Bureau County, Illinois - Chapter 6, 1885

FIRST THE EXPLORER, THEN THE TRAFFICKER, THEN THE TRAPPEE AND HUNTER - THEIR CURIOUS HABITS AKD CUSTOMS - CHILDREN OF THE SOLITUDES - WHAT THEY ENCOUNTERED - HOG AND HOXINT - TH« SHIRT-TAIL AGE - HOUSES AMD FURNITURE - SUFFERING FOR BREAD - ANECDOTES - SOME OF THE KXPERIEXCES OF PIONEER CHILDREN - To YOUm GuSS S - EXPERIENCE OF A BOT AT FIRST HOTEL - HE HEARS A GONG - SUPPOSES THE HOUSE BUSTED - Two DOLLARS A.XD A HALF A DAT AND EATS BREAD AND WATER - WITCHES, WIIXARDS AND TUB HORRORS OF SUPERSTITUTION - How PEOPLE FORTED - WEDDINGS - DANCING AND ONE-EYED FIDDLERS - BOTTLE RACE - How PEO PLE DRESSED - SALUTE YOUR BRIDE - GOING TO HOUSEKEEPING - ETC., rrc.

r\BTERE is much of romance in the story of _I_ the first white men who came to the West, who saw what is now this county, when only the savage and wild beast held possession of this rich and beautiful spot of our continent. The spirit of adventure allured these pioneers into this vast wilderness. The first was the lonely adventurer who cared only for the chase and the eternal solitudes, and sometimes the white men who had, from crime, but more often from an instinctive love of wild life, abandoned civilized homes and had hid themselves away from light, and become Indians to all practical purposes, preferring their barbarous freedom to the trammels of civilization. From the first landing of emigrants on the Atlantic shores, there was always a portion of the whites who looked upon the wild man of the country they found here, and at once they were ready and eager to abandon civilized life and become savages, and of these men often were the most dangerous and cruel enemies of the white race. They would cast their fortunes among the Indians, become bad savages, marry a squaw and they and their half-breed posterity would wage the most cruel and -vindictive warfare and murder, against the pioneers. When, this class of first white savages was ever here will never be known, as ono peculiarity of them was, they cut off all communication or love for their own race when once they abandoned it, and they never returned. They would, as far as possible, hide every trace of white blood about them, and they never were visible except when sometimes their bodies were found among the dead, in skirmishes and fights with the settlers, as when a ma rauding expedition after loot and scalps had been overtaken by the just avengers and slain. These white savages generally attached themselves to a particular tribe, and remained with them and would seek the position of chiefs and rulers. Yet some of them, murderers and fugitives from justice in their native homes, would pass from tribe to tribe, the vilest of criminals and cowardly assassins, and thus like the wandering Jew, they found no place of rest. In this way there were white men possibly here 100 years before the discovery of the country by Joliet. They never returned to tell their white brethren of the countries they had seen. Hence the whites along the Lawrence only learned through the occasional Indians that visited their trading posts, that there was a great river in this part of the world, and that it emptied into the Pacific Ocean.

of the first attempts at settlement and the permanent possession of it. For more than 100 years their lodgement was temporary and sporadic, caused often by the change of empire and the national contentions of the French, Fjnglish and the Spaniards. It was finally the Anglo-Saxon pioneers who came and " planted their feet, never to take them up." It was to traffic with the Indians, exchange those engines of civilization, trinkets, whisky and eventually powder, with the untutored savage for his pelts and furs. They were backed by the pious missionaries of the Catholic Church, bearing the cross and the pictures of Calvary, that were the first genial rays of the sweetness of civilization, in the noisome wilderness. The footsteps of the hardy trapper and hunter accompanied these traders and churchmen, and the latter were finally the little nucleus around which gathered the oncoming hosts that have truly made the wilderness to bloom as the rose.

These men came in the hunt of homes for themselves and their children. The adventurous spirit started them, but when they looked upon the country they had dreams of its great future, and were content to fix their lot where there was so much to gladden and encourage them. The beauties and natural wealth of the country pleased the eye, and the abundance of wild game gratified their passion for hunting and solved the problem, in one respect, in the struggle for life. They were surrounded by enemies, fierce and formidable. The luxuriant vegetable growths rotting in the autumn sun was the breeding place, especially in the lagoons, marshes and wet prairies, and in the river bottoms, of malaria that poisoned the air. and carried sickness and death on its wings. The cunning and treacherous Indian with his horrid scalping-knife was everywhere in ambush or in bold war paint to assassinate and torture the old or the young, the innocent and defenceless. But these bold borderers flinched not from the perils that beset them on every side; even the women and children at times were called upon and did perform deeds of cool valor and heroism from which the strong iron nerves of men might well have quaked. These dauntless couriers blazing the way to the heart of the wilderness for civilization, who slept with one hand always on their trusty rifles, whose minds were ever keenly alive to the dangerous surroundings, encompassed on every side with the limitless solitudes, like the lost mariner, " alone, alone, all, all alone, alone on a wide, wide sea, " must have had brave souls to thus endure and suffer and struggle through the great problem of mankind as they did, and lay the foundations for that grand structure for the millions of happy and prosperous people, who now are reaping where they sowed.

