Madison County Genealogical Society

Minutes of the Meeting – September 9, 2021

On September 9, 2021, the Madison County Genealogical Society held a meeting — its first meeting since February 2020 — in the community room of the Tri-Township Library in Troy, Illinois.

 

President, Robert Ridenour, called the meeting to order.

GIFT MEMBERSHIPS AVAILABLE

Do you have a family member that is interested in (or even obsessed with) genealogy? A membership in the Madison County Genealogical Society would be a very thoughtful gift. A gift card will be sent to the recipient of any gift membership.

The following memberships are available:
Individual/Family Annual Membership $25.00
Patron Annual Membership $35.00
Life Membership $300.00

Contact our Secretary, Petie Hunter, at [email protected], about a gift membership.

September Meeting

 

On September 9, 2021, Cherie Kuhn presented a program titled Ancient Native American Culture of Illinois.

 

Ms. Kuhn graduated in 1968 from Livingston High School.  She worked at SIUE Lovejoy Library for 28 years.  Her hobbies are horses, playing piano, travel, reading, genealogy, and hunting arrowheads. She is a member of the Silver Creek DAR Chapter, Archaeology Society of Illinois, and Cahokia Mounds Society. Her presentation follows:

 

Thanks for coming tonight. This talk is about a year and a half late. I read a big book on the settlements in Sugar Creek, which was really interesting. Sugar Creek is a tributary of the Sangamon River, just below Springfield. I went up there today to Chatham where all the different families lived. There was the Drinnon family and the Pulliam family. Robert Pulliam was the first settler in Sangamon County and he built a cabin up there in 1817. There were people in Illinois before that, but it wasn’t really safe; the Indians were still around then and a lot of wild animals too. So you had to protect yourself from both things.

 

I am going to talk about the Illini Indians first. The women worked in gardens and they did quill work, beadwork, and embroidery; and the men did two things – they hunted and went to war, that was it; the women did all the work. The Illini started the fur trade with the French. They went on buffalo hunts in the summer and they made dugout canoes. They painted their faces for different occasions and they had tattoos. The tribes lived in long houses – 24 x 60 – in the summer, and wigwams – 12 x 24 – in the winter. Reed mats covered the floor and the roof. A long house would hold ten families and a wigwam would hold two families.

 

The Illini sided with the French during the French and Indian War; and they sided with the Americans during the Revolution. In 1640, the Illini lived south of Lake Michigan; there were sixty villages totaling 20,000 people. The enemies of the Illini were the Fox, the Sauk, and especially the Iroquois. They came from New York State and wanted to take over all the hunting grounds. Because of the Iroquois, the Illini had to move to Eastern Minnesota. The Illini traded with the Indians there and exchanged Indian slaves for guns and tools.

 

The main Illini village was just north of the Illinois River across from Starved Rock. This Grand Village of the Kaskaskia was an agricultural and trade village. There were a thousand people here and the chief was Rouensa.

 

In 1673, the French claimed the Illinois Country.  Marquette was a missionary and Joliet was an explorer that came down the Mississippi from Green Bay to Prairie du Chen, Wisconsin. They came all the way down the Mississippi, stopping at the Des Moines River below Keokuk, Iowa, and they saw a path that led off the river into the woods. They took that path, which was pretty brave, to see what was there and they came to a Peoria Indian village of 8,000 people. Historians believe that this was the first European contact with Indians in Illinois. The white men were welcomed; they smoked the pipe; they exchanged gifts, and they feasted on corn, fish, and buffalo. Now they probably would not have welcomed them if they knew what was coming in the future, right?

 

The explorers went on down the river, all the way down to the Arkansas River. They turned around, came back up the river and took the Illinois River and they stopped at the Grand Village. Marquette spoke to them about Christianity and they sat around him in a circle on their reed mats and their bearskins. Marquette came back here in 1675 and established a mission and a fur trading post. After this, priests and fur traders came to the Illinois Country to convert the Indians and build a fur trade network. In 1680, Fort Crevecoeur was built near Lake Peoria. This was the first French fort in the west. In 1682, Fort Saint Louis was built on top of Starved Rock as a fur trading post and, at this time, the French were at war with the Iroquois.

