LIBRARY OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
 
 AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN 
 
 977-327 
 
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 The Birthplace 
 of Illinois 
 
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 75* 
 
STARVED ROCK 
 
 BIRTHPLACE OF ILLINOIS 
 
 By C. C. Tisler, editorial staff member Daily Republican Times, 
 Ottawa, Illinois. Vice president of the Illinois State Historical 
 Society 1947-1953. Member of the Civil War Round Table of 
 Chicago; Director of the LaSalle County Historical Society; Winner 
 of the 1951 Regional Award for State and Local History; Author 
 of Lincoln's In Town 1940; Centennial History of Ottawa 1953 and 
 Contributor to different Historical magazines. 
 
Copyright 1956 
 
 C. C. TISLER 
 
 and 
 ALEITA G. TISLER 
 
•£Hor 
 
 T52S 
 
 — 
 
 ■n 
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 Starved Rock has looked down through the centuries on the Indian 
 busy in his great camp, along the blue waters of the wide Illinois, on his 
 hunting ground and his corn land. 
 
 It has seen bobbing canoes of the Jesuits and the Franciscans and heard 
 the orders of their companions, the explorers, who together were the first 
 white men to penetrate Illinois. 
 
 It has echoed to the violins of the lonely French soldiers and their 
 friends, thousands of miles from their homeland. 
 
 It has seen the camp of the Indians raided and left in ruins by their 
 savage enemies, has looked down on the last of its original people, who 
 climbed its rocky summit to gaze on a virgin land, that teemed with game 
 and was cloaked in giant trees along the shores and on the rocky bluffs. 
 
 This craggy old piece of jutting rock washed by the river on one side, 
 and inaccessible from two sides must be climbed, now in the same man- 
 ner as by those who long ago were wrapped in their green quilt in the 
 wilderness. 
 
 Acknowledgements are due many persons and other sources for their 
 aid in the preparation of this small volume. These include Dr. James 
 Alton James, Retired Head of the History Department of Northwestern 
 University, Letters and Records of Daniel F Hitt, Monsignor Thomas 
 Meehan of Loyola University of Chicago, W. R. Foster, former super- 
 intendent of LaSalle county schools, Baldwin's History of LaSalle county, 
 The Rev. E. J. O'Donnell, S. J., President of Marquette University of 
 Milwaukee, and The Rev. R. N. Hamilton, S. J., Head of the Department 
 of History of the same University, Monsignor Thomas Cleary, pastor of 
 St. John's Church at Bradford, the Rev. Martin H. Coughlin, pastor of 
 St. Mary's Church at Utica, Dr. Joseph E. Fields of Joliet, late Harry Pratt, 
 secretary of the Illinois State Historical Society, Paul Angle, secretary of 
 jp the Chicago Historical Society, The University of Chicago, Dr. John 
 -x McGregor of the University of Illinois, The Division of State Parks, and 
 the Illinois State Museum at Springfield, "The Jesuit Relations", "From 
 Quebec to New Orleans" by Bishop Joseph H. Schlarman, "The Last of 
 a Great Indian Tribe" by Eaton Osman, The Illinois Historical Collec- 
 tions, the Ottawa Weekly Republican, The Daily Republican Times, the 
 Old Ottawa Free Trader Files, the numerous pamphlets, that have been 
 published on the History of Starved Rock by various authors. 
 
 CHAPTERS 
 
 1— BELOVED BLACK ROBE 
 2— MARIE AND MICHAEL 
 3— GENTLEMAN OF FRANCE 
 4— MAPS AND CANOES 
 5— SIEGE AND SLAUGHTER 
 6— RETREAT FROM CANADA 
 7— CRAGGY DEATH TRAP 
 8— VANISHED CAMP GROUND 
 9— SENECA BEAD MAKER 
 10— MODERN PLAYGROUND 
 
Winter Quarters of Father Marquette. 
 
 Courtesy of Chicago Historical Society. 
 
 Pere Jacques Marquette, Born 
 
 June 1, 1637, Laon, France. 
 
 Died May 18, 1675, Luding- 
 
 ton, Michigan. 
 
 
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 e ,o ctriior\tm-, iuxJ<*- meant* in ' c^^/faG'tiJ rh^re*JM,.1i*utfi,j /t'sf&. 
 
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 Photostat copy, as a member of the Society of Jesus of Father Marquette. 
 Courtesy of Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 
 
BELOVED BLACK ROBE 
 
 AND now the hour had come, when the Indians of the Illinois valley 
 were to hear from the lips of the Black Robe the Catholic Easter 
 l. Morning mass and the sermon to follow. 
 
 All about this holy and gentle man, his frail body racked with fever, 
 lay the wilderness. The bluffs of the Illinois river, a mile away, were 
 clothed in early spring verdure. Somewhere along the river bank the 
 early comers among the spring birds provided the only orchestral music 
 for the solemn service on the flat plain, a mile or so from the great rock 
 on which was to be reared Fort St. Louis by countrymen of Father 
 Marquette. 
 
 And now the hour approached 10 a.m. and there had gathered a vast 
 crowd of red men, their women and their children, the young and the 
 old, the savage and those of gentle heart, the well and the ill, those who 
 had heard of the new faith and were curious to know more of it and 
 those steeped and hopeless in their own pagan beliefs. 
 
 And now the Black Robe, with the aid of his trusty paddlers, was 
 about to begin the solemn ceremonies of the Easter Mass, with the great 
 and vaulted dome of the spring heavens and the endless wilderness all 
 about him as his church. The groves were God's first temples and this 
 time, it was true in all sense of the word. 
 
 And now there fell upon the great concourse of hundreds of Indians 
 a great silence. Men listened and paid attention. Women bowed their 
 heads. Restless children were quieted and the whimperings of babies were 
 silenced in order that nothing should detract from the age old service that 
 was being celebrated by the Black Robe from overseas with the mark of 
 death already upon him from the hardships he had endured in so many 
 thousands of miles of travel in the wilderness. 
 
 And now the ceremony is ended and the Black Robe has called down 
 the blessing of God upon the great concourse, that they may go forth and 
 learn the Christian doctrine and to live at peace and to love one another 
 and to love God and their fellow men with all their hearts. 
 
 And now the Black Robe walks among the red men and shakes them 
 by the hand and blesses them, and now he recalls, that near Peoria, he 
 had come upon a baby sick unto death, its face pallid, its eyes closed, its 
 breath coming in gasps. 
 
 The Black Robe had comforted the distrait mother of the baby and 
 blessed the child, in its dying moments, for was not the aiding and the com- 
 forting of the sick, the dying, and the distrait through heat and cold and 
 loneliness and incredible hardships one of the main objects of all his labors? 
 
 And now the Black Robe is gone forever, up the broad river into the 
 noon day sun, his canoe and those of his retainers growing fainter and 
 fainter in the spring sunshine until they vanished forever from the sight 
 of even the keenest eyed member of the Indian village sprawled on the 
 north bank of the lovely Illinois river on April 14, 1675. 
 
 And there came rumors back to the village, that the Black Robe had 
 died, that his body had been buried on the lonely shores of Lake Mich- 
 igan by reverent Indians and his aides and the spot marked with a strong 
 wooden cross so that the Christian Indians could come and pray there 
 long years after his body had been taken north and buried under the 
 floor of the little mission church at St. Ignace, Michigan. 
 
 There the reverent still kneel in prayer at the grave of Father Mar- 
 quette, the gentle and merry hearted priest of the Jesuit order, who on 
 
that spring morning of 1675 chanted the first Easter service in what is 
 now the state of Illinois, south of what is now the village of Utica. 
 
 At the same time he founded there, true to his earlier pledge to the 
 Indians, the Mission of the Immaculate Conception the first in all Illinois, 
 the forerunner of the hundreds of Christian Churches, that now dot the 
 state of Illinois. 
 
 His congregation of Indians, with the few French "courier de bois" 
 his own retainers and his companion, Louis Joliet, long since have turned 
 to dust. 
 
 But Father Marquette's memory lives on, one of the humble followers 
 of Christ, who walked the earth and did good and lived an exemplary 
 life for his church that he served so many years. 
 
 His faith and that of others, who followed him and who were not of 
 his belief, but who also dared the hardships of the wilderness long ago 
 to carry the word of God, to the scattered settlers in their lonely cabins 
 on the prairies, lives on and will endure to the end of time. 
 
 And now it is October 14, 1951. The hills flamed, with red and gold, 
 with scarlet and burnt umber, and there had gathered the great of Illinois, 
 and its common people, by the thousands to honor the memory of a 
 parish priest, who had been dead nearly three centuries and who had left 
 his mark on the valley for all time. 
 
 And now there sounded and was seen all the pomp and pageantry of 
 the church, that Father Marquette had served so well. The fluer-de-lis 
 that he served for his beloved France fluttered in the fall breeze as did 
 the flag of # the Republic of France raised long years after he had gone. 
 
 The flag of a new nation, that of the United States of America of 
 which he never knew and that of a rich and beautiful state of Illinois, 
 an integral part of the union, dipped gently in the breeze as a prince of 
 the Catholic church, Samuel Cardinal Stritch unveiled and blessed the 
 granite and bronze marker on the lawn of St. Mary's church at Utica to 
 the memory of Marquette, where he chanted his Easter Masses in that 
 now long distant April of 1675. 
 
 And now on that brilliant fall day at Utica in 1951, one could see in 
 fancy the ghosts of the centuries looking down on the ceremonies — the 
 ghost of LaSalle, the French explorer, who had planted the lilies of France 
 atop what is now nearby Starved Rock in 1682-3, as a bastion of empire 
 for his emperor Louis XIV. 
 
 The ghost of Joliet, the ever faithful companion to Marquette, was 
 there as was that of Henry Tonti, the man with the iron hand, who was 
 equally loyal to impetuous, courageous LaSalle, as he explored the 
 wilderness with him and Allouez, successor to Marquette. 
 
 The ghost of Captain Passerat-de-la Chapelle, who may have planted 
 the same lilies of France on Buffalo Rock, four miles east of Starved 
 Rock, in the winter of 1760-1, when he built Fort Ottawa, looked down 
 and called the ceremonies good, but too long delayed to honor the first 
 priest of Illinois. The ghosts of the priests, who followed Marquette, 
 into the valley of Illinois, and who died at the hands of Indians — Fathers 
 Membre, Rasle, de la Ribourde, and Gravier, approved the solemn rites. 
 
 The ghost of the red men among whom Marquette had worked and 
 preached, exhorted and comforted, and planted the seeds of Christianity 
 in one of the loveliest valleys of the world, too nodded a poker faced 
 approval — they had loved and honored and respected the Black Robe. 
 
 — 6 — 
 
Inscription on the Face of Marker to Father James Marquette, S. J. 
 
 PERE MARQUETTE 
 
 Born at Laon, France, June 1, 1637. 
 
 He died near Ludington, Michigan, May 18, 1675. 
 
 Devoted Missioner and Heroic Priest — Explorer, he offered the Holy 
 Sacrifice of the Mass near this spot Maundy Thursday and Easter Sunday 
 1675 and established the First Christian Mission in the Illinois Country. 
 The monument erected under Archbishop Schlarman, Bishop of Peoria, 
 by contribution of many, was unveiled by His Eminence, Samuel Cardinal 
 Stritch, Archbishop of Chicago, Sunday, October 14, 1951. 
 
 Inscription on the Rear of Marker to Father James Marquette, S. J. 
 
 "October 24, 1674 Father Marquette set out from the Mission of 
 St. Francis Xavier at the present DePere, Wisconsin, with two young 
 voyaguers, Jacques Le Castor and Pierre Porteret, with orders to proceed 
 to the Mission La Conception among the Illinois. 
 
 "From December 4, 1674, to March 30, 1675, they wintered on the 
 banks of the Chicago river and reached the Illinois village of the Kas- 
 kaskia Indians, April 8, 1675. 
 
 "He was received there as an angel from heaven. He visited all the 
 cabins teaching and instructing the natives. Then he resolved to address 
 all in public. It was a beautiful prairie, close to the village which was 
 selected for the great council. The audience was composed of 500 chiefs 
 and elders seated in a circle around the father, and of the young men, 
 who remained standing. They numbered 1500 men and without counting 
 the women and children. 
 
 "He explained the principal mysteries of our religion and the purpose 
 that brought him to their country. Above all he preached to them Jesus 
 Christ, on the very eve of that great day on which He died upon the 
 cross for them, as well as for the rest of mankind, then he offered the 
 Holy Sacrifice, the first Parish Mass in the Illinois Country. 
 
 "On Easter Sunday, things prepared as on Thursday, he celebrated 
 the holy mysteries, for the second time. By these two sacrifices, the first 
 ever offered there to God, he took possession of the land in the name of 
 Jesus Christ and gave the Mission the name of Immaculate Conception of 
 the Blessed Virgin. 
 
 "Drawn from Father Claude Dablon Jesuit Relations and Allied Docu- 
 ment LIX." Carved in the granite below this inscription are the following 
 additional lines. 
 
 Sponsors, His Excellency, the 
 most Rev. Joseph H. Schlarman, 
 Arch-Bishop of Peoria. Rev. 
 Martin H. Coughlin, pastor of 
 St. Mary's, Utica, the Illinois 
 Valley Chapter, the state coun- 
 cil and several councils of the 
 Knights of Columbus, priests and 
 faithful of the diocese of Peoria 
 and Friends". 
 
 — 7 
 
 i 
 
MARIE AND MICHAEL 
 
 THERE was much clacking of tongues and shaking of heads among 
 the Indian squaws and maidens in the ancient village of Kaskaskia 
 over the case of Marie and Michael. 
 
 Some took the part of Marie and said that it was a shame, that her 
 father, a chief of the tribe, insisted that she marry Michael, a good look- 
 ing young French canoe paddler. 
 
 In the other camp were those, who said, in effect, that Marie was a 
 spoiled darling, that she still was in her father's wigwam, so to speak 
 and that his wishes for her to marry Michael should be carried out be- 
 cause of filial loyalty. 
 
 Father Jacque Gravier, one of the successors to the beloved Marquette, 
 took the side of Marie and the issue of whether to marry or not took on 
 another aspect. It was the talk of the village for a long time and there 
 was more clacking and clucking and head shaking. Marie appears to 
 have been a high class Indian maiden, well liked by both her own people 
 and the few whites in the Illinois valley. 
 
 Finally Marie yielded to her parental wishes and was duly married to 
 Michael, who had been a paddler for Father Louis Hennepin, another of 
 the famous explorers of the late 17th century, in the Mississippi and 
 Illinois valleys. 
 
