The history of Cahokia began a long time before its
settlement. Everyone who is at all versed in the pioneer history of Macoupin
County has heard of General Whiteside, who commanded a semi-military
organization known as the "Rangers," whose mission was that of intimidating
hostile Indians and pursuing and punishing them when hostile demonstrations
had been made or depredations committed.
One of Whiteside's Indian
raids took his "Rangers" through Cahokia township in 1811, this being the
first historical incident recorded authentically in the township. Larkin
Craig, in 1832 a member of the State Senate, a pioneer preacher and early
settler of Cahokia, was personally acquainted with many of the actors in
this raid and often related the account of it to me. I will give it as I
recall it from his narrative:
''In June, 1811, there was a family in
Bond County by the name of Cox, residing about three miles northeast of
Pocahontas. The family consisted of Mr. Cox, his wife, a son and daughter.
On the morning of June 2, 1811, the senior members of the family went out to
pick wild strawberries. When they returned they found the son murdered and
scalped, the daughter gone and plenty of evidence of the presence of
Indians. Whiteside was notified at once, and with his ''Rangers" started in
hot pursuit. A number of the Indians riding ponies made the band easily
trailed. They went northwest, crossed Cahokia Creek, three or four miles
below its head, and a party of the Indians on foot were overtaken as they
were resting in a small grove of timber on Prairie branch. One Indian was
killed and more wounded. Two miles to the northwest another Indian was
killed. They continued the pursuit, killing one Indian at a time until near
Chatham, in Sangamon County, where they regained possession of the girl and
returned, claiming they had killed all of the Indians but two"
Perhaps no Indian raid was better verified by landmarks than this one. The
citizens of Pocahontas and vicinity contributed funds and erected a suitable
monument to the memory of young Cox. I have seen the monument and listened
to the tale they told me. The same story as a boy I often heard at my
father's knee. The monument is about ten feet high and stands alone at the
edge of the forest, marking the site of the Cox home where the young man was
slain by an enemy who was a terror to the pioneers of those early days. The
grove where the first Indian was killed has long since disappeared, but the
remnant of it I think is remembered by C. A. Walker and Major F. H. Chapman.
The last four trees of that grove stood in the branch close to my father's
house. My oldest brother found under those trees an old butcher knife, well
eaten with rust. My father thought it belonged to the Indians.
The
place in Cahokia township where the second Indian was killed is better
verified. Four boys, Kinder and Karnes, picking berries thirty-six years
afterwards, found an old flintlock gun and a tomahawk, both nearly eaten up
with rust. This find was one-half mile south of where the village of Clyde
(now Hornsby) stands. I have seen all three of these relics, but
unfortunately they were not preserved.
The first settler in Cahokia
was John Blevins, who built a cabin on the west half of the southwest
quarter of township eight, north of the base line, range six, west of the
third principal meridian. He and his family wintered there. In the spring of
1831, he entered the above eighty acres. The cabin, of course, was built of
logs, and there being no neighbors to assist in the "house raising," he and
his wife built the cabin by rolling the logs in place with oxen, in the same
manner as logs are rolled on a log wagon. My aunt Jennie often told the
story to us as children.
In the fall of 1831 came John and Thomas
Kinder, Amos Snook and Peter Karnes. They built cabins and entered land, so
that in the second winter there were five families and a permanent
settlement was established.
In 1833 Tarleton Blevins, Lodowick
Jones, Nathan Duncan and others came. Tarleton Blevins built the first
blacksmith shop.
The first school was a log cabin on section
sixteen. There were no nails, glass, lime or plank used in its construction,
or in any of the cabins built before its time. It had wooden door hinges,
peg-leg seats and a log cut out for a window. It had a fire-place built of
stones, and a mud chimney like other cabins. My mind rapidly carries me back
to those times.
Cahokia township was a manufacturing community in
the thirties and early forties. How many, if they could see them, would know
a flax break, rope walk, flax hackle, flax spinning-wheel, hand loom or
warping bars; the adz with which they made our puncheon floors, the frow
with which to split the clap-boards for the roofs of the cabins, the ox yoke
and plow with wooden mould board, and many other primitive tools and
utensils which have been supplanted and are now only to be seen in museums
as epoch-marking relics. To those of us who have been eye witnesses to the
evolution it seems as a dream. The pioneer usually made the shoes for his
family or hired them made at fifty cents a pair, everyone furnishing the
leather for his or his family's shoes. As individuals advanced financially
and had more time and help, the cabin was supplanted with a hewed log house
of greater dimensions, with sawed plank floor and shaved oak shingles and
space between the logs chinked with lime and sand. They burned their own
lime on log heaps.
The first accessible sawmill was on Shoal Creek,
built and operated by a man named Fogoeman. The four prime necessities to a
settler were a frow, an axe, a dog and a gun. The rail maker got three bits
a hundred for making rails; the farm hand received six dollars per month,
and the school teacher ten dollars and boarded himself. The best cows sold
for seven dollars, though they seldom changed hands.
We sowed wheat
in the corn and covered it with a shovel plow, cut it with reap hooks and
cradles and tramped the grain out with horses. The acreage was not large and
many farmers used sycamore gums for granaries.
In those times when a
traveler rode up to a cabin and asked for a night's lodging, the reply was,
"Light off." If he knocked at the door it was, "Walk in." Heart to heart
sympathy was characteristic of the early settler. The traveler was often
able to enlighten us with some late news, perchance of the latest election
or of some of the important questions agitating the public. The lack of
transportation facilities caused news to travel slowly and the high rate of
postage was necessarily prohibitive, except for the most important
correspondence. It cost twenty-five cents to post a letter and twenty-five
cent pieces were very scarce.
