mother makes of the game, however small, a stew, 
 or she mixes it into a cornmeal stirabout. The father invites 
 a company of his close friends to the feast. There is much 
 feigned enthusiasm for the dish and extravagant compliments 
 for the prowess of the young hunter. 
 
 As the boy grows older he is given some small part in the 
 building of new lodges and in the less skilled part of canoe 
 construction. The Sacs were once builders of canoes of birch- 
 bark, but this material is not available in the Illinois country, 
 and canoes must now be hewn out of the wood at hand. For 
 smaller and lighter craft the trunk of the basswood is used, 
 while for heavier and more durable ones black walnut is 
 chosen. Trees are cut down and the trunks cut to suitable 
 length by the use of fire and scrapers. By the same crude 
 methods the trunk is shaped into a graceful dugout. Barring 
 accident a dugout of walnut has a life expectancy as long as 
 the man who makes it. 
 
 The boy is now of the years when he is expected to sit in 
 the outer row of listeners at meetings called by the town's 
 chiefs. With the expectancy that he will be himself one day 
 a chief and will address the meetings of his people, he is all 
 attention, not only to the subject matter of the discourses, 
 but to the manner of delivery of the speaker. Oratory is a 
 necessary accomplishment of a chief, cultivated from his 
 youth. He acquires an accurate ear for the rhythm of his 
 sentences, aided as he is by a language of long and stately 
 words and of multiform inflexions. The talks follow an un- 
 
Saukanuk 219 
 
 varying line. There are but few themes appropriate for the 
 speech of chiefs and warriors. They all have to do with war, 
 with public policy, hunting, personal strength and courage, 
 the benefits of abstinence, and of endurance under suffering. 
 Their thoughts and discourses are of the past and its glories. 
 At this time there begins to appear in their speeches a fore- 
 boding awareness of encroachment by the white man's 
 superior civilization and the appalling sense that nothing 
 will avail against the menace. They know more of the white 
 man's warfare than of his civil life. There are old warriors in 
 Saukanuk who were in Montcalm's armies in his struggle 
 with the English. There are more who were with Pontiac 
 when in 1763 he cleared the Great Lakes country of British 
 arms. The Sac and Fox tribes are credited with the dire 
 vengeance that was visited upon the Illinois nation after the 
 murder by one of its tribesmen of the great Ottawa leader in 
 1769 at Cahokia in the Illinois bottoms. More recently, in 
 1780, they joined in a British attack upon the Spanish town 
 of St. Louis and American garrison at Cahokia. They were 
 the principal sufferers from American retaliation when later 
 in the same year their down-river towns were attacked and 
 burned. 
 
 Better than the artificial language of the public address 
 the boy likes the jovial banter that passes for conversation in 
 the lodges. Best of all is he pleased when he finds himself on 
 a winter's night among the lodge audience of one of the tribal 
 story-tellers. These are men of good memory and fluent 
 speech, speaking a language midway between that of the 
 orators and the tribal vernacular. They preserve the oral 
 chronicles of the tribe and collect all floating fables and tales. 
 
220 Sinnissippi 
 
 Metamorphosis or transformation is the background for all 
 of their stories, in which is shown an ingenuity for the pur- 
 poses of amusement and instruction that rivals the skill of 
 Ovid himself. Similarly omnipresent is the magic canoe 
 capable of covering its hundreds of miles in as many minutes, 
 and moccasins that devour space like seven-league boots. 
 There is a charm in certain words, without meaning in the 
 language. In these stories animals are people in other forms, 
 who reason and speak their thoughts like men. In this 
 field they anticipate the bedtime story by centuries. Stories 
 involving mystery and terror are circumstantially told to 
 raise the hair of the listeners, stories of cannibalistic giants 
 who devour men, women and children, stories of ghosts, of 
 fairies and of mermen. Any of these may be introduced as the 
 agent of retributive justice. Most often in these tales is heard 
 the name of Manabozho, the king of all animal kings. Appear- 
 ing most often as the Great Hare there is no limit to his 
 transformations nor of his powers for good or evil. 
 