 It was one of his paddlers, so the tradition goes, who wrapped him- 
 self in some blankets one chilly night along the Illinois river west of 
 Ottawa, rolled some "black stones" into the fire and went off to the land 
 of dreams. He awoke in a sweat for the "stones" in the fire were really 
 coal and his accidental discovery was the first of its kind in North 
 America. It was something like the tale of Charles Lamb and the Chinese 
 discovery of the roast pig by fire and accident. 
 
 Back to Marie and Michael and their romance in the wilderness of 
 the Illinois country, which had caused so much excitement among the 
 Indian women and relieved their humdrum life for a few weeks. 
 
 Her action, so the Jesuit Relation says,- volume 64, increased the con- 
 version of Indians to Christianity to the great joy of Father Gravier. 
 
 Breese in his "Early History of Illinois" says "In the oldest record of 
 the church found at the (new) Kaskaskia in the Register of Baptisms 
 of the Missions of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin the 
 first entry bears the date March 20, 1695. Retaining the French spelling 
 of the names it reads like this, "In the year 1695 March 20th, I Jacques 
 Gravier, of the Society of Jesus, baptised Pierro Aco, newly born, of 
 Michael Aco. Godfather was DeHautchy, Godmother Marie Aram- 
 pinchincoue; Maria Joanns, grandmother of the child." 
 
 That Michael apparently settled down to caring for his wife and 
 later his son is shown by an ancient deed now in possession of the Chicago 
 Historical society and given to that body in 1893 by Edward G. Mason, 
 who obtained it in Paris. 
 
 It shows that on April 1, 1693 Francis de la Forest conveyed a half 
 interest in his Illinois valley concession to Aco. It has been granted him 
 from Tonti and the King of France through the sovereign council in 
 Quebec in August 1691. Ako was to pay 6,000 livres in beaver skins at 
 Chicago for half the concession. 
 
 It was signed by De La Forest, Aco, De La Dicourvertes and Nicholas 
 Laurens de Chappelle as witnesses. 
 
 — 8 — 
 
Flat topped and lower in height than famed old Starved Rock is the 
 sand stone promontory to the east of it known as Lover's Leap. 
 
 Long ago romantic and fancy legend spinners gave it the name of 
 Lover's Leap and assured the doubting Thomases, that it was the same 
 rock off which love sick Indian couples used to hurl themselves into the 
 blue waters of the Illinois river 100 feet or more below the top of the rock. 
 
 There were, among the Indians of the Illinois valley, as among the 
 pale faces, who followed them into it, couples forbidden to marry under 
 the code of morals. That of the Indians was a savage one in keeping 
 with the numerous others of their customs such as burning at the stake, 
 torture of running the gantlet. 
 
 In such cases a long jump into the river may have seemed the easier 
 way out to such couples. 
 
 A 
 
 Robert Cavalier De LaSalle 
 Prince of American Explorers 
 
 Courtesy of Illinois State Historical Society 
 
 GENTLEMAN OF FRANCE 
 
 ^CROSS the pages of time, there flashes now and then a restless spirit, 
 a wandering spirit, one fired by ambition and consumed by that 
 same ambition and who leaves the world richer for his work, but 
 ends it all in the bleakest of personal tragedy. 
 
 Such was Robert Cavalier Sieur de LaSalle, a gentleman of France, 
 who claimed the heart of an empire for his monarch, a colonial empire 
 which other kings who followed Louis XIV allowed to slip from their 
 grasp into the hands of England, their ancient rival. 
 
 The Kings of England were no wiser than their counter parts across 
 in France, across the English channel. They held the center of an im- 
 mensely rich continent for less than a quarter of a century and saw it 
 slip into the hands of a young and struggling nation born of the inspired 
 work and belief in the equality of man and hardship in battle of a long 
 string of colonies, that reached from the northern mountains and lakes 
 of Vermont and New Hampshire down along the Atlantic seaboard 
 through the river valleys of New York and Pennsylvania, the tobacco 
 fields of Virginia and the rice fields and pine woods of the Carolinas 
 and Georgia. 
 
 The routine of daily masses and prayers, the long study to reach the 
 goal of the priesthood and the life of such a spiritual leader in a small 
 town parish of 17th century France — these were not meant for the rest- 
 less spirit that was LaSalle. 
 
Henry Tonty, "The Man with the Iron Hand." Italian explorer and trusted lieutenant 
 of LaSalle. From relief head in Marquette Building, Chicago, Illinois. 
 
 Courtesy of Illinois State Historical Society. 
 
 10 
 
So, when still in his early 20's LaSalle said farewell to the Jesuit 
 seminary in France, where he had been a student, took his small allowance 
 from his family and set out for Canada, another of the goodly company 
 of explorers and Jesuits and Franciscans, who were destined to play such 
 an important role at old Starved Rock. 
 
 It was a grand scheme, that youthful LaSalle had in mind — to set up 
 a chain of forts in the heart of the continent that would shut off the 
 westward expansion of the British colonies adding beyond measure to the 
 wealth and domain of his beloved France and at the same time enrich 
 his own fortune. 
 
 LaSalle, in the words of Shakespeare, lacked the quality of character 
 to bind men to him with hoops of steel. Courageous, but cold of character 
 he was a good foil for his loyal companion, Henry Tonti, the man with 
 the "Iron Hand" whose charitable attitude towards lonely men in the 
 wilderness made them as loyal to him as to the real leader of the many 
 expeditions led by LaSalle up and down the valley of the Illinois, from 
 1679 to 1683. 
 
 Those four years are among the most significant in middle western 
 colonial history. They established the lillies of France in the valleys of 
 Illinois and the Mississippi, saw the planting of the first French colonies 
 in the state, saw the Indians gather in numbers up to 20,000 or more 
 for protection under the guns of Fort St. Louis built on old Starved 
 Rock in 1682-83. They saw the beginning of law, the white man's law, 
 in the land of the Illini, saw the first business deals in real estate and 
 in the fur trade made out on the Rock, saw the Indian change swiftly 
 from one who had been on his own resources for unkown centuries to 
 one dependent partly on the white man for barter, for aid against his 
 enemies and saw him adopt, in many cases, the religious beliefs of the 
 pale face instead of sticking to his own pagan rites. 
 
 LaSalle, then, at 23 set himself up with a grant of land at Montreal 
 Island, Canada, called LaChine by some in derision because in all his 
 wanderings he was like others — he could not find a direct and shorter 
 route to China. That was the goal of the explorers of his day — and none 
 succeeded. The China trade in silks and spices and other luxuries was a 
 lucrative one for traders and ship owners and was eagerly sought as a 
 way to wealth. 
 
 A tribe of wandering Senecas paid him a visit one winter and told 
 him of a great river "Oyo, eight moons away that "empties into the sea." 
 
 That set LaSalle off on a two year trip, still veiled in mystery. Ap- 
 parently he discovered the Ohio. He may have found the Illinois and 
 the Mississippi, but all this is conjecture — nothing is certain. His plan- 
 tation, LaChine, was sold in 1669 to a Seminary at Montreal, which 
 financed his two year trip, starting with four canoes and 14 men to find 
 the Ohio. Parkman in, "LaSalle and the Discovery of the East" doubts 
 that LaSalle saw the Mississippi, but he certainly knew well the lay out 
 of the mid-west from his two year trip. France based her claims to the 
 heart of the continent on his explorations. 
 
 He knew the routes from the Lakes to the Illinois river, from some 
 source, even before Marquette and Joliet used them for the first time in 
 the summer and fall of 1673. 
 
 Back in Canada in 1672 LaSalle attached himself to Governor Fron- 
 tenac waiting for his grand scheme to materialize. 
 
 That was to set up the French forts in a strategic position, then claim 
 the midwest beyond the Alleghenies for France, drift down the Illinois 
 
 — 11 — 
 
and the Mississippi to the gulf coast and there bolster the French claim 
 again. Then the seat of French government in North America could be 
 transferred from cold inhospitable Canada to the fertile Mississippi valley. 
 French colonies would then be established, trade and commerce would 
 nourish and France would have a vastly rich empire in North America to 
 add to her Canadian possessions. 
 
 Louis the Magnificent took time out from the gay life of the French 
 court, its quadrilles and its idlers and sycophants to listen to the grand 
 scheme of LaSalle in 1674. Louis nodded his head in approval, called for 
 quill and parchment and drew up the royal order approving the designs 
 of LaSalle and also making LaSalle a noble for what he had already done. 
 
 He moved swiftly now, with a land grant given him at Fort Frontenac 
 (now Kingston, Ontario) along with trading rights on Lake Ontario and 
 in the distant land of the Illinois Indians which he was determined to 
 explore. 
 
 Fort Conti on the Niagara river was built to control that portage 
 against enemies. 
 
 Axes rang and trees crashed all one summer, that of 1679, when he 
 built the Griffon, the first sailing vessel on the Great Lakes. Indians 
 fled in terror into the thick timber, when she spread her white sails on 
 August 7, 1679 and set out for distant Mackinac in far northern Michigan 
 and then to Green Bay, Wisconsin. At Mackinac, he left his boon com- 
 panion, Tonti, with 20 men to build a trading post, then proceeded south 
 along the eastern shores of Lake Michigan to the mouth of the St. Joseph 
 river. LaSalle was to go to Green Bay, The Griffon loaded with furs was 
 to go to Niagara to unload, then return to Fort St. Joseph with supplies. 
 
 But the Griffon vanished and was never heard from again. That was 
 only the beginning of the troubles of LaSalle. 
 
 LaSalle had a party of 14 men with him including the Francisan 
 fathers, Louis Hennepin and Zenobe Membre, and Gabriel de la Ribourde, 
 the latter then 65 years old and destined with Membre to die at the hands 
 of Indians. His men fell to with axes and Fort Miami was built, the 
 third of his projected chain of forts in the wilderness. That gave him the 
 key to Illinois via the Kankakee river. November 12, 1679, Tonti arrived 
 with his grim message, that the Griffon had never reached Niagara or 
 even Mackinac. LaSalle waited for the balance of Tonti's men to arrive 
 at the fort. 
 
 Instructions were nailed to trees, to the master of the Griffon and her 
 crew as to his plans and where he had gone. 
 
 December 3, 1679 LaSalle and his force of 29 men set out for the 
 Illinois and Mississippi in bitter weather through land filled with dreary 
 and icy marshes. The Indians had fired the prairies in the fall — the game 
 had been driven away. Hunger and cold assailed the explorers. A 
 buffalo mired in the muddy marsh along the Illinois met a sudden end 
 and provided badly needed meat. 
 
 The mouth of the Fox river at Ottawa — the Indians called it Pesticoui 
 — was passed, then Buffalo Rock, that mighty mass of yellow sand stone, 
 west of Ottawa on the north side of the Illinois river. Then Starved Rock 
 was reached, its oak and pines clad in the snow of winter. Marquette and 
 Joliet had passed the same great rock for the first time, when it was 
 cloaked in its early fall colors and the second time, when it wore the soft 
 livery of early spring. Now LaSalle saw it stripped of all greenery or 
 brilliant color, as winter clutched the land with icy hands. Marquette 
 and Joliet on each of their trips had found the great Indian villages of 
 
 — 12 — 
 
Kaskaskia or LaVantum, as the French called it, teaming with hundreds 
 of Indians, naked children and slinking cur dogs some of which wound 
 up in the stew pot as the explorers found. They politely declined it, and 
 with equal politeness on the part of their hosts were then offered some 
 of the "Fat of the Land," that came from the deer and the buffalo, then 
 roaming Illinois and, literally, were as well clad with fat in their way 
 as the porkers of the white man in the same valley in the twentieth 
 century. 
 
 LaSalle and his party, cold and hungry Frenchman, found the rows 
 of bark huts housing 4,000 to 5,000 Indians, usually 6 families to a hut, 
 deserted. No blue wood smoke came from the dark and ill smelling 
 cabins, there was no chatter of men or women in the village streets, no 
 shouts of children at play, no cur dogs roamed through the idle streets. 
 The Indians were off on a winter hunting trip. 
 
 Desperate for food LaSalle and his men raided the corn pits of the 
 Indians and for payment left a supply of gifts without which no explorer 
 went among the Indians. The women loved the white man's finery of 
 beads and baubles as well as the warriors relished the axes and tobacco 
 and other goods which they could not produce themselves. 
 
 The silent village of the Kaskaskia, when LaSalle first saw it, was a 
 grim forecast of the scene of horror, that he was to look on in the same 
 sprawling camp, less than a year in the future after the Iroquois had been 
 on there savage raid. 
 
 Were it not recorded history the labors of LaSalle in the Illinois and 
 Mississippi valleys over a period of several years would seem incredible 
 for their long journey, some by foot, some by canoe, some through the 
 heat of the summer and others in the dead of a North American winter. 
 
 New Years day 1680 Father Hennepin offered a mass and extended 
 greeting to the concourse of Frenchmen in the lonely wilderness and 
 LaSalle then resumed his journey down the Illinois to what is now Peoria. 
 
 Somewhere along Peoria Lake, called by the Indians "Pimeteoui" or 
 a "Place of Many Fat Beasts." LaSalle found a village of 80 lodges of 
 the Illinois. 
 
 LaSalle and the sachems smoked the pipe of peace and exchanged 
 gifts. LaSalle made known his plans to build a "big canoe" to go down 
 the Mississippi. 
 
 Trouble arrived with a Mascoutin chief, who hinted that LaSalle was 
 a spy for the dreaded Iroquois. LaSalle wormed himself back into the 
 good graces of the Illini, but half a dozen of his men on whom he depended 
 for aid in building his ship took to the tall timber. With his usual charac- 
 teristic energy he started to build Fort Crevecour or "Broken Heart" 
 with its storehouses and huts for his workmen. Again the axes rang in 
 the wilderness as he started work on his proposed "Big Canoe" to float 
 down the Illinois and Mississippi. 
 
 In six weeks the keel was laid, but no ship could sail without cordage 
 or sails and they were in distant Canada. LaSalle set out for Canada to 
 get them. Father Hennepin, Michael Ako and Anthony Augel were di- 
 rected to go up the Mississippi on a trip which Hennepin made famous 
 in his account of the journey to the Falls of St. Anthony. 
 
 March 1st found LaSalle enroute to Canada through a land where 
 winter was breaking up and snow, sleet and rain were common. March 
 10th they were back in the Indian village south of Utica to rest for a 
 few days. 
 
 — 13 — 
 
He bargained with Chassagouc, mighty chief of the Illini for a canoe 
 load of corn to be sent down the river to Tonti at Fort Grevercour. Then 
 LaSalle took a look at Starved Rock and determined to change his base of 
 operations up river to LeRocher, as he called it, from Fort Crevecour. 
 At Fort Miami two of his men, were told to go down river to Tonti and 
 tell him of LaSalle's decision. 
 