 

In 1690, because of the attacks on their villages by the Iroquois, the Kaskaskia Indians moved south and the priests and the missions went with them. They moved all the way down to Cahokia. They built homes and businesses here and it became the center for the Indian trade in furs. The Indians got along with the French; they intermarried and lived together, but they did not like the British. The British gave them trouble.

 

Kaskaskia was established in 1703. Missionaries and French settlers came here and they lived in harmony with the Indians. The town became the capital of Upper Louisiana and a fur trading post. Many French trappers married Indian women. King Louis of France sent a church bell to Kaskaskia in 1741. That bell is still there. Fort Kaskaskia was built on a bluff in 1759 and, of course, in 1763, the Illinois Country was ceded to England. Kaskaskia was the first capitol of the State of Illinois in 1818, but it was destroyed by a flood in 1881.

 

In the early 1700s, the Sauk and the Fox tribes settled in Wisconsin and the Detroit area. They moved into the Illinois Territory in the 1740s and they fought the Illini tribes for supporting the French. The Sauk hated the French because they had brought liquor, war, and disease to their tribe. Fort Des Chartres was built in 1718; it was the seat of French government in Illinois, when they controlled Louisiana and the Illinois Territory. The fort was also built to control the Indians of the region. IT was turned over to the British in 1763 and abandoned in 1772.

 

In 1752, the Cahokia tribe captured and burned six Fox hunters that had come from Wisconsin one Fox escaped and returned to his tribe and they made war on the Illini. If you were standing where the St. Louis Arch is today, you would have seen a thousand warriors of the Sauk, the Sioux, and the Kickapoo come down the Mississippi River in 180 canoes to strike at the Michigania living north of Fort des Chartres, because they had given shelter to the Cahokia. Eighty men, women, and children were killed and the village destroyed.

 

1754-63 was the French and Indian War, between England and France for control of the Ohio country. The Illini sided with the French and during this time, the Illini, the Delaware, and the Shawnee burned grain of the English as far as Pennsylvania and raided settlers as far as Georgia and the Carolinas. The war ended with the Treaty of Paris and England owning the Ohio country.

 

Pontiac’s War occurred between 1763 and 1766. Pontiac was an Ottawa chief that led the Indians against British occupation in the Great Lakes Region. He tried to take Fort Detroit but failed. He came to the Illinois country to encourage the tribes to resist the British. In April of 1769 in Cahokia, Pontiac was killed by a Peoria Indian. Pontiac had stabbed and wounded this Peoria Indian’s uncle. Pontiac is buried around Fourth Street in St. Louis. In 1764 the Kaskaskia population was 600; they had been defeated by liquor and disease. Some Peoria lived in Cahokia, some lived in St. Louis. The Illini lived on the west side of the Mississippi and took furs to St. Louis to trade with the Spanish.

 

In 1778, during the American Revolution, George Rogers Clark and his Virginia Rangers came to the Illinois country. One group of Peoria joined Clark and another group joined the British at Vincennes. So they split. Indians were scouts and hunters. As we know, Clark took Cahokia, Kaskaskia, and Vincennes and secured the Illinois country for the Americans. After the Revolution people began to move west.

 

Have you ever heard of William Biggs, of the Waterloo area? Inn 1788, William was a veteran of the American Revolution who had come to Illinois with George Rogers Clark. A lot of the people who came with Clark returned after the Revolution because they liked the good farmland in that area.  They went back to Virginia or wherever and got their families and came back and settled there.

 

William Biggs lived around Waterloo. He was taking beaver pelts to Cahokia with his friend John Ballas. They were attacked by Kickapoo. John was shot but he made it back to the fort and William was captured. He was taken 240 miles to a hunting camp on the Wabash River above Vincennes. Trackers eventually came and paid money for his release and he returned home and wrote an account of his capture.