 Scarcely less fascinating than these stories to the boy's 
 mind are the enactments of bold adventure by the village 
 masters of pantomime. All Indians practice the art more or 
 less and all are adepts in its interpretation. The chief, returned 
 from a foray upon an enemy, will hold his audience spell- 
 bound as he depicts the incidents of the expedition. He enacts 
 the farewell to the home village, the long tedious march, the 
 swimming of rivers, the killing of game. Tension increases 
 as he depicts the discovery from afar of an enemy camp. 
 Then are enacted in turn the hasty run, the stealthy step by 
 step approach and the crawl to a point of vantage. He signals 
 his followers to advance and he points out the prey. He 
 
Saukanuk 221 
 
 cautions patience while food is being prepared in the camp 
 and until arms are laid aside. Then follows the rush, the 
 despatch of the enemy and the taking of scalps. Relaxation 
 comes to the company only when the victors are shown eating 
 the food of the vanquished. 
 
 Always a great event in the boy's envious eyes is the feast 
 that his father periodically gives to his fellow tribal chief- 
 tains. The main dish is invariably a mess of pounded corn, 
 wherein are boiled without salt of other seasoning, whatever 
 scraps of meat and fish that are at hand. Each guest, carrying 
 his wooden dish and spoon, thrusts out his long arm to be 
 served by the host, who sits beside his kettle and, out of cour- 
 tesy, takes no share of the food himself. The dishes are re- 
 turned as long as there is anything left in the kettle, and no 
 guest may, without grave offense, refuse his full share. 
 
 The kettle empty, pipes are brought forth and filled. To- 
 bacco is scarce and precious but there need be no self-denial 
 in smoking. The content of kinnikinnick, the substitute, 
 varies in different localities but here in the Rock valley it is 
 made up of sumac leaves, gathered at the right time in 
 autumn and the inner bark of the willow. It is the duty of the 
 women of the lodge to light and to keep alight the fires in 
 the pipes of their men, with coals from the lodge fires. The 
 guests, heavy with food and soothed by smoke, are more 
 likely to doze in sleep than to indulge in conversation. There 
 is a certain ceremonial air to the gathering that is maintained 
 to the leave taking. 
 
 Boyhood is merging into manhood for Pyesa's son, with a 
 changing outlook and changing aspirations. The chief takes 
 his son aside and tells him that the time has come for him 
 
222 Sinnissippi 
 
 to "talk to his heart" and then to go out and find his manito. 
 The boy completes his arrangements thoughtfully. A few 
 mornings later he steps into his father's light canoe, taking 
 with him only his ax and his basswood bowl. He drifts down 
 the Rock between its islands until on the left bank he comes 
 to the foot of a bluff. Here he hauls up his canoe, fills his 
 bowl with water and climbs to the top of the hill. He cuts 
 brushwood for a fire which he keeps blazing day and night. 
 He goes without food and keeps awake by singing and calling 
 upon his manito. Each morning he washes himself with water 
 from his bowl and dries himself by the fire. On the third 
 night he falls asleep in spite of himself and his guardian spirit 
 comes to him in his dreams. Everything is clear. He is to be a 
 hunter and a warrior. He may have wished to be a medicine 
 man, but that was denied to him by his guiding spirit. As to 
 all others, this comes to him in the guise of an animal. 
 Whether it comes to him in the form of bird, beast, or reptile, 
 he will speak its name to nobody, not even his father. He 
 may, however, try his skill in carving its likeness in wood and 
 he will at once obtain a feather or bone or a wisp of hair 
 of the animal of his dream. These contained in a small bag 
 are thereafter his "medicine" and will be carried upon his 
 person throughout life. He will call upon it for aid in every 
 enterprise upon which he starts, whether in hunting, war or 
 negotiation. It will influence every act of his life. 
 