 Fortified and garrisoned with troops, it could command the Illinois 
 and control the water route from Lake Michigan to the Mississippi against 
 enemies. It could be made a bastion of defense for the Illinois Indians 
 and their friends and a good base for the fur trade for hundreds of miles 
 around. 
 
 May 6 LaSalle was back on his home ground at Fort Frontenac, after 
 a journey of 1,000 miles through frozen wilderness, down river and back, 
 a trip that would have exhausted the strength or spirit of a man less 
 determined to carry out his plans than this gentleman of France. 
 
 More disastrous news waited LaSalle at Frontenac. Messengers told 
 him more of Tonti's men had taken to the tall timber, had wrecked the 
 Fort and stolen his goods. Others told him the same scoundrels had 
 pillaged Fort Miami, rifled Fort Conti at Niagara, seized his furs at 
 Mackinac and that some of them were on their way to Frontenac with 
 murder in their hearts. 
 
 LaSalle learned also that a ship from France with cargo of goods for 
 his colony and 20 men for the same purpose had been wrecked in the 
 Gulf of St. Lawrence. Enemies had stirred up his creditors against him. 
 It was a disheartening prospect that he faced now. But still he would 
 not throw up the sponge — he straightened matters out. His mutinous crew 
 were captured and sent to Frontenac for sentence by the Governor — a pair 
 were shot resisting arrest. 
 
 In the heat of early August, LaSalle and a party of 24 men and his 
 lieutenant, Francois de la Forest, set out once again for Fort Crevecour 
 or, more properly LeRocher, where he expected to find Tonti, with the 
 Fort built on top of the great Rock. 
 
 It was late in November, 1680 when they reached LeRocher and 
 the great village of the Illini. But there were no battlements on top of 
 the Rock, no sign that one had been started, no word of the presence of 
 Tonti. LaSalle was alarmed at the absence of Tonti, his faithful lieuten- 
 ant, in so many long journeys and hardships of the Illinois wilderness. 
 It was soon evident, looking at the ruins of the Illinois village and the cold 
 camps of the Iroquois, what had happened since he last set foot in 
 the camp. 
 
 Buzzards wheeled lazily in the autumn sky, the ominous sign of the 
 disaster for wherever these ugly birds were seen there has been death 
 in one form or another. The dogs slinked through the ruins of the burned 
 and destroyed huts, there was everywhere the odor of death and the awful 
 evidence of the fury of the Iroqouis attack on the village of the Illinois. 
 
 Corpses lay everywhere, some of children, their brains beaten our with 
 clubs, men had been clubbed or speared to death. Women were sprawled 
 in death trying to protect their papooses. Old men and withered crones, 
 unable to protect themselves had fallen an easy victim to the Iroquois. 
 The once busy village streets, that had hummed with life, now were 
 avenues of violent death. Graves had been ripped open and bodies des- 
 cecated. In short the Iroquois had shown themselves, once more to be 
 among the most savage and crudest of all American tribes. 
 
 — 14 — 
 
LaSalle left some of his men at LeRocher, while he descended the 
 Illinois in a fruitless search for his apparently lost friend, Tonti, and the 
 Franciscan priests Membre and De la Ribourde who had been with LaSalle. 
 The search was fruitless; sadly LaSalle retraced his trail up the Illinois 
 once more, past the ruined Illinois village, near LeRocher, where he picked 
 up the men he had left there, and set out in rigorous winter weather to 
 Fort Miami. There they found LaForest with planks and timber for a new 
 vessel to sail the Great Lakes and replace the lost Griffon. 
 
 Where was Tonti all this time? He had gone up river to examine 
 LeRocHer. More of his men had skipped out on him, as said, leaving him 
 with three loyal ones and the two priests. Tonti with this faithful hand- 
 ful had lived with the Indians at LeRocher until September 1680. It was 
 about September 10th, that a Shawnee arrived with the terrible news, 
 that a party of Iroqouis was hidden in the thick timber along the Big 
 Vermillion or Aramoni river, west of LeRocher and the Indian camp. Now 
 Tonti was in deadly danger of his life — the Illinois accused him of being 
 a spy, for the dreaded Iroquois. He advanced to meet the Iroquois, when 
 the battle was joined between that tribe and the Illinois on the plain, west 
 of LeRocher, and the Indian camp below Utica on the Illinois. 
 
 One warrior plunged a knife into the breast of Tonti, another thought- 
 fully looked over his scalp for a souvenir. Some debated what to do 
 with him as a friend of the French and Illinois. It was the question of 
 tying him to a stake or turning him loose, to still another action of the 
 painted and ferocious Irquois. Finally the wounded Tonti, weak from 
 loss of blood was directed to go to the camp of the Illinois and tell them 
 the Iroqouis were "friends of the Governor of France" and wanted only 
 peace. Tonti warned the Illinois the Iroquois were not to be trusted. 
 
 The more timid of the Illinois burned their lodges, took their women 
 and children off the island, where they had been placed for safety and 
 skipped for safety down the river. 
 
 Two days later the Iroqouis proposed peace and gave Tonti skins to 
 induce him to leave. Tonti kicked them away with supreme contempt for 
 the offer. But he could do no more for the already doomed Illinois 
 Indians. He accepted an offer of safe conduct from the Iroquois, for him- 
 self and the two friars, Membre and LeRibourde, and set off up the Illi- 
 nois in a leaky canoe partly laden with furs. That was September 18, 
 1680. The next day the canoe leaked so badly it was beached at what 
 is now Seneca, 25 miles east of LeRocher. Here Father de la Ribourde 
 went into the forest to pray, against the advice of those with him. He 
 was never seen alive again by the white men. 
 
 The story is told that the Kickapoos fell on him with wooden head- 
 knockers and left the 65 year old priest dead in the woods, where his body 
 was never found. 
 
 As was LaSalle, he was a gentleman of France, son and heir of a 
 nobleman of Burgundy. His piety and devotion to his church were known 
 throughout Canada for which he gave up his old home, friends and finally 
 his life. 
 
 The first death among the missionaries, who had toiled in the Illinois, 
 his fate was meted out to Father Membre in Texas, in 1689, to Father 
 James Gravier from wounds at the hands of the Indians on the Mississippi 
 Gulf coast in 1708 and to Father Sebastian Raise a 1,000 miles from the 
 Illinois valley at the hands of the Indians and English settlers in Maine, 
 in 1724. 
 
 — 15 — 
 
Meanwhile the slaughter had gone on at the village of the Illinois. One 
 tribe, the Tamoreas, had been slow or leluctant to flee and on these the 
 Iroqouis fell like fiends wiping out the tribe. Those who had left Kas- 
 kaskia ahead of the Iroquois escaped some of the worst of the slaughter. 
 
 Now back to LaSalle and his movements again comparable only to 
 those of his earlier years in the great valley of the Illinois. Uppermost 
 in his mind was the formation of some confederation among the scattered 
 tribes of the midwest, which, allied with the remaining Illinois would 
 fend off any further raids by the ferocious Iroquois. That was done at 
 Fort Miami, where he spent the winter of 1681-82. Allied now with the 
 Illini were the remnants of the Abenakis and Mohegans fleeing westward 
 from the bloody horrors of King Phillip's war in distant Massachusetts 
 and remnants also of the Shawnees and the Miamis, victims of the 
 Iroquois. 
 
 In March, 1681, he set out again for the ruined town of the Illinois 
 at Starved Rock. A band of Foxes told him Tonti still lived and that 
 Hennepin and Ako had come back from the land of the Sioux. The Illini 
 were urged to smoke the pipe of peace, with the Miami for the protection 
 of both. But another trip back to Montreal was necessary to pacify his 
 creditors and get more supplies and credit. 
 
 That done LaSalle, Father Membre, 30 Frenchmen and 100 of his 
 allied Indians set out for the Illinois country reaching Fort Miami in 
 November 1681. A rest of a month followed and the party resumed its 
 trip December 21, 1681 with LaSalle, Tonti, Father Membre, D'Autray, 
 lieutenants of LaSalle, 23 Frechmen and Indian braves, squaws and chil- 
 dren — 54 people in all. They struggled through icy waste until, open 
 water was reached at Peoria Lake. April 6, 1682 the goal of the long 
 standing ambitions of LaSalle was reached. His relentless work through 
 one hardship and disaster after another could not but help he recalled 
 as the triumph of a man determined to do what he started to perform. 
 That was to plant the lillies of France on the Gulf coast of the Mississippi 
 and take possession of a mighty empire in the heart of a continent for 
 Louis XIV. 
 
 A column was erected with words "Louis le Grand, Roy de France 
 et de Navarre, regne le neuviemie April 1682." LaSalle took possession 
 of the river and all that it drained, a huge territory from the Rockies to 
 the Alleghanies, from sunny Louisiana to the great northern forests of 
 distant Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan 1500 miles north and south 
 and another 1500 miles east and west. 
 
 But even a man with the strength and the coura'ge of LaSalle was 
 bound to feel the effects of so many long and exhausting journeys through 
 the wilderness. He fell ill on the ardous trip back up the Mississippi and 
 did not reach Fort Miami until August and Mackinac in September. 
 Father Membre was sent to Europe to tell the King that LaSalle has 
 claimed the Mississippi valley for the empire. Aboard the same sailing 
 ship was Count Frontenac, the loyal backer of LaSalle and his ambitions, 
 who had been relieved of his command by LeFebvre de la Barre, an enemy 
 of LaSalle. Intrigue once more had been made against him. 
 
 It was December 1682, when LaSalle again reached LeRocher. There 
 he and Tonti and the other Frenchmen felled trees to make a palisaded 
 Fort out of the top of the Rock as a bastion of empire for the French 
 colony, he proposed to found in the Mississippi valley a bastion of 
 defense for the allied Indians against more incursions of the Iroquois. 
 What this palisade looked like on top of what is now Starved Rock is told 
 
 — 16 — 
 
by LaSalle of which this part is taken from Magry Decouvertes estab- 
 lishments 11, 175, 76. It follows: "Below it was the ancient village of 
 the Kaskaskias, who abandoned it since the raid caused three years ago 
 by the Iroquois. The news of the Fort, which I have built there, has called 
 them back together with other nations. It is situated on the left in 
 descending the river on the height of a rock preciptious on almost all 
 sides, whose base the river laves in such a manner, that one can draw up 
 water from it to the summit of the Rock, which is about six hundred feet 
 in circumference. It is accessible only on one side, on which the ascent 
 is still quite difficult. This side is barred by a palisade of stakes of white 
 oak from eight to ten inches in diameter and 22 feet high, flanked by 
 three redoubts of square beams, placed upon the other equidistantly, so 
 that the two sustain each other. The rest of the enclosure of the rock 
 is surrounded by a like palisade but only 15 feet high, because it is inacces- 
 sible. There is also a parapet of thick trees lying lengthwise the one upon 
 the other to a height of two men, the other covered with earth and at 
 the top of the palisade a kind of chevaux-de-frise, the points of which are 
 ironed tipped to prevent scaling. The neighborhood rocks are all lower 
 than this line and the nearest is two hundred feet distant, the others 
 more, between which and the Fort of St. Louis ends on two sides a large 
 dale which a brook traverses and inundates when it rains." 
 
 Now Fort St. Louis was finished. It was to look down on 20,000 or 
 more Indians in their bark lodges strung along the river. By some his- 
 torians it is claimed to be the first white habitation of permanence in the 
 whole Mississippi valley. Here D' Autry was granted land by LaSalle, 
 but was not fortunate enough to enjoy his patrimony more than a few 
 years, when he met death at the hands of Indians, the year after LaSalle 
 met the same fate at the hands of his own treacherous workmen. 
 
 Once again the squaws labored in the corn and bean fields, the warriors 
 loafed or boasted of their exploits in battle to visiting delegations. Naked 
 children ran through the streets and the usually large population of cur 
 dogs multiplied without distinction as to blood lines, contrary to the dog 
 fanciers creed of to-day. LaSalle was content for the time being. The seat 
 of his seigniory would be here. He was surrounded with Frenchmen, he 
 could deal out land to his favorites. Even the usually taciturn Tonti com- 
 mented that it was a charming country, as one might anywhere see, "A 
 great plain adorned with trees and abounding in strange fruits, buffalo 
 and deer were plentiful; game fish and birds abounded. 
 
 Far away Governor LaBarre on his "high-horse" now was doing all 
 he could to undermine LaSalle and his plans. Supplies for LaSalle were 
 held up or not sent, his fur traders were way laid by agents of LaBarre. 
 That worthy sent word to the French court and the tongues wagged and 
 clacked against LaSalle among the bewigged dandies, their women and 
 their fancy women, both always masters of intrigue. 
 
 Matters became so bad that LaSalle in the early fall of 1683, when 
 the first wild geese were asking for the best routes south, accompanied by 
 vast flocks of wild ducks, bound the same trackless way, determined to 
 go back to Canada and to France to "settle the hash" of LaBarre. Also 
 in his mind was the old ambition to found his larger colony in the 
 Mississippi valley; then he could again defy his enemies to do their worst 
 against him. That was after LaBarre had sent him an official order to sur- 
 render Fort St. Louis to one de Bauges in league, of course, with LaBarre. 
 
 LaSalle now was to look for the last time on Fort St. Louis and its 
 great Indian camp. He left them a farewell note telling them to obey all 
 
 — 17 — 
 
orders given them no matter how hard or unreasonable they seemed to 
 be, and that he would be back in the spring of 1684 to greet them again. 
 Then they would broach the barrel of whiskey, which was to be saved 
 for his return. Tonti was to remain at the Fort and they were to follow 
 his counsel as the agent of LaSalle and to gather buffalo skins and beaver 
 skins for trade. 
 
 Once more tongues clacked in the gay court of Louis the Great in 
 Paris but this time LaSalle, no mean figure in such a place, set them 
 whispering first, then speaking openly against LaBarre and his intrigues. 
 The King of France rebuked LaBarre by sending LaForest, then in France 
 to reoccupy both Fort St. Louis and Fort Miami. LaSalle travelled through 
 out France rounding up peasants and artisians willing to leave their 
 hearth and go to the distant French colony of the Mississippi. 
 
 The expedition got under way from the harbor of LaRochelle in 1684 
 under the command, while at sea, of Captain Beaujeau. Friction devel- 
 oped among the volatile French. A storm drove them far out of their 
 course so they were forced to land on the coast of what is now Texas. 
 
 Misery, treachery, hardship, murder and the breaking up of the col- 
 ony marked this last ill fated venture of LaSalle. 
 
 LaSalle started to search for the mouth of the Mississippi, up which 
 he could lead the colonists to the distant Fort St. Louis more than 1,000 
 miles away. 
 