 

In June of 1790, James Gillham and his son were plowing on their farm in Kentucky. A party of Kickapoo captured his wife, Ann, two sons and a daughter. They were taken on rafts across the Ohio River to Indiana; they crossed the Wabash River below Terre Haute, and were taken across Illinois to the Indian village on Salt Creek, 20 miles east of Springfield. Meanwhile, James had sold his farm and put his son in a neighbor’s care. He went to Fort Vincennes, Kaskaskia, and Cincinnati to talk to General St. Clair. He learned from a French trader that the Kickapoo chief promised to give up captives for ransom. So James, with two guides, went to Salt Creek and he found his family there. It took him five years to find them. He took Ann and the two sons and left the village, but the Indians kept the daughter. The family moved close to Kaskaskia, had three more children, and came to Madison County in 1802. One son would return to Salt Creek every year to visit his sister and the Indians because he loved their life style. James and Ann are buried in Wanda Cemetery.

 

With an 1803 treaty, the Kaskaskia ceded all their land to the government and they moved to two reservations in northeast Kansas. They received yearly relief, farm supplies, a priest, a church, and government protection. In 1832, the Kaskaskia, Peoria, Cahokia, Tamaroa signed a treaty in St. Louis to cede any of their lands left in Illinois to the government. The Indians never fully adjusted to being farmers and by 1950, there were only 429 Indians that remained out of the twelve tribes of Illinois.

 

So we did a pretty good number on them: war, disease, and alcohol.

 

In 1809, Illinois Territory was formed with Ninian Edwards as governor. A company of mounted Rangers was organized in Madison County and blockhouses built for protection from Indians. The British were supplying guns and ammo to the Indians to kill settlers. Ten companies of Rangers guarded the Illinois frontier from St. Louis to Vincennes, which is a long way on horseback. How were the soldiers paid? Land grants. A lot of times they would get a land grant where Indians lived and the Indians would just be pushed out of the way.

 

The Fort Dearborn massacre between the U.S. troops and the Potawatomie Indians took place in 1812. Evacuation of the fort was ordered by the commander. The Miami Indians, who were friendly with the Americans, were going to escort the people to Fort Wayne. But two miles from the fort, they were attacked. Two women, twelve children, and thirty-eight troops were killed. The fort was burned and many of the survivors either died or were ransomed. Black Partridge was the Potawatomie chief and a friend to the settlers and he tried to protect the people at Fort Dearborn.

 

Also in 1812, Governor Ninian Edwards and 350 Rangers left Fort Russell and took the old Indian trail, known as Edwards Trace, for a campaign against the Kickapoo. There were acts of terrorism between the American settlers and the Indians who allied with the British. Edwards marched all the way from Fort Russell to Peoria Lake on the Edwards Trace. They surprised Chief Black Partridge’s village on the lake and they killed 24 warriors and drove the rest into the swamps. The Rangers destroyed horses, cattle, camp, corn, and everything else to punish the Indians for siding with the British.

 

Also the Wood River Massacre was in 1814, I think everyone knows about that. The Battle of Hill’s Fort in Bond County in 1814 was part of the War of 1812 also. There are markers for the four Rangers that were killed southwest of Greenville.

 

In March of 1815, several thousand canoes with Indian representatives came to Portage de Sioux. They came there to sign treaties to end the conflict between the United States and the Indians. William Clark, Ninian Edwards, and Auguste Chouteau were all there. President Madison approved $20,000 worth of gifts. The tribes that signed were the Potawatomie, the Lakota, the Sioux, the Omaha, the Kickapoo, the Osage, the Sauk, the Fox, and the Iowa. These treaties were to remove the Indians to Western lands and open Illinois for settlement.

 

September 1818, Ninian Edwards and Auguste Chouteau drew up a treaty that was signed at the Edwardsville Land Office. The Indians and their families came downriver and left their canoes at the riverbank. The men walked single file to Edwardsville while the women and children guarded the canoes. The tribes who signed were the Peoria, Kaskaskia, Cahokia, and Tamaroa. The Peoria ceded all their land to the government and were united with three other tribes. The U. S. promised to take them under their care, (Did they? Not really.), pay them $2,000 worth of goods and give them land west of the Mississippi River. Benjamin Stephenson signed the treaty also.