Settlements or neighborhoods were
usually many miles apart, yet the people were neighborly and were always
ready to assist each other in times of necessity or death. The nearest
settlement north of Cahokia was in what is known as Honey Point township.
This for many years was known as Hammer's Point. A man by the name of Hammer
settled near what is now known as the Barnes neighborhood about the year
1819, and for many years was the only inhabitant of that locality. There was
a trail leading from the river at Alton, through Edwardsville and what is
now Bunker Hill, by way of Hammer's Point to Springfield. A sign or
guide-board, which was fastened to a large locust tree which stood near a
small branch somewhat north and east of Bunker Hill, directed the traveler
to Hammer's Point and assurance that "honey and water in abundance were
easily obtained there," and from circumstances the name was gradually
changed until it finally went altogether by the name of "Honey Point."
Concerning this man Hammer an incident was related to me as a boy by
Telemacus Camp, who settled near what is now known as Staunton, in 1819. A
man named William Purdy was handling government supplies from the river at
Alton to Springfield, and in passing the home learned that Hammer's wife had
just died. There was not a vestige of a plank or piece of lumber on the
premises out of which to make a coffin. Finally they made a coffin out of
Purdy's wagon box and in this the woman was buried.
There were only
two religious denominations for a long time in this community, the Methodist
and Emancipating Baptist, but the Methodists were about as good
emancipationists as the Baptists, and far more numerous. The community of
which I write was almost all emancipationists, there being only one
pro-slavery family there. No one ever stopped a runaway negro in Cahokia.
Occasionally one would pass through and "Cuffy'' always got a piece of corn
bread and meat if he made his wants known.
There was a straight road
from Peter Karnes' place to Bunker Hill, fifteen miles. Twelve miles of it
traversed the middle of the prairie without regard to surveyors' lines or
points of the compass.
My uncle, John Blevins, who preceded my
father here by two years, experienced the winter of the "deep snow," and all
have heard the extremities to which the illy prepared settlers were reduced
during that trying winter. Only a few years later, I am unable to recall the
date as I was too young to remember, we had the "sudden cold spell." In my
boyhood and youth it was often referred to by our elders. It was the extreme
severity of the cold and unprecedented suddenness with which it came that
made it of historical interest. It was related that within one hour the
temperature changed from very mild to severely cold, and in a few hours to
the most extreme cold.
My father witnessed the strange phenomena,
the meteoric shower, or shower of shooting stars in 1833, and I well
remember the greatest of all comets in 1843. These items are not history of
Cahokia ; I mention them as being in the township when they occurred.
Before concluding I will mention the fauna and flora of these primitive
days. They interested me when a barefoot boy, as well as today. The deer and
wild turkey were the most interesting. We had the grey wolf or coyote, and
the black timber wolf, though the latter were never numerous. The foxes were
all grey, though thirty years afterwards they were supplanted by the red
fox. The mink were numerous and we had the grey badger, though the latter
soon disappeared. The weasel, which was so destructive to our poultry, has
disappeared, as well as the old popular song and tune, "Pop! Goes the
Weasel.'' An occasional panther was seen, but they were usually travelers
and I think never bred here.
The wherewithal for our clothing was
the sheep. The small prairie wolf was exceedingly destructive to our young
lambs and every effort was made to exterminate them. I remember seeing many
a wolf turn up his toes at the crack of my father's rifle. Prairie chickens
were abundant and seemed to increase until the cap-lock gun supplanted the
flint-lock and the despicable "pot shot" hunter for the market almost
exterminated the noble bird. Trapping them in winter was paradise for the
boy, while we had only to go a little way on the prairie to gather a basket
of eggs in nesting time. In the springtime, during the migrating season, the
wild ducks and geese, cranes and brants and wild pigeons filled the field,
earth and sky with an indescribable din. Poor common words fall far short of
giving any idea of how Illinois looked in its perfect newness.
There
was no underbrush in that well matured forest. As you passed through the
timber you saw only the tall, tapering stems of the trees till they cut off
the view. On the prairie where I was born we could see four bodies of
timber. They looked from a distance like long, beautiful walks. These woods
abounded in hickorynuts, hazlenuts, butternuts, and black walnuts, while for
fruit we had the wild plum and grape, the persimmon and pawpaw.
In
May and June the prairie was an ocean of flowers of every possible hue,
glittering and blazing in the sunlight. In my mind I can still see the
yellow buttercup, the wild pink and the tiny prairie lily. Surely Solomon
was not more beautifully arrayed.
In conclusion I would say, yes, we
lived hard at first. It was hard to make farms either in the timber or on
the prairie sod, but when the land was subdued and fenced the new soil was
exceedingly productive.
Provisions were abundant. The country
abounded in the flesh pots of Egypt and the land flowed with milk and honey.
I hope I may be pardoned for it (it is not history) when I exclaim
with Holmes: "Oh! give me back my boyhood days!" I would gladly live them
again could my lot be cast among those same primitive surroundings. Our
clothes were plain, but they were the same style and quality as those of our
friends and neighbors. Our fare was coarse but it was abundant and
wholesome. We lived close to nature; we were satisfied; what more could we
ask or enjoy.
Extracted 29 Nov 2018 by Norma Hass from Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society (1908-1984), Volume 8, article published 01 Jan 1916, pages 581-587.
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