 The malcontents of the colony fell on him took his life on March 19, 
 1687 and left him without even a grave. His nephew, his faithful 
 Shawnee scout, and his servant fell to the same villainous crew. 
 
 Thus, said Osman in his "Last of a Great Indian Tribe" in the vigor 
 of his manhood at the age of 43, "died Robert Cavalier Siuer de LaSalle 
 and the heroic age of Canada came to an end". Tonti is quoted by the 
 same author saying, "Behold the fate of one of the greatest men in the 
 age of wonderful ability and capable of accomplishing any enterprise." 
 
 More murders followed, father Membre among them, La Forest and 
 Boiron, another friend of LaSalle. A few escaped to France with the fleet 
 of colony vessels. The Spanish captured others. The Abbe Cavalier, 
 brother of LaSalle, Douay and Joutel, commander of the soldiers attached 
 to the planned colony finally reached Fort St. Louis on their way back 
 to France. 
 
 MAPS AND CANOES 
 
 MUCH has been made of LaSalle and Marquette and justly so, for 
 their part in the French history of the Illinois and Mississippi val- 
 leys, but each had a loyal companion, who in their own way, left a 
 rich legacy of history and toil as did Marquette, companion to Joliet, and 
 LaSalle companion to Tonti. Each travelled thousands of miles through 
 out the great valleys of what is now the richest part of central America 
 in one trip after another. 
 
 Take first the case of Tonti, known to the Indians. as the man with 
 the "Iron Hand", who did not hesitate, when necessity demanded it, to 
 use it, on the person of the refractory Indians to keep them in line, with 
 his orders or those of LaSalle. Literally it was an iron hand. He had lost the 
 original in battle in Europe before he met LaSalle in France and attached 
 himself to that gentleman of France for the balance of the life of LaSalle. 
 
 — 18 — 
 
Map of the Illinois Country, showing Cahokia, to which 
 the French Capitol was moved from Starved Rock. 
 
 Cahokia 
 
 (•723) 
 
 > Prairie du Rocher 
 ('733) 
 Kaskaskia 
 Ste. Genevieve VJ ( 1 700) 
 (■735) 
 
 Fort Chartres 
 (1720) 
 
 REGION OF 
 "THE ILLINOIS" 
 
 Cape Girardeau 1 
 ('79°) 
 
 Map of "Old Fort" — south of Starved Rock. 
 — 19 — 
 
Where Tonti was born is not certain. Some historians maintain he 
 was a native of Italy, others lean to the belief he was a native of France. 
 He has.been mentioned many times in the chapter the "Gentleman of 
 France." Now we find him in part command of Fort St. Louis in the 
 spring of 1684. Rumors came through the wilderness that the Iroquois 
 were once again en route to "drink the blood and eat the flesh of the 
 Illinois" as they had done in September 1680. 
 
 This time they met a Tartar in Tonti, who had no love and little 
 respect for these blood thirsty devils, from the east. Tonti and his co- 
 commander, de Baugy, were ready for the attack. It came March 21, 
 1684 and lasted six days. The roar of Indian battle resounded over the 
 wide Illinois and through the timber land where the first of the spring 
 wild flowers were peering through the swampy muck of the sodden hill 
 sides. The Iroquois were beaten back nursing their wounds and probably 
 carrying their dead and injured, with them to prevent their desecration 
 or torture by the warriors of the Illini and their allies. 
 
 Tonti was called to Quebec and was told that he was to command 
 Fort St. Louis. On his return he found the Illinois and the Miami about 
 ready to swing the war clubs at each other. That trouble required settling, 
 which may have been done with the aid of the "Iron Hand" in a literal 
 sense. 
 
 Worried now by the non-appearance of LaSalle at Fort St. Louis, 
 Tonti set out for the Gulf of Mexico, 1000 miles away to find his lost 
 companion. That was a fruitless piece of work on his part, which lasted 
 from April to early September 1686. He left a letter for LaSalle, which 
 was given to a chief of the Mougoulockes, a tribe that lived 100 miles 
 above modern New Orleans. 
 
 The survivors of LaSalle's ill fated expedition from France, which was 
 to found a colony for him, had deceived Tonti on their arrival at Fort 
 St. Louis. They told Tonti that LaSalle still lived, when in fact he had 
 been murdered. They stayed the winter, after which Tonti and he loaned 
 them 700 francs to get back to France. It was not until the fall of 1688, 
 that Tonti learned the bitter truth about LaSalle and the manner of his 
 death. It was December 1689, when he made another trip down the 
 Mississippi in vain, again, to find the killers of his lost chief. He was 
 gone then until September, 1690. 
 
 Tonti was commander of Fort St. Louis from 1690 to 1698 and con- 
 trolled the key post in the colonial dreams of LaSalle as said by Mon- 
 signor Thomas A. Meehan S. J. in his booklet, "Man with the Iron Hand". 
 
 He had little money and less influence at the court of France, but con- 
 tinually tried to stir interest in official circles and among the people of 
 France to found colonies in the Mississippi valley. 
 
 He made a notary account in 1693 to his partner, LaForest, for 3,893 
 livres (French currency) in good beaver at the current prices within two 
 years. He hired voyageurs to carry supplies to Fort St. Louis and bring 
 back the furs gathered by the Indians and French trappers. 
 
 The edict of the King of France in 1691 said that white men were pro- 
 hibited from trading west of Montreal, but Tonti and LaForest were ex- 
 cepted from the order. But their trade was so restricted by the royal 
 order as to leave them little profit. Tonti spent the last four years of his 
 life in the Mississippi gulf coast, where D'Iberville had founded his 
 French colony. His death there was from fever in 1704. 
 
 Of the greatness of Tonti, Monsignor Meehan wrote; "He was possibly 
 one of the greatest and most unselfish men who ever trod the soil of 
 
 — 20 — 
 
Illinois. He was loved, feared and respected by the Indians. He had en- 
 durance that few men had, and absolute fearlessness and bravery was a 
 counterpart of him. He was loyal to LaSalle and later to the point of 
 death to D'Iberville. Finally, as testimony shows, he had deeply religious 
 convictions. Few men in history have had so many admirable qualities 
 to such a high degree. 
 
 Some idea of what his contemporaries thought of him is gleaned from 
 a letter of Father St. Cosme. "He is the man who knows best these 
 regions; he has twice gone down to the sea, he has been far inland to the 
 most remote tribes and is beloved and feared everywhere. If it be desired 
 to have discoveries made in this country I don't think the task could be 
 provided to a more experienced man." That 'is the case for Tonti, who 
 knew the wilderness as did few men of his time. Now for that of his 
 predecessor Louis Jolliet, as he spelled his name. 
 
 Unlike the other French explorers and priests, who wrote so much 
 history in the Illinois valley, he was a native of North America. His 
 birthplace was near Quebec, September 1645 and at 10 he was a student 
 in a Jesuit school. His minor orders as a Jesuit were conferred by Bishop 
 Laval in 1662, but like LaSalle and Marquette, the hum drum life of a 
 priest in a little town was not for him. He spent a year or so in France, 
 then next appears at the Soo in Michigan in June 1671, in a ceremony 
 complete with Indians, priests, soldiers and a handful of government dig- 
 nitaries of Canada, when the north country was ♦claimed for France be- 
 fore LaSalle did the same 1,500 miles to the south on the Gulf coast. 
 
 A year later, Joliet was commissioned by Talon of the Canadian royal 
 government, to start search for the Mississippi and its mouth. That led 
 to his hook up with Marquette, the young Jesuit missionary, who had 
 been stationed in what is now Northern Michigan. 
 
 Their voyages up and down the Illinois and the founding of the fir A 
 Christian Mission at Utica by Marquette in 1675 have been told. 
 
 After the death of Marquette, Joliet was married the same year and 
 settled down to go into business and raise a family near Quebec. His 
 eldest son was born in 1676. His petition to go back to the Illinois valley 
 on a voyage of exploration was denied by the royal government. But in 
 1689 he was mapping the wilderness of the Labrodarian coast. He also 
 mapped the Gulf of St. Lawrence at the order of the French government 
 as an aid to navigation. His death was in 1700 and his burial place is 
 unknown. 
 
 Joliet found the valley of the Illinois, a beautiful place filled with 
 game and fish, where he believed it would be easy for settlers to make 
 their living; of the valley he wrote: 
 
 "The river which we have christened St. Louis rises near the lower 
 end of the lake of the Illinois (Lake Michigan) and seemed to me the 
 most beautiful and most suitable for settlement. 
 
 "At the place where we entered the lake is a harbor convenient for 
 receiving vessels and sheltering them from the wind. The river is wide 
 and deep abounding in catfish and sturgeon. 
 
 "For the distance of 80 leagues, not a quarter hour passes without 
 seeing game, which is abundant in these parts, oxen, cows, stags, does 
 and turkeys are found there in much greater numbers than elsewhere. 
 
 "There are prairies 3, 6, 10 and 20 leagues long and three wide sur- 
 rounded by forests of the same extent, beyond these the prairies begin 
 again, so that there is much of one sort of land as of the other. Some of 
 
 — 21 — 
 
the grass is very short, some grows as high as six feet, hemp grows wild 
 here and reaches a height of eight feet. 
 
 "A settler would not have to spend 10 years cutting and burning trees. 
 On the very day of his arrival he could put his plow into the ground. 
 And if he had no oxen from France, he could use those of this country 
 or even on which western Indians ride, as we do on horses. After sowing 
 grains of all kinds a settler could devote himself to planting trees and 
 grafting fruit trees, to tanning hides, with which to make shoes and with 
 the wool of the oxen (buffalo) he could make finer clothes than that 
 brought from France. 
 
 "Thus he could easily find in the country, his food and his clothing 
 and nothing could be wanting except salt; however by taking proper steps 
 it should not be difficult to remedy that deficiency." 
 
 It was Joliet, with the trained eye of the explorer and the map makers, 
 who with Marquette, first saw the possibilities of a waterway, that would 
 link the Great Lakes with the Father of Waters, far to the west. Of it he 
 wrote: "We could easily sail ships to Florida. All that needs to be done 
 is to dig a canal through half a league of prairie from the lower end of 
 Lake Michigan to the river of St. Louis — which empties into the Missis- 
 sippi, which the ship could easily descend to the Gulf of Mexico. 
 
 SIEGE AND SLAUGHTER 
 
 WOMEN screamed in horror and children yelled in terror as the 
 knife, the tomahawk, the spear and the war club did their deadly 
 work on the night of September 8, 1730. 
 
 Historians are agreed on the date — but still argue as to the site of 
 the siege of the Fox Indians by their enemies, the Sauks and a band of 
 French soldiers. Many sites have been suggested by students of French 
 colonial history. None agree and it remains to this day a fascinating rid- 
 dle with part of the story centered around Starved Rock long before 
 the siege started. 
 
 The Foxes were the "scourge of the forest" a rough and tough tribe, 
 well able to take care of themselves in the endless and savage war-far, 
 that was so common in Illinois before and after the coming of the white 
 man. 
 
 They preyed on the French, stole their furs, enroute to be sold, and 
 left the owners scalped and dead in the wilderness. The Illini were a 
 favorite target of the Foxes to be slaughtered or roasted at the stake as 
 captives. 
 
 But the Illini in all this savagery, did not wear the wings of angels or 
 the mein of saints. They were cruel and vengeful also. One source of 
 early Illinois history say they captured a nephew of Oushala, head man 
 of the Foxes, and made of him a burnt offering at the stake. 
 
 The war drums beat in fury in the Fox camps. Word of the outrage 
 perpetrated by the Illini went out to the allies of the Foxes — the Macaou- 
 tins, the Kickapoos, the Winnebagoes, the Sauks and even the distant 
 Sioux and Abenakies. 
 
 The Fox warriors had nothing more to do than take to the warpath. 
 The squaws could look after the crops as they did anyway. 
 
 So the allied warriors in 1722 gathered at the base of old Starved 
 Rock and drove some of the Peorias, part of the Illini confederation, to the 
 top of the Rock, expecting them to starve to death. 
 
 — 22 — 
 
Starved Rock as seen from the Illinois River. 
 
 But the Foxes found a tartar on their hands. The Peorias had no de- 
 sire to have their scalps hung on a warpole in a Fox village. They battled 
 back and the Foxes lost six men to each of the Peoria tribe's one. 
 
 Word of the latest war between the Foxes and the Illini set the 
 French army commanders in the west to tearing their hair and a force 
 of troops was started from Fort Chartres in southwestern Illinois to 
 Starved Rock or Fort St. Louis as it was then known. 
 
 Before they arrived the Foxes had lifted the siege and sought the 
 favor of the French for doing so. The Peorias freed of their potential 
 death trap, scuttled for a safer place along the Mississippi and the Foxes 
 took over their lands. 
 
 The Foxes continued their depradations against the French fur traders 
 and courier de bois. Finally the government of Canada determined to 
 wipe out the Foxes, men, women and children, to make the fur trade 
 safe for the Canadian dealer. 
 
 How it was to be done was of no great concern to the royal govern- 
 ment. It could conveniently look the other way, if the helpless mem- 
 
 — 23 — 
 
BEAUTIFUL STARVED ROCK 
 
 Archaeologists at v 
 Starved Rock Exr. 
 tons and relics of 
 logical value founc 
 throughout the coi 
 
JTATE PARK 
 
 Starved Rock State Park — one of 
 the most beautiful, scenic spots in 
 the entire Midwest — water falls, 
 canyons and rock formations dot its 
 1850 acres. Shown here are typical 
 views. 
 
 : during 1947-1948 
 ition — many skele- 
 orical and archaeo- 
 e now in museums 
 
 y- 
 
bers of a tribe, the women and the children met death by siege or in a 
 fiendish way devised by the Foxes. The important thing was to wipe 
 them out. 
 
 St. Ange, commander of the French troops at Fort Chartres, was 
 ordered to start a force of soldiers and Sauk Indians north to intercept 
 the Foxes. 
 
 The Foxes got wind of the dispatch of about 500 enemies against them 
 and supposedly started east to seek asylum from their friends, the Iroquois. 
 
 Just where they were trapped by the Sauks and French is the matter 
 of dispute by historians. 
 
 W. R. Foster of Ottawa, who from 1906 to 1946 was LaSalle county 
 superintendent of schools, had no peer as a student of early day history 
 and legends of northern Illinois suggested, logically, that the Foxes split 
 into bands to keep from being annihilated and that more than one band 
 may have been trapped. 
 
 The late Bishop Joseph H. Schlarman of Peoria, believed the Foxes 
 were trapped in eastern Illinois, south of Chicago. Other historians, with 
 less proof, even placed it on Covel Creek near Ottawa and Starved Rock. 
 