 

In 1818, Illinois becomes a state, Kaskaskia is the capitol and Shadrach Bond is the Governor.

 

Now we’re going to talk about the Nauvoo area.

 

In 1823, there was a Sauk village of 1,000 lodges in the Nauvoo area. The place was purchased by Captain James White from a Sauk leader. How did White pay for that land? He gave that tribe liquor and 2,000 bushels of corn. And the Indians went for it! In 1841, Mormon leader Joseph Smith was there and was visited by a Sauk from an Iowa village. Smith met Keokuk and 100 braves and chiefs to discuss the Mormon religion. There was a feast and dancing by the Indians.

 

The Prairie du Chen Wisconsin Treaties were four treaties from 1825 to 1830 – one establishing borders for the Indian Territory and the others ceding lands to the United States.

 

The Blackhawk War was 1832 and could have been avoided. It was between Chief Blackhawk and U. S. troops. His main village was Sauk-a-nook on the Rock River in northwest Illinois. The Sauk settled there in 1750 and Blackhawk was born there in 1767. There were 100 lodges. They had gardens, grass for their horses, river fish, and game. An early explorer was there and he said it was the best-built Indian town he had seen. They had a good life there. Part of the tribe lived in eastern Iowa and eastern Missouri. They planted crops in the spring and harvested in the fall. Their winter hunt was in Iowa and they sold furs to the British. What brought this war on happened in 1804 in St. Louis. A Sauk delegation went to St. Louis to have a council with Governor William Harrison. They were read a 2,000-word treaty, given alcohol, and eventually agreed to sign it. But, they didn’t have any concept of land areas. They ceded 23,000 square miles of land. They were promised protection by the government and would receive $2,200 in goods each year. But their fur trade, alone, brought them $60,000 a year. So they didn’t need that government money and those treaties.

 

They had little concept of land and didn’t know how much they signed away. The problem was – Blackhawk and Keokuk never signed the treaty. So to them, it was not a valid treaty. And the delegation that signed it was not given permission by the tribal council to sign anything. So in 1826, there were 4,800 Indians at Saukenuk and the government opened the land for settlement. The Indians went on their winter hunt in Iowa, and when they returned in the spring, there were settlers there. Well, to avoid trouble, Keokuk took his band to Iowa, but Blackhawk decided to fight for his homeland. Governor John Reynolds raised 1,500 troops to move the Indians out of Illinois to Iowa. Blackhawk only had 500 warriors and he was not supported by the British.  There were many battles and many killed on both sides. When Blackhawk was found on the Bad Axe River in Wisconsin, he had 600 people due to death and desertion and there was a battle. The troops opened fire and they killed about 260 and 100 drowned trying to cross the river to Iowa. After this, Blackhawk surrendered at Prairie du Chen to an Indian agent and he was taken to Jefferson Barracks. In 1833, he was taken to Fort Monroe Virginia, where he became a celebrity. Pictures were taken of him and he was given many dinners in his honor. He toured Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York City to show him the progress of the white man. He came back and lived with the Sauk on the Des Moines River and he was buried there in 1838. There is a sculpture of him on the Rock River in the museum where the village used to be.

 

This Indian village where he was born and lived is the site of the most western conflict of the Revolutionary War. In the summer of 1780, American forces under John Montgomery with French and Spanish allies destroyed Saukenuk. Colonel George Rogers Clark ordered it done in retaliation for the British attempt to capture St. Louis and Cahokia. Saukenuk was rebuilt and stayed an Indian village until 1828. White settlers moved in and the Indians moved to Iowa.

 

In 1833, the Treaty of Chicago granted land in Michigan, Wisconsin, and the Chicago area to the government. At the end of the ceremony, before they left, 500 warriors in full dress did a war dance with their tomahawks. This was their final farewell to Illinois where they had lived for thousands of years.

 

This presentation was very well received and provoked many questions and comments.

 

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