 The war-chiefs son is now fifteen and a meeting of the 
 towns' council speaks of war. There are two principal causes 
 of war, the killing of tribesmen and trespass upon the tribe's 
 hunting grounds. The former may be satisfied by the payment 
 of goods to the family of the dead man, but invasion of the 
 
Saukanuk 223 
 
 hunting grounds is not so easily settled. In the scheme of 
 Indian economy it is necessary for the tribe to have vast 
 areas of hunting fields that can be successively hunted over 
 and left for the multiplication of game. Trespass is a menace 
 to the life of the tribe. 
 
 The Osages of the lower Missouri are accused on both 
 counts. A war-chief from down the river is recruiting a band 
 for vengeance and for protection of the tribal lands. Any 
 warrior may volunteer to go and anyone can stay at home 
 without question of his motives. Pyesa joins the war party 
 and takes his son with him. In the ensuing battle the young 
 man kills and scalps his first victim and returning to Saukanuk 
 is permitted to put an eagle feather in his headdress and to 
 paint the blood-red hand upon the inside of his blanket. 
 He is the warrior son of a war-chief. At the next dance of the 
 warriors of the tribe he takes his turn in the circle to the 
 pride of his father and the envy of his less fortunate boyhood 
 friends. 
 
 Following the planting of the corn the next spring he waits 
 the feast and dance of the crane when the marriageable 
 maidens of the village are shown in their finest dress, and the 
 young men choose their brides. He looks with favor upon the 
 maiden Singing Bird and so informs his mother. She speaks 
 to the girl's mother, and the customary arrangements are 
 made. Upon an appointed night he steals into the lodge of the 
 girl's family. With his flint and steel he locates her where 
 she sleeps and awakens her. He holds the light near his face 
 that she may see him well and then he extends it close to 
 hers. She blows out the light and he knows that he is accepted 
 and will move with his possessions into the lodge the next 
 
224 Sinnissippi 
 
 morning. If the light had remained unextinguished he must 
 try again or try elsewhere. It is well understood that the 
 marriage can be as easily put aside as it is taken on, but this 
 union is to be a lasting one. 
 
 The years roll over Saukanuk with a little-broken routine. 
 Autumn and the early months of winter are the times for 
 hunting the distant forests and gathering the skins and furs 
 with which to buy the trader's supplies. The end of winter 
 finds all back in the home lodges. Sugar-making will fill the 
 days of early spring. Then follows the preparation of the 
 corn fields by the women and the planting of the crop. The 
 young men are now out on the spring hunt for meat to dry 
 and cure. A band of older men with their families go to spend 
 the warm season in the lead-workings to the north. For the 
 hunters and warriors the summer is a time for play and for 
 trying out their skill and luck at games and races, in which 
 personal possessions may be doubled or lost within the hour. 
 The women are working the fields, gathering the produce, 
 curing meat, and preparing food, but for them, too, summer 
 is a time of comparative ease. 
 
 Hardly a year passes without the foray of a war party into 
 the country of the Osages, Cherokees or Sioux. Pyesa can be 
 counted on to head these bands and his son to be with him. 
 They are adepts at the swift unheralded march, the ambush 
 and the daybreak onslaught upon enemy villages. But one 
 fateful day Pyesa's manito fails him and the lance of a 
 Cherokee warrior cuts through the blood supply of his thigh. 
 Dying, he hands over the "medicine" of his chieftainship to 
 his son, who is now a man full-grown. 
 
 The young war-chief returns to Saukanuk and mourns his 
 
Saukanuk 225 
 
 father for five years during which time he takes part in no 
 war parties. He is however cherishing the idea of again 
 humbling the Osage nation and will be satisfied with noth- 
 ing short of extermination of the Cherokees. He gathers a 
 war party of Sacs, Foxes, and Iowas and strikes quickly into 
 the Meramec country below the Missouri River. He scatters 
 the Osages to the four winds but finds that the Cherokees 
 have gone from their old haunts, leaving only deserted vil- 
 lages. The few found are unworthy of his vengeance. 
 