 The late Stanley Faye, another competent student of colonial and 
 Indian history in Illinois in the October 1935 issue of the Illinois State 
 Historical Society quarterly, placed the siege on the Vermillion River, 
 north of Lowell and about five miles south of Starved Rock. 
 
 W. C. Brigham, retired McLean county superintendent of schools, 
 contended the Foxes were trapped near Arrowsmith, east of Bloomington. 
 
 In the 1900's John Steward of Piano, spent much time in Paris as 
 agent for a harvester company, by whom he was employed. His interest 
 in early Illinois history led him to search the old French colonial records 
 of the late 17th and early 18th centuries in Illinois. 
 
 From these records he deduced the Foxes were trapped near the fa- 
 mous old Indian village of Meramech, about two miles south of Piano. 
 There Little Rock and Big Rock creeks, one on the east and the other on 
 the west of a low bluff, joins at the south side of the bluff. Steward 
 bought two acres or so of the top of the bluff and deeded it to the Piano 
 schools. Then he marked the top with native boulders at the site of the 
 "rifle pits" and "trenches" "used by the besiegers". 
 
 Where ever the Foxes were chased to the top of the bluff and held out 
 against their enemies in the waning summer days of 1730, they were not 
 annihilated, as the Sauks and French believed they would be. 
 
 The Sauks had been friends and allies of the Foxes for unknown years. 
 Now they turned on the French and secretly aided the Foxes by passing 
 them weapons, etc. The French soldiers did some grumbling about the 
 matter, too, as their own supplies ran short and it appeared they would 
 be there for an indefinite time. Even the hum drum of a garrison life 
 was preferable to being stuck in the wilderness trying to wear out a band 
 of stubborn Indians by siege. 
 
 The siege broken, the massacre done, and some of the luckier Foxes 
 outdistancing their enemies, as they fled, enough Foxes survived to keep 
 the race alive. 
 
 A century later they took part in the three months Black Hawk war of 
 northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin marked by cruelty on the part 
 of the Indians, defending lands against the encroachment of the whites, 
 and by equally vicious tactics on the part of the white soldiers. 
 
 — 26 — 
 
RETREAT FROM CANADA 
 
 HE could see it all now, the disgrace and humiliation to his small 
 body of troops as something that was inevitable unless he took 
 swift action to avoid it. 
 
 A long file of British troops, in their scarlet uniforms, would be at 
 rigid attention, their faces masking their jubilation as best they could in 
 a soldierly fashion. 
 
 Facing them would be a long file of French troops at equally rigid 
 attention, only their soldierly training, as with the British masking their 
 true feelings. But a twitching of the lips and a lifting of the eye brow 
 would tell more than words. 
 
 There would be sharp commands and the fleur-de-lis of France would 
 come fluttering down off the tall flag staff. Another sharp command 
 would be barked and the Union Jack would go to the top of the pole. 
 There might be some martial airs to go with the ceremony, then crisp 
 orders and the troops would march off to their barracks, the British to 
 toast their conquest of Canada, the French to mourn the loss of half a 
 continent. 
 
 There was no hesitancy in the mind of Captain Passerat de la Chappelle, 
 only 26, a soldier of France already a veteran of many years service as 
 to what to do when that exigency of surrendering his command to the 
 British would take place. He would not endure it. 
 
 He would get permission from his superiors to march them to Louisiana 
 to a place of refuge safe from the British. A journey of 2,000 miles 
 through the winter weather of Canada and the middle west? That was 
 a small matter, he could take supplies, build a fort and spend the winter 
 with his command. 
 
 Some personal history of De la Chappelle is in order. He was born 
 July 9, 1734 at the chateau of Montville in the department of Contrevez 
 en Budget, France, and entered the army, when he was 18. Commissioned 
 in the royal artillery, he was in Quebec in May 1756. He was in active 
 service against the British at Fort Duquesne near Pittsburgh and May 12, 
 1758 was wounded in an attack on the British fort near the Potomac. 
 The young army officer was in the battle of Quebec in 1759, when the 
 British under Wolfe defeated the French under Montcalm and the fate 
 of Canada was sealed — now it was to become British territory. 
 
 The story of the retreat from Canada to New Orleans to escape sur- 
 render to the British was not known to historians, until one of his des- 
 cendants, the Baron de la Chappelle of Paris found documents and other 
 historical information, which he presented to a meeting of the Societe 
 d' histoire du Canada in 1933. It was published in the society's maga- 
 zine, Novia Francia, and in the Mississippi Valley Historical Society and 
 a copy was furnished the author of this publication by Ernest East of 
 Peoria, a past president of the Illinois State Historical Society and was 
 published in the Daily Republican Times, February 2, 1943, as one of the 
 most important contributions to Illinois and LaSalle county histories in 
 many years. 
 
 The story of the remarkable retreat of this man, his determination and 
 endurance is too long for a publication of this sort. 
 
 He was in service at Detroit, when he was ordered September 2, 
 1760 to march to the aid of besiged Montreal. On the forced march 
 east, he learned from Jesuit priests, that Montreal had surrendered. The 
 
 — 27 — 
 
troops were all prisoners and all of Canada was to be turned over to the 
 British. 
 
 Now he acted swiftly to escape surrender; with the aid of the Jesuits 
 he was able to purchase supplies cheaply for his projected retreat to 
 Louisiana, which was not included in the surrender to the British. 
 
 Sergeant Bellivadier was named head of the commissionary depart- 
 ment. Permission was obtained from M. de Bellestre at Detroit to leave 
 Canada. That officer concluded with these words to de la Chappelle, 
 "My best wishes accompany you; in spite of miseries that you will have 
 to endure your lot is happier than mine. For I shall have the shame of 
 surrender and turning over my command to the English and becoming 
 their prisoner. Sad end to a career, pity me, be of good courage and 
 the grace of God go with you." 
 
 How many men de la Chappelle had under his command is not known 
 — it may have reached 200. He speaks of rounding up 32 Canadians and 
 78 half breed Ottawa Indians and French who were wandering aimlessly 
 and also wanting to go to Louisiana to escape giving up to the British. 
 These he added to his own force of soldiers. 
 
 The expedition built rafts on the east shore of Lake Michigan to 
 carry its supplies and beasts across the lake to the southwest within sight 
 of shore for safety sake. His goal through the harsh days of early winter, 
 1760, was Fort St. Louis, where he hoped to spend the winter in the old 
 quarters left by the French garrison many years ago. But all he found, 
 he related in the diary found by his descendants, was the ruins of the 
 Fort, which had been burned long ago. The location of the Fort on the 
 Rock, de la Chappelle decided, was not good enough to ward off any 
 possible attack by the British, if they approached from the east. 
 
 Here de la Chappelle set his men to work in December 1760 cutting 
 trees, building a fort and huts, the fort commanding the river for a long 
 way to the east. The name "Fort Ottawa" was burned over the doorway 
 of the fort. 
 
 The militia men believed they had reached Louisiana and were thus 
 safe from the British. They asked permission of de la Chappelle to stay 
 in the fort, while he took his command to New Orleans, which he granted 
 them in repayment of their services as guides from Detroit to Fort Ottawa. 
 
 Game was abundant, there was an ample supply of fish in the river 
 and skins to make clothes from deer and buffalo. From his stock of 
 supplies de la Chappelle rationed enough for the militia men to last 
 through the winter. Meantime he prepared for the long trip down the 
 river, barks and sledges were built to haul in daily supplies from the 
 forests. 
 
 The voyage by water was to be resumed by his soldiers as soon as 
 open water prevailed. They rested, repaired shoes and uniforms. 
 
 An Indian chief presented him a relic of LaSalle, a document, wherein 
 the Indians declared an alliance with the King of France. So de la 
 Chappelle added his own name to the roll under that of LaSalle to con- 
 tinue the alliance of many years before. 
 
 When it seemed that de la Chappelle was getting matters nicely in 
 hand at Fort Ottawa trouble brewed. December 20, 1760 M. de Clignana- 
 court arrived at the fort as an envoy from M. de Beaujeau, former com- 
 mander at Michlimackinaw, who also had shipped out for New Orleans 
 with his troops to avoid turning the command over to the British red coats. 
 
 He was then wintering, the envoy told de la Chappelle, about 90 miles 
 or 30 leagues west of Buffalo Rock, probably near the present Rock Island. 
 
 — 28 — 
 
Death and discouragement had struck the camp, de Clignancourt told 
 de la Chappelle. Could he spare supplies for Beajeau and his troops? 
 
 That was agreeable to de la Chappelle, but he went along with the 
 convoy and supplies. Beaujeau looked over the goods from Fort Ottawa, 
 seemed pleased. and de la Chappelle rested. But when he said he was 
 going back to Fort Ottawa, Beaujeau raged and ranted, accused de la 
 Chappelle of being a traitor to France and ordered him to take a message 
 to the commander at Fort Chartres. If he did not go willingly, he "would 
 be bound like a sausage" as Beaujeau threatened and taken there against 
 his will. So de la Chappelle went, burning as one might well do, at the 
 ingratitude of Beaujeau, whose real motive was to take over Fort Ottawa 
 and install his own troops in solid comfort for the winter. 
 
 The reception of de la Chappelle at Fort Chartres by the commander 
 M. de Neyon de villiers, who even more ungrateful than that of Beaujeau. 
 He demanded of de la Chappelle his service orders to go to New Orleans 
 in the first place. It was explained that these were back at Fort Ottawa. 
 Then de villiers stormed and ranted and accused his guest of being in 
 league with the Spanish colonies and eventually, with the British. He was 
 ordered back to Rock Island, as sort of a messenger boy, but he deter- 
 mined not to go that way, instead he made his way back to Fort Ottawa 
 via horseback. The commander at Fort Chartres by then had cooled 
 down enough to furnish him with that transportation. 
 
 Back at Fort Ottawa, de la Chappelle in January 1761, made known 
 his intentions of leaving at once for New Orleans with his soldiers and of 
 allowing the milita to keep the camp and what supplies that they needed. 
 
 New Orleans was reached, but the commander, M. de Kedlerec was 
 a brother-in-law of de Villiers. Probably he already had word of what was 
 taking place in distant Illinois from de Villiers. Luckless de la Chappelle 
 on reaching New Orleans was put under military arrest. He demanded 
 an inquest and was sent to France, where the inquest cleared him of all 
 charges and ordered him restored to his old rank as a French army captain. 
 He was made governor of the island of Martinique in the West Indies, 
 where he died in 1703. 
 
 More than a cenutry after his trip from Canada through Illinois valley 
 another de la Chappelle, also sailed from France with a member of the 
 Peltier family, all glass makers. They settled at Ottawa, where the Peltiers 
 first started a factory that turned out stained glass for church windows 
 of exquisite beauty. From that business, they turned to the making of 
 glass marbles, which produces millions of such articles per year in one 
 of the few plants of its kind in the United States. 
 
 The de la Chappelle factory went into production of lamp chimneys, 
 some of them of the unbreakable type through a secret process. The family 
 was another branch of the de la Chappelles of which the soldier, who 
 built Fort Ottawa was a member. 
 
 Jacques de la Chappelle of Chicago, a member of the Ottawa family, 
 that made glassware says, that it is the tradition of the de la Chappelles of 
 France, that Captain Passerat de la Chappelle played an important, but 
 a secret part in the American revolution. It is the family story, that he 
 was sent by the government of France to the colonies to investigate the 
 character of a leader of the American Revolution — George Washington, 
 before France cast her lot with the colonies against the British. 
 
 Now it was October of 1781, and once again de la Chappelle, now 
 middle aged, could visualize a scene in his mind. 
 
 — 29 — 
 
Again a long file of troops was drawn up, their real emotion hidden 
 under a soldier's mask, but not all of it could be masked. There was a 
 twitching in one line of the facial muscles to tell sadness. Opposite them 
 was drawn up another file of troops, only their eyes sparkled in triumph 
 and they stood a bit straighter, maybe, than the other dejected file. Once 
 again a crisp order was barked. A flag fluttered down from a tall staff, 
 again an order was barked, another flag was hoisted to the top of the 
 pole, and sailors in the nearby harbor watched with glee. The triumphant 
 troops marched off to their barracks to drink a toast to the day and the 
 prisoners of war marched elsewhere in dejection. The cycle was completed 
 now for de la Chappelle and he could drink a toast to the new nation 
 of the United States of America, which hauled down the British colors 
 all the way from the Atlantic coast to the Mississippi river valley, where 
 he endured misery less than a quarter of a cenutry before. The cycle was 
 completed — and the French, who had surrendered Canada had taken a 
 hand in bringing down that same British flag as allies of a new and poten- 
 tially great nation born of patroitism, hardship and warfare from 1775 
 to 1781. 
 
 CRAGGY DEATH TRAP 
 
 ALL morning the clop, clop, of carriage horses and the sturdier tread 
 
 /A of farm horses, each bearing visitors, had echoed through the 
 
 canyons and bluffs, now clad in their early fall finery as 2,000 to 
 
 3,000 people made their way to Starved Rock early in September 1873. 
 
 They were gathering to mark the 200th anniversary of the coming 
 of Father Marquette and Louis Joliet, first white men to look on the 
 craggy sandstone bluffs around which so much Illinois history has revolved. 
 
 They came also to hear, from historians of the time, some of the 
 legends, which gave it its present day name, Starved Rock and that it 
 was there that a band of Illini Indians were presumably starved to death, 
 in the late 1760's, by their allied enemies. 
 
 Of what actually took place, there is no written account from any of the 
 survivors taken at a time, when their memories might still have been clearer. 
 
 Legend and fiction, some of it the product of those with fertile imagi- 
 nations and no historical background, are endless on "the siege." 
 
 Picnic lunches were spread on the ground, of what is now the state 
 park, at the base of the famous old pile of sandstone and, after that had 
 been disposed of, the visitors settled back to hear the accounts of the 
 historians. 
 
 The original speaker, says the Ottawa Republican, was to have been 
 Supreme Court Justice Sidney Breese, but the judge begged off from the 
 assignment, saying his eyesight was failing and he could not read manu- 
 script as well as he should. The Republican editor commented tartly that 
 Judge Breese then had no business being on the bench, if he could not 
 read manuscript. 
 
 So the story of how the Illini Indians were trapped on the Rock, 
 according to legend, fell to Perry Armstrong of Morris, a leading his- 
 torian of his day, who wrote, "The Sauk and Black Hawk war," still a 
 good account of the Black Hawk war of 1832, then fading from the minds 
 of those, who had survived its terrors in the early days of LaSalle county. 
 
 Memory is the most fallible of all human faculties, a treacherous 
 thing, a thing that is liable to mislead one into mistakes of all kinds, 
 particularly in historical matters. 
 