 The year is 1804 when Quashquame, Pashepaho, Outche- 
 qua and Hashebarhiqua, all minor chiefs, are sent by the 
 tribal council to see the American Father at St. Louis to 
 bargain for the life of a tribesman who has killed an Ameri- 
 can. They are back in due time to report that negotiations for 
 the freedom of their erring brother had proceeded favorably, 
 but that while they were still in progress the prisoner was re- 
 ported shot to death while trying to escape from his captors. 
 They are shamefully aware, but loathe to report that during 
 the negotiations they have in some manner sold all of the 
 tribal lands east of the Mississippi river, including the home 
 townsite, for a song. This they sang themselves to the accom- 
 paniment of flowing liquor between spells of maudlin self 
 pity and of frenzied rage. There never was anything jovial 
 about an Indian in his cups. The St. Louis governor who was 
 later to have the highest place in the government on account 
 of his handling of the Indians, knew well the potent influence 
 of rum. He could well subscribe to the fictional trader 
 McDole's formula for success. 
 
 A thousand Opportunities present 
 To take Advantage of their Ignorance. 
 
226 Sinnissippi 
 
 But the great Engine I employ is Rum 
 
 More powerful made by certain strengthening Drugs. 
 
 This I distribute with a lib'ral hand 
 
 Urge them to drink till they grow mad and valiant; 
 
 Which makes them think me generous and just 
 
 And gives full Scope to practice all my Art. 
 
 I then begin my trade with watered Rum 
 
 The cooling draughts well suit their scorching Throats 
 
 The Fur and Peltry come in quick Return: 
 
 My scales are honest, but so well contrived 
 
 That one small Slip will turn Three Pounds to One. 
 
 Which they, poor silly Souls! ignorant of Weights 
 
 And Rules of Balancing, do not perceive. 
 
 But here they come; you'll see how I proceed. 
 
 Jack, is the Rum prepared as I commanded? 
 
 There is consternation in Saukanuk over the sale of the 
 tribal lands and universal repudiation of the authority of its 
 negotiators, but as years pass and there is no sign of an 
 eviction the transaction is forgotten. But the sale is made 
 very much of record in St. Louis and regarded as a stroke 
 of good business. 
 
 Up to this time Saukanuk has seen few white men. At each 
 return from the winter's hunt there are found at the village, 
 awaiting the hunters, a small group of traders, Canadian and 
 English, ready to exchange their guns, powder, blankets, 
 utensils and ornaments for the skins and furs brought in. The 
 end of the trading is marked by gifts of kegs of rum to the 
 village and the traders depart in the midst of an alcoholic 
 celebration. Now there are settlers moving into the tribal 
 lands to the south and there is a report of a military post 
 being built a short distance downstream on the great river. 
 
Saukanuk 227 
 
 It is explained that the post is to be a supply point for the 
 Indians and this is thought good news. The new settlements 
 have each their traders who are always ready to exchange 
 their goods, preferably rum and whiskey, for the Indian's furs. 
 There are rumors of coming war in the air, war between the 
 Americans and the English. In such a war the Indian must 
 fight with the side with which he can trade and get supplies. 
 The chiefs of the village know that they are under American 
 rule and go down to Fort Madison to make arrangements 
 for the supplies necessary for their winter hunt. Yes, the 
 American Father has the goods that are needed, but he must 
 have payment in advance, preferably in the fur of the beaver. 
 This is an unheard-of situation, and there is depair in Sauka- 
 nuk until there arrive boat-loads of British goods sent by 
 Colonel Robert Dickson from Green Bay by his agent, La 
 Gutrie. With them comes word that the British and Ameri- 
 cans are really at war, and that the war-chief of the Sac 
 and Fox nation is asked to bring his warriors to Green Bay 
 to aid their British Father. At Green Bay the Sac war-chief 
 is addressed as a general and placed at the head of the 
 confederated tribes of that section. They join Tecumseh's 
 forces before Detroit, and take part in the battles at French- 
 town and Fort Meigs. Defeat at Thames River with the death 
 of Tecumseh sends the Sac band back to Saukanuk. For 
 another year there is war along the Mississippi, with Prairie 
 du Chien the center of conflict. It is different war than the 
 inter-tribal struggles of earlier times, but nothing happens to 
 lessen the Indian's confidence in his manner of making war. 
 The war ends, inconclusively for the white contestants, but 
 not for the Indian tribes who have aided the British cause. 
 