 — 30 — 
 
Louis Joliet 
 
 Courtesy State Historical Society. 
 
 CJaJ iituti'it u*utiM? C-ysAtifvLrysi *•>*£"**- ys?*.jni-*p *•— ^ 
 
 m 6#^- fax*-. 
 
 Courtesy of Dr. J. E. Fields of Joliet — owner of the only known autograph of Louis 
 Joliet in private hands, City of Joliet was named for him. 
 
 — 31 — 
 
So the account of Armstrong must be taken with a lifting of one eye- 
 brow in some respects. 
 
 He got it, he says, from one Shick Shack famous old Indian chief, of 
 the late 18th and early 19th centuries. 
 
 But Shick Shack was 104 years old, when he told the story of the seige 
 of Starved Rock, as he recalled, it to Armstrong. The latter was nine 
 years old, at the time (1831) and he waited 40 years to put it down in 
 writing, which renders it suspect. 
 
 The story told by the aged chief, was that the Illini, once the mighty 
 Indian nation of what is now a great part of Illinois, had been almost 
 exterminated by endless wars against their enemies and by the raid on 
 their great village opposite Starved Rock in September 1680. That was 
 by the blood thirsty Iroquois, who also had known of their own captives 
 being roasted alive by the Illinois, when they were captured. 
 
 As Shick Shack told the story to Armstrong and Armstrong related it 
 to the 2,000 to 3,000 visitors at Starved Rock on that autumn day in 
 1873 the combined Miamis, Kickapoos and Pottawattomies finally drove 
 a remnant of the Illini to the top of Starved Rock late in the fall. 
 
 There they were trapped for an indefinite period, while their beseigers 
 made themselves at home on what was known to the people of 1873 as 
 Camp Rock or Lover's Lean, as some with an imagination later called it. 
 That is the bluff, east of Starved Rock with a little stream coming out 
 of French canyon between the two bluffs. 
 
 Shick Shack told Armstrong the Illini suffered from lack of food and 
 water and the bullets of their enemies but that smallpox added their 
 terrors to their horrible predicament. That caused them, he said to dig 
 pits around the outside of the Rock in the soft dirt, in which they could 
 roll to ease their agony. 
 
 Finally, so Shick Shack said, some of the trapped Illini tried to escape 
 and the woods echoed to the death shrieks of the Illini as club, spear and 
 tomahawk did terrible work. Others were carried off to the torture stake 
 leaving the other victims lifeless on the rock. 
 
 Shick Shack contended that some of _the Illinoi escaped, stole the 
 canoes of their besiegers and fled to Indian friends and the French along 
 the Mississippi for shelter. Their tracks, he said, were covered by light 
 snow, that fell that night and their escape was not discovered until too 
 late for an effective prusuit by their savage besiegers. 
 
 The aged chief recalled also one event, after the siege of Starved Rock, 
 that remained in the memory of the Indians for many years. That was 
 the terrible winter in the 1770's, when the game starved because of the 
 deep snows and the Indians huddled day after day in the miserable huts 
 enduring the combined terrors of a merciless winter and famine. 
 
 Justice John Dean Caton of Ottawa, a chronicler of early Illinois his- 
 tory, whose works are invaluable heard still another version of the siege 
 of Starved Rock. 
 
 It was told to him by one Meachelle in the later 1830's. But Judge 
 Caton waited until 1870 before he told it in a paper read to the Chicago 
 Historical Society December 13, 1870; once again memory may have played 
 false over the long period of years. 
 
 Meachel-le was then a Pottowattomie chief who said he was a youth 
 at the time the Illini were driven to the top of the Rock. Probably he 
 was among these who squatted on Camp Rock on the fringe of the warriors 
 eyeing Starved Rock for any Illini foolish enough to expose themselves 
 to musket fire from Camp Rock. 
 
 — 32 — 
 
William Hickling, the first mayor of Ottawa (1853) had heard the 
 same tale from Meachelle and aided Caton in preparing his paper. 
 
 Maechelle did not know either, how long the Illini remained in their 
 craggy death trap. Far away on the other side of the river were the corn 
 fields and food supplies of no use to them, in their agony of hunger. 
 
 The blue waters of the Illinois, filled with game fish swirled below 
 the rock, but again was a mockery. Some historians have asserted the 
 besieged cut leather thongs, carrying drinking vessels lowered to the 
 river to obtain water. 
 
 Meachelle told Judge Caton, that 11 of the trapped Illini escaped and 
 made their way down river to seek shelter from the French and their 
 Indian friends, which was granted. 
 
 But back of the legends was the basis of the attack against the Illini 
 and that was the failure of the conspiracy of Pontiac, great chief of the 
 Ottawas in Michigan. 
 
 The Pottowattomies were allied with the Ottawas and Pontiac crafty, 
 cruel, scheming, hating the English and all they stood for, wielding in 
 effect a despotic war club over a loosely formed confederation of hun- 
 dreds of Indians. 
 
 September 13, 1759 the English defeated the French on the heights 
 of Abraham at Quebec and the fall of Canada to the British became 
 inevitable. 
 
 Pontiac lived in a small village about five miles north of Detroit. When 
 the British came to take over their new possessions he was at first 
 cordial, but insistent, that he be treated for what he was — the great sachem 
 of many Indian tribes. 
 
 He smoked the pipe of peace with Major Robert Roberts detailed by 
 Sir Jeffrey Amherst, the British royal governor, to take possession of the 
 British forts at Detroit and Mackinac, in far northern Michigan at the 
 confluence of Lakes Huron and Michigan. 
 
 Pontiac detailed a detachment of warriors to help troops of Rogers 
 on their way with 100 head of cattle, which they were driving from Fort 
 Pitt in Pennslyvania through the wilderness to British forts for slaughter 
 for the garrison. 
 
 But the French were bitter at their fate. Their agents visited the 
 Indian tribes, incited them to further hatred of the British, stirred them 
 to frenzy. 
 
 The French had supplied them with guns and food and ammunition. 
 The British cut off their supplies and when the warriors visited the forts, 
 where the British flag now flew, instead of the familiar fleur-de-lis they 
 were some times booted out of the fort at the end of a sentry's big foot. 
 
 All this led Pontiac to form his great conspiracy against the English 
 and their scattered forts and settlements. The French had laid them out 
 along the thundering waters of the Great Lakes and their little rivers 
 that linked them — places that became famous in colonial history — Green 
 Bay, St. Joseph, Mich, Detroit, the Maumee, Sandusky, Ohio, Niagara, 
 Fort Pitt, and others. 
 
 It was the aim of Pontiac to capture these or as many as he could. 
 The conspiracy got underway late in 1762, when Indian agents visited the 
 tribal leaders and enlisted their aid. The war drums throbbed in a score 
 of villages, squaws mixed war paint, moulded bullets, sharpened knives. 
 Children practised the use of bows and arrows. Terror struck the fron- 
 
 — 33 — 
 
tier. British lives were sacrificed in a frenzy of hate. Warriors drummed 
 up their courage with savage rituals. 
 
 April 27, 1763 the conspirators, says Francis Parkman great American 
 historian, met on the river called Aux Etorces near Detroit. Pontiac, then 
 nearing middle age, harangued the great council inciting them to fury 
 against the hated British, whom he called "dogs in reds," the supreme 
 insult. Mackinac fell to Indian strategy and the garrison was slaughtered 
 on June 4, the birthday of King George by the combined Ojibway, Chip- 
 pewa and Sac tribes. 
 
 A month before early in May, Detroit then a settlement of about 
 2,500 was attacked. But tradition is that, Catherine, an Ojibway, Indian 
 woman, warned Captain Gladwyn, commander of the fort at Detroit, 
 that an attack was imminent. The plans of Pontiac to capture the fort 
 by strategy failed. Then he and his allied Indians laid siege to the fort 
 and that too failed, after many months. Pontiac hastened to the distant 
 Illini tribes and tried to enlist their aid in his grand scheme to chase the 
 white men out of the western wilderness. But the Illini would have no 
 part of it. By that time, 1764 they had become a degenerate tribe weak- 
 ened by constant war and they evaded any part of the grand conspiracy 
 of Pontiac. 
 
 The latter saw the handwriting on the wall and capitulated to the 
 British at a grand council on the Wabash near the site of what is now 
 LaFayette, Indiana. Here the Ojibways and the Pottowattomies concluded 
 the treaty of peace with George Croghan, agent for Sir William Johnson, 
 the British governor over the territory. 
 
 It was in April 1769 that Pontiac made another trip to the Illinois 
 country this time to visit his old friend St. Ange, the French army officer, 
 who had offered his service to the Spanish at St. Louis after the cession 
 of Louisiana to the French, Pierre Chaoteau, the French trader St. Ange 
 and others entertained Pontiac as a great chief, who it is said wore the 
 full uniform of a French officer given him by Montcalm, French general, 
 who was killed at the battle in Quebec. 
 
 In that kind of a uniform his presence in the nearby Indian village 
 at Cahokia was an insult to the British traders, who treated him with 
 contempt, while Pontiac in turn looked down on the Illinois Indians, who 
 five years before had rejected his plea for aid in his conspiracy. 
 
 Murder was the inevitable end of all this hatred and Pontiac was 
 felled at Cahokia in April, 1769 and was murdered. News of his slaying 
 spread like a prairie fire among his old followers, the Miamis, the Kicka- 
 poos and the Pottawattomies. Once again the war drums throbbed, the 
 war paint was donned, the weapons prepared and a campaign of exter- 
 mination was planned against the remnants of the once great Illinois tribe. 
 
 Some writers have drawn on their imagination, to say the body of 
 Pontiac was cleaned of its flesh, in accordance with Indian customs, and 
 the skull and leg bones carried off to a village of the Indians allie'd now 
 against the Illinois. These ghastly relics so the tellers of fancy tales relate, 
 were attached to a long pole and waved from Camp Rock as a horrible 
 taunt to the Illinois of what their fate would be. 
 
 More prosaic writers say that actually Pontiac was buried in St. 
 Louis, where the Southern Hotel was built. 
 
 Uproar and arguments spurred on by the inevitable fire water, that 
 accompanied what started out to be a love feast increased on Indian creek, 
 northeast of Ottawa in the spring of 1770 according to Eaton Osman of 
 
 — 34 — 
 
Ottawa. He was author of the "Last of a Great Indian Tribe" and a 
 historian who had access to material that now is lost. 
 
 Osman contended the allied Kickapoos and Pottowattomies met to split 
 the territory taken from the vanquished Illini, whose bones, if tradition 
 is to be believed, then were bleaching on top of Starved Rock. 
 
 The Miamis to quote Osman claimed the greater part of the territory 
 of the once great Illinois. That, in the fashion of all, who claim credit 
 for doing more than their allies, did not make them any more popular 
 with the Kickapoos and Pottowattomies; more the Miamis told their now 
 angry allies they had muskets while presumably the other Indians besieging 
 the Illinois on Starved Rock had to be content with showering them with 
 arrows, which may or may not have sent some of the besieged to the 
 happy hunting ground. 
 
 The squaws, old crones, children and senile warriors took sides in the 
 raging controversy, which then developed into a general brawl. Heads 
 were bashed and presumably some of the warriors joined their ancestors. 
 
 The matter could not be settled despite days of argument and battling. 
 Off and on the Miamis and their one time allies fought here and there and 
 many a warrior "kicked the bucket" after these bloody encounters. 
 
 Finally the chiefs smoked a pipe of peace and agreed to settle the 
 matter by a battle to be waged on Sugar Creek about 200 miles from 
 the Wabash river in eastern Illinois. The Miamis were to pick 300 of 
 their finest and toughest warriors, the Kickapoos and the Pottowattomies 
 the same number combined. 
 
 The argeement was that each side with its 300 warriors was to cross 
 to the east side of the Wabash. Weapons were to be the tomahawk, the 
 bow and arrow, and the spear, the old time Indian weapons. 
 
 Dawn came cool and clear on a September day, when the first signs of 
 autumn — the golds, the reds, the bronzes and the scarlets on the hills 
 were brightening the otherwise solid green wilderness. 
 
 The roar of battle started as warriors sneaked up on their enemies 
 hidden in the brush and behind the bushes and rocks. Tomahawks cracked 
 skulls, knives did their deadly work, arrows struck home and clubs 
 crushed bones to make their victims helpless and the scalping knives did 
 the rest. 
 
 All that day, so the legend goes, the bloody horror went on. At sun- 
 down there were only 12 men left out of the 600, who had been alive 
 at sunrise. There were five Miamis and seven Kickapoos and Pottawat- 
 tomies. Perry Armstrong of Morris the early day historian, listed the 
 seven survivors as including chiefs Shick Shack, and Sugar. The five 
 Miamis understandably took to their collective heels and fled not knowing, 
 if the seven opponents might suddenly have a "hankering" for further 
 combat, with the five Miamis as their targets. Thereafter the Miamis re- 
 tired east of the Wabash — and the Kickapoos and the Pottawattomies 
 split the land of the Illini. 
 
 The Kickapoos claimed the land between the Wabash and a vague 
 line, according to Osman, running north and south through what is now 
 Livingston county, Illinois. 
 
 The Pottawattomies took over the land, including what is now Starved 
 Rock. Their camp was northeast of the famous old rock. 
 
 Guerdon Hubbard, one of the hustling young men of Illinois in the 
 early 1820's did business with them as a fur-trader. A native of New 
 England, he was in the egg and butter business at 12 years, to help out 
 
 — 35 — 
 
the family income. At 20 he was chief clerk in the Illinois valley for 
 the American Fur Company. Hubbard had a hand in the founding of 
 Danville and Chicago and Ottawa and for years was one of the important 
 figures in the state. 
 
 One of the last camp sites of the Pottawattomies was at Kankakee 
 and the site is marked by a monument on the court-house lawn. 
 
 The pitiful remnants of the Pottawattomies passed through Ottawa 
 in the fall of 1840 (Ottawa Free Trader) from Michigan, under United 
 States army guard, for a western reservation. 
 
 VANISHED CAMP GROUND 
 
 AN age was to pass and a mode of life, that had persisted for cen- 
 /\ turies was to dwindle away, decade by decade, until the last of 
 -*- -^- the Indians had passed from the valley, leaving only their dead, 
 their camp sites, their weapons and their legends for the white man, who 
 was to take over their corn lands, their hunting grounds, their burial 
 grounds and their fishing sites. 
 
 Here the Indian had built his lodge, had learned to know of the wild- 
 erness it's secrets, learned to keep alive in a primitive civilization, learned 
 of the wild animals, their habits, learned of the wild plants and bushes 
 what would help him in his illness, what would help fill his larder against 
 the bitter days of winter, what he should plant and what he should shun. 
 