228 Sinnissippi 
 
 The various tribal chieftains are summoned to St. Louis 
 to make what peace they can with the American Fathers. 
 The war-chief of the Sacs goes with the civil chiefs who try 
 to explain the plight of the tribe between the two combatants. 
 In signing a peace, they ratify, as they later discover, the sale 
 of their homelands made a dozen years before by Quash- 
 quame. 
 
 The years of war have brought a Fox chieftain Keokuk 
 into a position of influence in the confederated tribes. Never 
 a warrior, he is the advocate of peace with the Americans 
 at their own terms. A fort is built on the island in the Missis- 
 sippi opposite the Fox village, and a house for an Indian 
 agent. Settlers upon the land are coming closer to Saukanuk 
 and its cultivated fields. Disputes and personal conflicts be- 
 tween settler and Indian become more common and more 
 serious. Within the Indian villages there is a cleavage be- 
 tween the followers of the Sac and the Fox chiefs, not on 
 tribal lines primarily but upon policies' in relation to the 
 pressure upon them by the settlers. The so-called "British 
 band" of the Sac chieftain is a definite unit of opposition 
 to the abandonment of their lands and villages. They make 
 periodic pilgrimages over the "Sac trail" from Saukanuk to 
 Maiden in upper Canada, where the British authorities give 
 them some supplies and some unwarranted words of encour- 
 agement. They have great faith in the word of the British 
 Father. 
 
 In 1825 the American Father called the tribes of the upper 
 Mississippi valley to meet at Prairie du Chien, there to settle 
 all differences between them, and to establish boundaries 
 
Saukanuk 229 
 
 between their hunting grounds. Schoolcraft, the Indian agent, 
 came from Mackinac to lend his aid and he writes at length 
 about the council which lasted the greater part of a month. 
 Three tribes of the Sioux nation were there— the Dakotas, the 
 Winnebagos and the Iowas— each hostile to the others, and 
 the latter two allied to their Algonquin neighbors. Of these 
 latter people, there were bands of Chippewas, Menomonies, 
 Ottawas and Pottawattomies. No other tribe, says the Indian 
 agent, attracted as intense an interest as did the Sacs and 
 Foxes, who came accompanied by their allies of the Iowa 
 tribe. He writes of them: 
 
 These tribes were encamped on the island or opposite coast (of 
 the Mississippi). They came to the treaty ground, armed and 
 dressed as a war party. They were all armed with spears, clubs, 
 guns and knives. Many of the warriors had a tuft of red horse hair 
 tied at their elbows, and wore a necklace of grizzly bears' claws. 
 Their head dress consisted of red dyed horse hair, tied in such a 
 manner to the scalp lock as to present the shape of the decoration 
 of a Roman helmet. The rest of the head was completely shaved 
 and painted. A long iron shod lance was carried in the hand. A 
 species of baldrick (girdle) supported part of their arms. They 
 were, indeed, nearly nude and painted. Often the print of the 
 hand, in white clay, marked the back or shoulders. They bore 
 flags of feathers. They beat drums. They uttered yells at definite 
 points. They landed in compact ranks. They looked the very 
 spirit of defiance. Their leader stood as a prince, majestic and 
 frowning. The wild native pride of man, in the savage state, 
 flushed by success of war and confident of the strength of his arm, 
 was never so fully depicted to my eyes. And the forest tribes of 
 the continent may be challenged to have ever presented a spec- 
 tacle of bold daring and martial prowess, equal to their landing. 
 Their martial bearing and high tone and whole behavior during 
 
230 Sinnissippi 
 
 their stay, in and out of council, was impressive and demonstrated, 
 in an eminent degree, to what a high pitch of physical and moral 
 courage, bravery and success in war may lead a savage people. 
 
 This display of martial spirit would have its due effect 
 upon neighboring Indian tribes, but upon the yet low and 
 distant tide of adventurous settlers that was flowing up from 
 the southern settlements, it was as powerless as King Canute's 
 commands to the advancing sea. 
 
 The years are accumulating upon the head of the war- 
 chief and he is no longer young. To the troubles that have 
 come upon his town and people are added griefs of a per- 
 sonal nature. At about the same time his first-born son and 
 his youngest daughter are taken by death. He mourns them 
 by living in isolation away from his family and his friends. 
 He spends long hours in contemplation atop the sheer bluff 
 overlooking the Rock and in vigils beside the graves of his 
 children. It is in relation to this sad period of his life that 
 he says: 
 
 With us it is a custom to visit the graves of our friends and 
 keep them in repair for many years. The mother will go alone to 
 weep over the grave of her child. The brave with pleasure visits 
 the grave of his father, after he has been successful in war, and 
 repaints the post that marks where he lies. There is no place like 
 that where the bones of our forefathers lie to go when in grief. 
 Here prostrate by the tombs of our fathers will the Great Spirit 
 take pity on us. 
 
 Settlers are coming ever nearer and are casting covetous 
 eyes upon the cultivated fields surrounding Saukanuk. Hunt- 
 ers returning from the winters hunt find squatters in the 
 fields who must be driven off. They become every day bolder 
 
Saukanuk 231 
 
 and another spring finds them plowing in the village fields 
 and doing damage to the burial-ground. The Indians threaten 
 them violence if they persist. Thus comes about the condition 
 desired— Indian threats upon the white settlers. An alarm is 
 raised and the governor is called upon for protection. He 
 calls some thousands of militia to the colors and orders them 
 to the suppression of Indian atrocities at the mouth of the 
 Rock. When the troops make camp south of the river, oppo- 
 site Saukanuk, Keokuk and his followers have already moved 
 across the Mississippi into Iowa. The British band with its 
 leader remains in the village, and they try to make terms 
 with General Gaines, the American war-chief. Even the re- 
 quest that they be allowed to stay long enough to harvest the 
 crops they had planted in the spring is denied them. They 
 must be beyond the Mississippi before another daybreak. 
 
 With nightfall the Sacs abandon their homes and begin the 
 transport of their possessions across the river to the west. On 
 the next day, June 26, 1831, Saukanuk, which had been built 
 for the ages, goes up in a hundred swirls of flame and smoke. 
 

 ■<.. 
 
 *■#/&:", v 
 
 - 
 
 Black Sparrow Hawk 
 
UENVOI 
 
 lN early a hundred years have passed since Margaret 
 Fuller found such perfection in the aspect of our valley and 
 wrote so sympathetically of our homeland. Just as the spirit 
 of Black Hawk continues to dominate the river's length, so 
 this graceful writer has kept her place as the discoverer and 
 propagandist of its beauty. At the end of the chapter of her 
 book telling of her pilgrimage along the Illinois waterways, 
 she writes this farewell to their scenes. 
 
 Farewell ye soft and sumptuous solitudes! 
 
 Ye fairy distances, ye lordly woods, 
 
 Haunted by paths like those that Poussin knew 
 
 When after his all gazers eyes he drew. 
 
 I go— and if I never more may steep 
 
 An eager heart in your enchantment deep 
 
 Yet ever to itself my heart shall say 
 
 Be not exacting! thou hast lived thy day; 
 
 Hast looked on that which matches with thy mood, 
 
 Impassioned sweetness, of full being's flood, 
 
 Where nothing checked the bold yet gentle wave 
 
 Where naught repelled the lavish love that gave. 
 
 A tender blessing lingers o'er the scene 
 
 Like some young mother's thought, fond, yet serene 
 
 And through its life, newborn our lives have been. 
 
 Once more farewell— a sad, a sweet farewell; 
 
 And if I never must behold you more 
 
 In other worlds I will not cease to tell 
 
 233 
 
234 Sinnissippi 
 
 The rosary I here have numbered o'er. 
 