 Here the red man lived in peace for the most part, but when the war 
 drums throbbed, there was terror in the villages, sprawled in protected 
 places. 
 
 Here the women and children dwelt in fear, when the warriors took 
 the trail against their enemies, lived in terror, lest the war whoops resound, 
 through the defenseless viallages, and waited in dread lest the toma- 
 hawk, the knife, the spear and the club do their deadly work or the 
 torture of the stake take its toll in burning and agonized flesh of helpless 
 prisoners. 
 
 Here in the winter the snow lay deep and the waters of the Illinois 
 bordering the great Kaskaskia village and later that of LaVantum froze 
 thick and blue, hard and cold, the snow and ice keeping the warriors in 
 the cabin, keeping the deer in their yard and the other small game deep 
 in their winter quarters. 
 
 Here famine then lay its terrible clutches on the silent villages, where 
 the Indians huddled in misery in his cabin warmed only by the smallest 
 of wood fires. 
 
 Here in these days of the deep winter, it was not possible to get to 
 corn heaps in the rock caves near the village. The game was not at 
 hand to be killed, the fish could not be speared, there were no birds to 
 be shot. 
 
 When these dark days had passed, when the warm south wind heralded 
 the coming of spring, then the Indian lived in a paradise of beauty. 
 The soft green of new verdure clothed the bluffs, brought the grass to 
 the land again, brought the wild duck and the wild goose north on their 
 annual flight of thousands in a flock. It brought the time to plant the 
 corn and beans, and pumpkins in the patches at the village sites, brought 
 the song of the blue bird and the lark to the land again and foretold of 
 the coming of the long lazy summer days, and shortening days of autumn, 
 when the same bluffs would be clothed in brilliant red, in Chinese man- 
 
 — 36 — 
 
darin yellow, in deep brown and mixed colors. Then the time would be 
 at hand to gather the hard flinty corn and store it away for the winter, 
 and the time would be near to fletch the hide of the deer and the buffalo 
 to make them soft to provide clothing. The time to gather reeds from the 
 marshes to make mats would be approaching and the south bound migra- 
 tion of the ducks and geese now foretold of the winter to come. 
 
 Such was the endless cycle of the centuries, in the beautiful valley 
 of the Illinois, when the coming of the white men told that, for better 
 or for worse, this age was to pass. 
 
 The white man had left his foot in the valley, with the coming of 
 Father Marquette and his companion Joliet, one of the truly great figures 
 of French colonial days, whose exploration and travels extended over the 
 many years and for whom the modern Joliet was named. 
 
 Men mouldered to dust and bones, with their squaws and their chil- 
 dren and lay in flat lands along the river. The camp sites vanished and 
 the game dwindled to a fraction of what it had been, and only the endless 
 cycle of the years persisted. 
 
 Then long centuries later came the white man, with his science and 
 his trowels and his knowledge of how to resurrect the buried past, from 
 what lay underground in the corn fields and pasture lands where the 
 Indian had lived. 
 
 So through three summers 1947-48-49 these men and women burned 
 brown, by the hot summer sun dug carefully to see what the Indian had 
 left behind to show his mode of living and where his villages were. 
 
 Trenches were carefully excavated and brushes and trowels used to 
 clear away the dirt and dust, so that nothing would be lost or misplaced 
 as the work proceeded. 
 
 Now the post holes for the lodges were uncovered, showing where 
 they had stood. Here were the garbage pits or midden heaps to use the 
 term of the archeologists. Here were uncovered the artifacts — the spears 
 points, the arrows and war clubs — long buried. 
 
 Bits of rusty metal came to light showing the Indians had had contact 
 with the white man and thus fixing the date of the village site as after 
 1673. Here were the beads worn by the Indian women, who loved their 
 finery as did their white successors. 
 
 Most pitiful of all, now and then a skeleton was uncovered of some 
 dead man, woman, or child who had lived in one of the most primitive 
 civilizations the world had ever know, sans law, sans medical service of 
 any kind, sans education, sans even the rudimentary comforts of life, 
 sans religion except their own belief in the goodness and justice of a God, 
 that looked after them in the wilderness. 
 
 What the scientists found in the flat lands and fields of the Zimmer- 
 man-Danner fields east of Starved Rock, on the north side of the river 
 was only part of what actually had lain there so many decades ago. 
 
 The white explorers and missionaries, who came into the valley of 
 the Illinois in such numbers in the 17th and 18th centuries dreamed of 
 a waterway that would link Lake Michigan and the Fathers of Waters 
 via the broad Illinois past the Indian camp sites of Kaskaskia and 
 LaVantum. 
 
 That waterway was realized in one way in 1848, when the Illinois- 
 Michigan canal was built from Chicago to Peru. It passed to the north of 
 the great camps of the Illini Indians and their friends and the gangs of toil- 
 ing laborers, mainly Irish imigrants, who dug the ditch, may have un- 
 earthed some of the camp sites and corn lands of the long departed Indian. 
 
 — 37 — 
 
There was agitation in the early part of the 19th century for a new 
 and modern lake to the gulf waterway. Leading the movement in Ottawa 
 were such civic leaders as Richard Jordan, hardware merchant, Judge 
 H. M. Johnson, former Mayor Al. Schoch and others. 
 
 In 1908 the people of Illinois approved a $20,000,000 bond issue tor 
 digging the channel and building the necessary locks on the Illinois river 
 for the new waterway. 
 
 The work started in the middle 1920's and was finished by the United 
 States goverenment, which now runs the waterway from Chicago to the 
 Mississippi river at Alton. 
 
 The closing of the dam gates at Starved Rock, above the site of old 
 Fort St. Louis in 1933 doomed part of the Indian villages site to watery 
 grave. It was not possible for scientists of the University of Chicago, the 
 University of Illinois and the Illinois State Museum then, to excavate more 
 of the Indian village sites. 
 
 Their findings were taken into a base camp atop Buffalo Rock and 
 there carefully tagged and cataloged prior to being taken to museums for 
 study. 
 
 The last of the excavating was done on top of Starved Rock in the 
 summer of 1949. There the same kind of careful patient work uncovered 
 artifacts, bits of rusty gun pieces, the beads, the bullets, the tiny stone 
 fragments of arrows or whole ones the evidence of past ages as found 
 when they were run through a fine screen. 
 
 It was evident, then, that the rock had been used for hundreds of 
 years by the Indians until the white man acquired title to it through diplo- 
 matic circles of the great powers of the world — first Spain, then France, 
 Great Britain and finally the infant United States. 
 
 SENECA BEAD MAKER 
 
 MAINTAINING the traditional silence of the Indian-part of their 
 sales talk in a good many cases — Frank Hart for 40 years was a 
 fixture in Starved Rock state park, until his death on November 
 27, 1952. Hart was a member of the Seneca tribe. In his own words 
 he said, "The state acquired me almost as soon as they did the rock. I 
 came here in 1912 — the state bought the rock in 1911." 
 
 Hart set up in business at the Wishing Well, at the west end of 
 the rock and there he made unknown thousands of rings from beads. Small 
 boys and girls who came to the park in lumbering cars of the pre-world 
 war I vintage brought their own children back in sleek modern automo- 
 biles and found Hart still at work making his rings. 
 
 His canvas tent, pitched close to his work bench, was near the Wish- 
 ing Well into which thousands of visitors over the period of 40 years 
 tossed small coins. 
 
 Regularly Hart cleaned out the Wishing Well of its coins and cashed 
 the receipts. 
 
 His winters were spent in Florida over a period of a long time. 
 
 Hart watched the white oak trees in the state park; come October when 
 they obtained a blood red color, he packed his gear into his old car, folded 
 his tent like the immortal Arab, and was off to Florida for six months. 
 
 He knew far away, about the time the same oak trees, in the park 
 would be the size of squirrel's ears come May. That in the ancient Indian 
 
 — 38 — 
 
Frank Hart 
 'Seneca Indian' 
 
 legend was time to plant corn — and it was also the sign for Hart to start 
 north back to the Wishing Well in Starved Rock state park. 
 
 Two world wars almost put him out of business. His beads came from 
 Austria, and Czecho-Slovakia and their production practically ceased as 
 the factory workmen were hustled into uniform. But Hart obtained enough 
 of a supply to keep him in business. 
 
 He was content in his chosen spot in the park, for so many years, 
 but was moved to protest at one time, when it was proposed to install a 
 zoo in the lower part of the park near his stand. 
 
 That would have included some buffalo, which for generations, had 
 provided the western Indians — not Senecas, who are an eastern tribe — 
 with food, chips for fires, and hides for tents but Hart did not like buffalo. 
 
 "I am glad the stinking things never got into the park," he said, 
 "they would have ruined me." 
 
 — 39 — 
 
MODERN PLAYGROUND 
 
 WHEN Daniel F. Hitt was a fiery young man and in his prime, 
 he buckled on the armor and went to war to help chase the 
 Indians out of northern Illinois. 
 
 When the Black Hawk War of 1832 was concluded, there were no 
 Indians left in that area, except those who remained at peace and there- 
 after scared the wits out of frightened settler's wives by appearing at the 
 back door of a cabin for a handout. 
 
 Some used the reliable broom or brandished a mop to get rid of their 
 unwelcome guests. Others were more kind and passed them out a plate 
 of cornbread or a good piece of venison. 
 
 When the same Hitt was long on the sunset side of life he was a 
 still rough and a ready character, with an acid and sometimes profane 
 tongue, he sold Starved Rock birthplace of Illinois and potential play- 
 ground of the middle west along with a hundred acres of land near it. 
 He retained other acreage west of the present park and still more land 
 in and near Ottawa. The colonel was as expert at picking up land as 
 he was careful to preserve, most of his personal correspondence over the 
 60 years that he was a resident of LaSalle county. He helped put down 
 an "Irish rebellion" of pugnatious canal workers in LaSalle county in 
 1928. How many died in it from their dispersion by Hitt, county sheriff 
 Olson Woodruff and others is not known. 
 
 The Civil war rolled around and once more the colonel by now 
 afflicted with the aches and pains of approaching middle age buckled on 
 his armor, this time to take up arms in defense of the nation against 
 threatened disunion; but chasing rebels at 50 was much different, than 
 sending Indians scuttling when he was 20. The colonel sepnt a year in 
 the service, then resigned from the 53rd Illinois and called it quits to his 
 military career. That did not mean he retired to the fireside, his slippers 
 and his pipe for the balance of his days; far from it, his trade was that 
 of a surveyor, one that calls for much endurance and sturdy legs; coupled 
 with a well developed bump of curiosity it "also could and did in the case 
 of the colonel leave much information on the potential playground of the 
 middle west that modern historical or archeological sources no longer have 
 or neglected, when it was available nearly a century ago. 
 
 The tireless colonel mapped and surveyed what he called Indian or 
 mound builders' forts in Marseilles, north of Wedron along the Fox river 
 and near Starved Rock, but not in the park proper. In his 60 years of 
 active life in LaSalle county the colonel acquired Starved Rock and land 
 around it. He left surveys of what he called a "Fort" just outside the 
 park. What it was used for, who built it and for what purpose has 
 never been determined. Modern archeologists might find the answer, if 
 amateur diggers have not destroyed much of it and then add still more 
 to the already fascinating lore of the park, so rich in Indian and French 
 history. 
 
 This fort surveyed by Hitt was north of the present day State High- 
 way 71 and directly south of old Starved Rock along the head of French 
 canyon and a ravine at right angles. 
 
 Hitt surveyed this "old fort" as he called it in August 1867. He identi- 
 fied it as south of the rock running in a general east and west direction 
 and continuous except for a "gateway" on the east. He located a "well" 
 to the north of the "parapet." A black oak stump which still stood in 
 
 — 40 — 
 
First American Flag ever flown atop Starved Rock. Note number of stars. 
 
 the parapet he estimated was at least 160 years old. One side was along 
 the ravine, where the stump was found and another was protected by a 
 bluff from 50 to 75 feet high. 
 
 Apparently Colonel Hitt was the first private owner of Starved Rock 
 and made his purchase from the United States Government. January 10, 
 1861, William E. Keefer, register of the U. S. land office at Springfield 
 made the following entry as shown by the records of Colonel Hitt; 
 
 "I, William E. Keefer, register of the land office at Springfield, do 
 hereby certify, that on the 23rd day of June 1835 Daniel F. Hitt pur- 
 chased of the general government at the land office at Galena, the south 
 fraction of the northwest fractional quarter of section 22 in township 33 
 north range number two, east of the third principal meridian, containing 
 68 acres and that said land at the time of said purchase was within the 
 district then subject to sale at the land office at Galena now Springfield." 
 
 All these flashed through his still keen mind, when he determined to 
 sell the rock, and he could not recall that to his knowledge the American 
 flag had ever flown on Starved Rock. Only the French fluer-de-lis so 
 far as he knew had waved over the great rock. The British hold on the 
 Rock had been a tenuous one for less than a quarter century and their flag 
 had never flown over the Rock. The Spanish had held an equally slender 
 claim on it through the discoveries of the 15th and 16th cenutry explorers 
 hundreds of miles to the south. 
 
 — 41 — 
 
But for all of his gruffness, there was under the rough exterior of 
 the old colonel a liking for the famous rock, that he had first seen, when 
 he was a young fellow, which had been the home of the Indians for cen- 
 turies, the birthplace of Illinois by the French, and a playground for the 
 men and women of his own generation. 
 
 Here they held their picnics in the shadow of the rock, here they had 
 discussed its rich history, here they had found the artifacts left by the 
 Indians and some had heard from the lips of the Indians the legends 
 that had been handed down by their ancestors. Here the colonel had 
 gathered a bushel of Indian relics, some relics, some crosses the origin 
 of which is not known. 
 
 So the colonel on the face of it, had some one make a home-made 
 American flag, still in a fair state of preservation, with 40 stars, to hoist 
 above the great rock around which so much rich and tragic history had 
 centered more than two centuries before his time came to dispose it by sale. 
 
 The 40 star flag would date it for a few months of time in American 
 history, when such flags were used in 1890 and then gave away to others 
 as new states were added to the union. 
 
 When the colonel hoisted his flag on the rock is not known. He may 
 have recalled, also, at the same time, that in the 1850's an Indian tribe 
 in Oklahoma proposed, that a chunk of the same rock be taken out and 
 placed in the George Washington monument in Washington under con- 
 struction in the early 1850's. It was to be a gift of the red men to the 
 white as a symbol of friendship. The proposition never went beyond the 
 suggestion stage. 
 