 And bright-haired Hope will lend a gladdened ear, 
 
 And Love will free him from the grasp of Fear, 
 
 And Gorgon critics, while the tale they hear 
 
 Shall dew their stony glances with a tear 
 
 If I but catch one echo from your spell— 
 
 And so, farewell— a grateful, sad farewell. 
 
 This parting tribute carries the hope and a thought of 
 seeing the Illinois country again. The writer had made a 
 short visit to the village of Belvidere, on the Kishwaukee 
 River northeast of Oregon and with an invalid younger 
 brother she later bought a piece of ground where he built a 
 home and for a time conducted a private school. As Arthur 
 Fuller belonged to the Unitarian ministry, his biographers 
 speak of his work in Belvidere as that of a missionary. 
 
 Three years after her visit to the west, the poetess went 
 to Europe as correspondent for the New York Tribune, and 
 in December of the following year, 1847, she was married in 
 Rome to Marquis Ossoli, an Italian nobleman. Sharing her 
 husband's zeal for Italian unity, she worked in the hospitals 
 of Rome while he fought with its defenders in 1849. When the 
 city fell to General Oudinot's French army, the couple left 
 for northern Italy, and in May of the following year, they 
 sailed from Leghorn on the bark Elizabeth for her homeland. 
 After a long voyage marked by the death of the ship's captain 
 from smallpox, and much bad weather, the boat was driven 
 ashore on Fire Island on July 19, 1850 by a hurricane. The 
 ship broke up and the poetess and her husband and two year 
 old son were drowned only a few hundred yards off the shore 
 of her native land. 
 
L'Envoi 235 
 
 The memory of this warm-hearted woman has not been 
 permitted to die out in the section, where in its pioneer days, 
 she spent happy weeks in walks and rides over its varied 
 scenes. The island which bears her name is an emerald gem 
 in the amethyst blue of the river, a jewel that catches the 
 eye of each of the thousands traveling the cement highway 
 that has taken the place of the Indian trail along the river. To 
 the few who are given welcome to the colony atop the Eagle's 
 Nest, the island lies below as a most arresting feature of the 
 spreading panorama. Ganymede's Springs still pour their 
 waters into their basin below the hill, and the thirsting visitor 
 is reminded anew in letters of bronze, of the woman who, 
 a century ago, found inspiration in the hill and springs, for 
 a story of the Greek gods. 
 
 To the last page the figure of the old Sac chieftain intrudes 
 itself into every scene having to do with Rock valley history. 
 Unlike the eastern visitor of a few weeks, Black Hawk lived 
 his life along the banks of the river. It was the scene of his 
 childish play, of his exploits as a young warrior, and it saw 
 the tragic last act of his career as leader of his people. His 
 last years were spent in a home on the north bank of the Des 
 Moines River near its mouth. His household was made up of 
 Singing Bird, the bride of his youth and sharer of a half- 
 century of his fortunes, two sons, Naseeuskuk and Gamesett, 
 and their families, and a daughter with her husband. On 
 July 4, 1838 he was a guest at a dinner in Fort Madison near 
 his home. In response to a toast, he paid a last public tribute 
 to the Rock River country: 
 
 It has pleased the Great Spirit that I am here today. The Earth 
 is our Mother— we are now on it with the Great Spirit above us— 
 
236 Sinnissippi 
 
 it is good. I hope we are all friends here. A few summers ago I 
 was fighting against you. I did wrong, perhaps, but that is past— 
 it is buried— let it be forgotten. Rock River was a beautiful coun- 
 try. I liked my towns, my cornfields, and the home of my people. 
 I fought for it— it is now yours— keep it, as we did. 
 