 So now the colonel was ready to negotiate for the sale of the rock to 
 Ferdinand Walther of Chicago. Some of the letters that passed before 
 the deal was finished, have been preserved, because, as said, Hitt appar- 
 ently never discarded letters. He kept them by the hundreds in box 
 after box. Colonel Hitt it would appear began dickering for the sale of 
 old Starved Rock in 1889 as shown by letters to one E. Grube Esq. The 
 latter may have been the agent for Harris W. Huehl, architect and super- 
 intendent in the Metropolitan building in Chicago. Huehl seems to have 
 been the broker in the deal then pending; Hitt wrote in this fashion to 
 Grube. 
 "Grube November 18, 1889." 
 
 "I have seen the man I spoke to you about and have concluded, that 
 if your friends will make the payment to date I will let them have the 
 Rock, and 100 acres of land for $15,000 and will expect an answer within 
 a month as the man who was wishing to rent it will need some time to 
 get everything ready to move in on the first of March if I don't sell." 
 Respectfully, Yours Truly, 
 
 D. F. Hitt. 
 The deal was completed February 15, 1890 in LaSalle as shown by this 
 record : 
 
 "This certifies that D. F. Hitt has sold to Ferdinand Walther one hun- 
 dred acres of land, including Starved Rock in LaSalle county, Illinois, 
 the same being shown by the plat furnished to said Walther for the sum 
 of fourteen thousand, one hundred dollars cash, and six thousand, nine 
 hundred dollars, on or before 60 days from this date and balance to be 
 secured by first mortgage on same on or before five years of former date 
 and deed delivered, when the sixty day payment is made with interest of 
 six percent annually. Said Walther to have option of purchasing from 
 
 — 42 — 
 
Hitt the balance of said tract, of 265 acres more at $45 per acre, within 
 one year at such time as Walther may choose, Hitt to furnish abstracts 
 of title and make warranty deed. 
 
 The agreement was signed by Hitt and Walther. 
 
 People reached Starved Rock before the days of automobiles by car- 
 riage, on bicycles for the younger "sports" of the 1890's, others by train 
 or by interurban. In the case of the train before there was a bridge across 
 the Illinois, south of Utica, ferrymen plied their trade hauling people 
 across the wide Illinois, where the canoes of Indians, missionary priests 
 and explorers had bobbed centuries before. 
 
 Where the great Indian camps of LaVantumn and Kaskaskia had stood 
 on the north bank of the Illinois, south of Utica, interprising speculators, 
 more than a century ago, laid out the old town of Science or Old Utica. 
 The last building vanished from it late in the 19th century. Long before 
 Science had fallen into disuse as had the great Indian camps. The village 
 of North Utica to give it the legal name, was founded in the early 1850's, 
 when the coming of the Rock Island railroad and the Illinois Michigan 
 canal doomed Science to oblivion. 
 
 Science had been a stopping place for steamers for many years; its 
 trade with southern point included dry goods, sugar, manufactured small 
 articles and the staple articles for commerce of those days — barrelled 
 whiskey. 
 
 The first steamer, that passed old Science was the "Traveler," which 
 docked at Ottawa, October 16, 1831. The Traveler kicked up the clean 
 waters of the Illinois with her paddle wheel, black smoke belched from 
 her stacks along with showers of sparks. Indians lurking along the shores 
 fled in terror from the "White man's fire canoe." Six months later the 
 Caroline came up river and docked April 4, 1832 in Ottawa. A few weeks 
 later the Caroline hauled supplies to Fort Wilbourn, of Black Hawk war 
 service, on the bluff a mile south of LaSalle. She was armed with a field 
 piece, protected by planks, against Indians. 
 
 The ghost town of Science, on the west end of the old Indian village 
 west of the Rock, was matched by the town of Gibraltar at the west end 
 of the mass of sand stone now called Buffalo Rock. That would put 
 Gibraltar about at the east end of the Indian villages strung out on the 
 north bank of the Illinois. But Gilbraltar, named for some fancied resem- 
 blance to Gibraltar the famous rock that guards the straits of Gibraltar, 
 never had any inhabitants but bullfrogs and turtles. The Miami Indi- 
 ans, however, had occupied Buffalo Rock itself before the west end of 
 it was cut up by a coal strip mine and a sand pit leaving the east 43 acres 
 to be made into a state park. 
 
 The Miamis and other Indians had looked down on the tiny canoes 
 of the French missionary priests and the traders. The priests had asked 
 of their superiors, for use in the wilderness and in their work, such varied 
 items as these as shown by a letter not signed, which may have been 
 written by Father Jacques Graviep. The latter was the successor to Father 
 Claude Allouez in the later 1670's, who, in turn, had succeeded Mar- 
 quette. Here is what the letter asked in part; Rice, raisins, prunes, 25 
 pots, (pot was a French measure of about iy 2 pints) of Spanish wine, 
 150 livres of powder, a gross of large clasp knives, 6 bars of soap, three 
 hatchets, 1,000 needles, 10 livres of glass beads, six finger rings, 50 livres 
 of bullets, India ink and cotton, a livre of nutmeg and cloves, six pair 
 of half worsted hose and material to make awnings as protection against 
 
 — 43 — 
 
the gnats and mosquitos, one dozen trade shirts, six ells of cloth for 
 capotes, for making breech clouts, summer and winter cassocks, fifty 
 livres of flour, six pairs of shoes, breeches, shoes, double soled slippers 
 and three good razors with whetstones. 
 
 The missionaries also asked for the necessary church supplies for the 
 carrying on of their work. These included: A host iron, and a shaper for 
 cutting the wafers. They asked for a little Spanish wine and some dainties 
 such as sugar for the priests, who were ill of their labors in the wilderness. 
 Included in the request also were supplies for the sick, a syringe, one 
 livre theriac, ointment, plasters, alum, vitroil, aniseed, medicine and cot- 
 ton candle wicking, 12 small towels, six small napkins and three covered 
 bowls for the sick, pewter, spoons, knives, basins and plates. 
 
 About the time Starved Rock was sold by Colonel Hitt two Ottawans, 
 aided by others interested in the same thing, started a campaign to have 
 the state take over the property, which was the birthplace of Christianity 
 and civilization in Illinois. One was Horace Hull, an attorney by pro- 
 fession, but who instead of practicing became the official circuit court 
 clerk reporter for LaSalle county, a post he held for many years. The 
 other was William Osman, Jr., son of William Osman, who in 1840 be- 
 came editor of the Free Trader, the first weekly newspaper in Ottawa 
 that lasted beyond a few issues. The Free Trader was a powerful demo- 
 cratic organ for 87 years until it was sold to the Daily Republican Times. 
 At that time William Osman, Jr. was editor. 
 
 Hull and Osman took scores of pictures of Starved Rock and its sur- 
 roundings as it looked before modernization got started and changed the 
 face of the playground of the middle west in so many ways. The pictures 
 now are priceless; they are on glass negatives and show many canyons, 
 the Rock itself and so on. Hull and Osman carried their campaign 
 throughout the state with lectures and stereoptican slides rousing interest 
 in their campaign to have the state make a public park out of the Rock 
 and its canyons, bluffs and wooded slopes. They were joined by Al 
 Richards, an Ottawa newspaper editor, who also took an interest in his- 
 torical matters and by Father Donat Lowery Crowe, who was pastor of 
 St. Mary's Catholic Church at Utica from July 16, 1891 to September 24, 
 1897. His interest in having the state park established at Starved Rock 
 rose from the fact that his parish grew out of the Mission of the Im- 
 maculate Conception the first parish established west of the Alleghenies 
 by Father Marquette in 1675. 
 
 In Evanston Dr. James Alton James, professor of history from 1897 
 to 1935, took a natural interest in the same matter, from his long study 
 of history of the American middlewest with particular attention to that 
 of George Rogers Clark. It was the work of Clark and his Kentucky 
 and Virginia "Long Knives" that, in the Revolutionary war, wrested the 
 Northwest Territory from England and gave this incredibly rich territory 
 to the infant United States of America in 1778-79- 
 
 The work of these men and many others culminated in an act of the 
 general assembly on June 10, 1911 authorizing the purchase of 280 acres 
 of land for the state park from Mr. and Mrs. Ferdinand Walther for 
 $146,000. The first purchase was made Dec. 29, 1911. Successive pur- 
 chases and acquisitions have followed until the park now sprawls for three 
 miles on the south bank of the river. 
 
 March 23, 1912 25 acres was purchased from Mr. and Mrs. Robert 
 J. Reid and March 18, 1912, five acres from the estate of Colonel Hitt. 
 
 — 44 — 
 
James Alton James 
 Dean of the Graduate School and 
 Professor of American History Emeritus 
 
 Northwestern University. 
 
 Last survivying member of the State 
 
 commission, which purchased Starved 
 
 Rock for the State of Illinois. 
 
 < 
 
 Three additions were made in 1916. Feb. 21, the state bought 2.31 acres 
 from the Walthers and April 5, John H. Carlin sold 42.11 acres and 
 August 8th, Mr. and Mrs. Peter Harbeck sold 2.31 acres. Still more 
 acquisitions have followed. August 27, 1920, Mr. and Mrs. James A. 
 Mitchell sold 13.2 acres to the State. The department of public works 
 and buildings. December 3, 1931 sold 7.19 acres to the department of 
 public works and buildings and Feb. 14, 1935 the state bought .25 acre 
 from Mr. and Mrs. John Pohar. March 31, 1944, the state acquired 
 384.78 acres from the Mathiessen estate, which is west of the park proper 
 and has not been developed for park purposes. 
 
 The state, when it bought the park, authorized the setting up of the 
 first commission to administer its affairs, which now are carried on by 
 the Division of Parks and Memorials with William R. Allen, as super- 
 intendent. In turn the division is under the supervision of the Depart- 
 ment of Conservation with Glen D. Palmer as director. Named to this 
 first commission were Father Crowe, Richards and Dr. James. 
 
 Of those early years of modern park history Dr. James wrote under 
 date of December 12, 1955. "I was for nine years chairman of the com- 
 mittee for the acquisition of a state park for Illinois. "I was appointed 
 as a member of the first committee of five by Governor Charles Deneen 
 to make a survey of the state for the selction of a state park. Starved 
 Rock was agreed upon by the committee as the most desirable .place for 
 the beginning. I was made chairman of the committee; The next com- 
 mittee of three of which I was re-appointed chairman by Governor Deneen 
 proceeded to secure the Property. The committee of three was made up 
 of two Republicans and Father Crowe as a Democrat; I was again made 
 chairman. The minutes of our meetings were kept by Mr. Richards. I 
 appeared before the legislature and interested Governor Deneen in the 
 acquisition of Starved Rock for the State": One of those who worked 
 with this same committee in the formative years of the park was John 
 P. White, of Ottawa now 88 years old, while Dr. James, when he wrote 
 
 — 45 
 
the letter quoted is 91. White was the first park custodian and served 
 12 years. Those were the years when the park was undergoing many face 
 liftings. The old hotel on the lower level west of the Rock was still in 
 service. The state had a swimming pool to the west of the rock. A dance 
 hall was constructed in the lower levels and Bill Jasper was the popular 
 concessionaire. Ferry boat service was set up running from the lower 
 park level to Horse Shoe Canyon up river in the park. Now the ferry 
 takes its load of pleasure seekers to the half mile long dam in the river, 
 over which they walk to be transferred to another ferry above the dam. 
 
 Hard roads were laid into the park in the 1920's, concessions stands 
 and rest rooms were built, a parking lot laid out, and a camp ground 
 set up overlooking the Rock from the bluff from the south. Trails were 
 laid out through out the park, so that nature lovers could enjoy its 
 wealth of trees and plants, some rare in this part of the state. The steep 
 path up the Rock was improved. The Ladies of the Grand Army of the 
 Republic in 1914 dedicated a granite park marker with a bas relief of 
 Lincoln at the west base of the rock. The only connection, that he ever 
 had with the park may have been in 1832, when he passed through it to 
 and from one Black Hawk war fort to another to be sworn into or out 
 of the service, since he served in three outfits in three months. 
 
 Still the park remained in a wild state over much of its area and 
 needed more face lifting, which the state could not afford at own expense, 
 when hard times struck the nation in the 1930's. Public bodies scraped 
 the bottom of the financial barrel, while private purses grew lean. That 
 was the time the Civilian Conservation corps was organized by the Fed- 
 eral Government in Washington. Two companies were assigned to the 
 park. One company had its barracks in the lower level, with some of 
 the buildings later taken over by the state for the use of the Park Cus- 
 todian. The other company had its barracks on "Parkman's Plain", 
 named for the great American historian, who long ago made a trip to 
 Utica to satisfy himself that he was correct in his assumption, that Starved 
 Rock actually was the site of Fort St. Louis, capital of the French colonial 
 empire in the middle west until it was moved down state to Kaskasia 
 in 1690. 
 
 The C. C. C. under the direction of the regular army officers and 
 work superintendents did yeoman's work in laying new trails, building 
 shelters and giving the park a "New Look". Probably many of those, 
 who did the work later gave their lives for the nation in World War II, 
 as they were then at the age that was quickly called for service. 
 
 The state took another long, look at its property in the 1930's and 
 decided, that more face lifting was needed. That included abolishment 
 of the old camp ground in the thick woods on the bluff and construction 
 of a new one on the lower level of the park much larger and more con- 
 venient north of the parking lot. 
 
 With the camp ground on the bluff gone, the state looked over the 
 old hotel and decided that it, too, had outlived its days. A new lodge, 
 one of the finest of its type in the middle west was constructed on the 
 brow of the bluff, with a long porch at the rear overlooking Starved Rock 
 to the north east. The cost of the main lodge and cabins was between 
 $200,000 and $300,000, while the contract for the construction of the 
 48 room hotel addition was $200,000. At present day prices the state 
 has a $1,000,000 hotel in the park, open the year around and offering 
 not only luxurious accommodations to the guests, but a background of 
 
 — 46 — 
 
Most popular of all Illinois State Park's is Starved Rock, and this scene of the lounge 
 
 will give some idea of the immenseness of the lodge which has forty-five guest rooms 
 
 in addition to nearby overnight cabins. 
 
 French colonial history and American middle western history unmatched 
 by any other state park in Illinois dating back now almost three centuries. 
 Other park custodians have included George Malone, and John Biggs, 
 John Heitman, and the incumbent, Terrence S. Martin. All have had 
 their work cut out for them, with their staffs, in accommodating crowds 
 that have topped the 50,000 mark on a three day holiday as people throng 
 this modern playground of the middle west, thronged with the ghosts of 
 the Indians, the explorers and the missionary priests of three centuries 
 ago, who wrote immortal pages of history in a beautiful setting, that is 
 without equal in the middle west — Starved Rock. 
 
 — 47 —