 The Indian has never been lacking in eloquent speech, and 
 Black Hawk had his full share of that talent. If in its reading, 
 these remarks appear lacking in that quality it can be 
 understood that the speaker, even as an honored guest, was 
 still a defeated leader, a ward and virtual prisoner of the 
 government. Most poignant of all, he was under the control 
 of Chief Keokuk. The eloquence of Red Jacket himself 
 would have frozen on his lips under such circumstances. But 
 who can say what fullness of the throat, what moisture of 
 the eye prevented anything more than these few simple 
 words on that occasion, or who can say at this time to what 
 depths they moved the hearts and minds of the listeners! 
 This meeting marked the last public appearance of the 
 Indian patriot. He died on October 3rd of that year, and 
 Singing Bird survived him but a few months. He was buried 
 in the military uniform given him by his white captors, in a 
 burial plot near his home. A sword was laid by his side. But 
 his poor old body was not permitted peaceful sepulture. 
 It was dug up and his bones exhibited for a price to a mor- 
 bidly curious public. Protest from his sons put a stop to this 
 infamous business, and a merciful fire reduced the bones to 
 ashes and restored them to the earth from whence they had 
 been pillaged. His sons and daughter with their families 
 went with the rest of the tribe to new fields and a new life 
 in the Indian territory. It seems a pertinent reflection at this 
 
L'Envoi 23? 
 
 point that few indeed are the men whose memory warrants 
 
 perpetuation in statues of stone, and fewer yet are those 
 
 whose dried bones would pay for the trouble of digging them 
 
 from the ground. 
 
 * « * 
 
 The scene in the Des Moines River bottomland now fades 
 out and in its place emerges the crest of the high bluff that 
 overlooks the old site of Saukanuk and the Rock River. A 
 century has passed, and it is now a June day in 1939. The 
 bluff, known locally as Black Hawk Tower, and the spread 
 of the forest, covering and surrounding it, are now made 
 into a state park still carrying the Indian warrior's name. On 
 this afternoon a gathering of thousands is on hand to take 
 part in the dedication of the park museum devoted to a 
 collection pertaining to the Sac chieftain and his people. The 
 governor of the state, too ill to come in person, sends the 
 address of the day to be read. He extols the high motives 
 of the old warrior and praises his devotion to his people's 
 interests. A dozen men and women of the blood and breed 
 of Black Hawk in the fourth and fifth generation are here 
 from their homes in Oklahoma, and one of them replies to the 
 message of the governor in words of appreciation of the honor 
 paid to their gallant ancestor. The program closes with a 
 reading of his speech at Prairie du Chien at the time of his 
 delivery there. Like stars of the Hollywood world the Okla- 
 homa visitors are besieged for their autographs. 
 
 The afternoon is over, the people have dispersed to their 
 homes and the park takes on its usual quiet aspect. Dusk 
 settles down and then night. The noises of passing traffic on 
 the state road behind the hill grow less and less and finally 
 
238 Sinnissippi 
 
 cease. The hour has come when from that land of the dead 
 where the old chief was to look to Pyesa his father, for ap- 
 proval of his earthly deeds, comes back his spirit to look down 
 again from his old lookout upon the scenes of his youth. 
 Except for the bridge that spans the river a half-mile down- 
 stream and a spire and a few roofs of Milan dimly seen above 
 the treetops beyond the river, the scene is quite as it was in 
 that golden age when Saukanuk was the valley's metropolis, 
 and the cornfields of the tribe covered the river bottoms. 
 
 The long hours to dawn are ample for spirit flight to other 
 well remembered spots in the valley, to other wooded heights, 
 to stretches of tumbling rapids, to cool springs flowing in 
 forest glades, to sedgy lakes and to sombre groves of oak and 
 of pine. The memories these places bring back are not always 
 of happy times, but everywhere he finds that local tradition 
 has marked the passing of his moccasined feet. 
 
 Back again in the gray of morning to the hilltop above 
 Saukanuk for a parting look at the most cherished view of 
 all and for a period of musing upon the change that a century 
 has brought about. How inscrutable and unpredictable are 
 the mind and heart of the white man! Throughout the length 
 of this valley, where in life he had suffered injustices without 
 number, and where for a season his name invoked only fear 
 and horror, he finds himself now regarded only as a hero 
 unafraid and his name honored above all others. To Pyesa, 
 his father, he can repeat his words of self-justification for 
 his deeds upon earth, and may add that he stands further 
 justified in the words and works of the children of those who 
 had once been his persecutors. 
 
 THE END 
 
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 239 
 
240 Sinnissippi 
 
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