They had no opportunity for the cultivation of the arts and elegancies of refined life. In their trying ordeal, in their oppressive solitude, there arose a peculiar condition of society, elsewhere unknown. The little allowance of corn meal, often, that they brought with them, was too soon expended, and sometimes for weeks and months they lived literally without bread. The lean venison, and the breast of the wild turkey they would then call bread, and the fat portions of the bear was meat. This was a wretched artifice, and resulted in disease and sickness, when circumstances compelled them to indulge in it too long. They would become gradually weaker and weaker, oppressed with a constant feeling of an empty stomach, and the poor women and children would pass the dull hours in watching the potato tops, pumpkin and squash vines, hoping from day to day to get something to answer the place of bread.

The writer has been told by those who had witnessed these things, that they had eaten the young pumpkins as soon as the blossoms would drop off the end. What a delight and joy, then, were the first young potatoes! What a jubilee, the first young corn, with its grains half grown, eaten raw or cooked! And how all this pleasure was intensified when the corn had become hard enough for the tin grater, and the glorious johnny-cake was turned piping hot off of the baking board. These were as the harbingers from heaven, bringing health, vigor and content to all.

The first houses, if they can be so called, were merely brush sheds, that were but the slightest protection against the elements, and none at all against the thieving Indians and prowling wild beasts, and at times the little family would be compelled to take their turns of standing sentinel during the night, while the others snatched the short sleep that exhausted nature made compulsory.

The furniture for the table for some years consisted of a few pewter dishes, plates and sometimes a spoon, wooden bowl, trencher and noggin, gourds from the hard-shelled squashes, and the cooking utensil was an iron skillet. These, with some salt, had been brought often on horse-back, and on this single horse often were the household goods, and the wife and child, while the husband led the way on foot with his rifle on his shoulder. Corn-bread for breakfast and dinner, and mush and milk for supper. Meat was always abundant; the wild hogs were nearly as abundant as the many varieties of game and fish that were easily obtained.

At first game abounded; deer and bear were in great abundance. Soon after the Indians had gone, and the country was occupied by the sparse settlements of the whites, the woods were filled with wild hogs. In the winter, when they flocked, the prairie chickens were so abundant that at times the fences and trees were literally lined with them, and the beating of the air by their multitudinous wings as they arose from their perches or from feeding places would sound like distant thunder. Wild turkeys, quail, and the trees apparently full of squirrels, were all rather too contemptible for these hunters to waste their ammunition upon. When the bear had gone, the prize game was the graceful and bounding deer that sometimes grazed and frolicked upon the rich prairie grasses, the graceful and toothsome successors to their more noble congeners - the buffalo; as in the woods the wild hog had come in the place of the panther and bear. In the spring and fall the migrating geese, swans and ducks and other fowls at times tilled the river and lakes, feeding upon the wild rice, from which in countless thousands they would rise and fly along in front of the lone canoe or the batteau as it came and went with the Indian or pioneer. Meat was always abundant and of easy access, until immigration came so plentifully that the domestic animals usurped the places of the wild game. It probably was the second crop of pioneers who depended mainly upon the wild hogs in the woods for their standard article of meat. Hominymills and the old fashioned lye hominy (the only kind that was ever fit to eat) were the chief reliance for bread, and the phrase ' 'hog and hominy" was not a meaningless one. And for the information of posterity it is not amiss to tell, that there was once a period of time in the West that is fitly designated as the "hog and hominy'' age.

In fact, men who were here as boys, and from whose memories we gather these facts, will tell .you with a sly twinkle of the eye that in their own case they associate another national characteristic of that age of "hog and hominy," and that was the "shirt tail age." Some boys were, with the full knowledge of the old folks, ready to go "sparking" when the first pair of pants was ready to don. There certainly was not as much style among young people as we find now. There were more children then to the family than now, and much less for them to badger their brains about wearing.

An anecdote is told - of course it is not true, but it serves to illustrate some of the economy of the times - of a man who had too many children to array them in silks and fine linens. So, in the warm months of the year, he had prepared a gum for each and set them conveniently about the cabin. At the ap proach of a visitor he would yell, "Gums !" when each would take to his retreat, and no other part of their person would ever appear above the top of the gum except the child's eyes.

Dr. Doddridge, in his diary, tells something of his recollections as a pioneer child; how he saw the first teacup and saucer, and for the first time tasted coffee. When six years old he had lost his mother, and was sent to Bedford, Md. Here he saw his first tavern. What a new world was this to him. It was made of stone, and more astounding still, it was all plastered inside, both the walls and ceiling. On going into the dining-room he was still more amazed and stupefied with wonder. He had never before supposed there was a house in the world but that was made of logs and had only one room; but here was a house and he could see no logs, and stranger still, on looking up he could see no joists. Had all this been made by the hand of man or had it so grown itself, he could not conjecture. He was afraid to ask questions about it. When at the table he watched attentively to see what the " big folks " would do with their little cups and spoons; he imi- tated them and found the taste of the coffee exceedingly nauseous, but he continued to drink it as did the rest until the tears were streaming from his eyes, and when the torture was ever to end, he could not guess, as each little cup would be again filled as soon as it was emptied. His distress grew to agony, and he dared not say he had enough. Watching closely, he finally saw one turn his cup bottom upward and put his spoon across it, and then his cup was not filled any more, and this hint being acted upon stopped the prolonged agony of the young pioneer.

The writer will never forget his first experience in a big, fine hotel. He was sixteen years old, and had seen only the big prairies of Southern Illinois; had once been to St. Louis, distant twenty miles from the farm on which he spent his boyhood, but had helped drive some hogs to market, and they all camped during the trip and though bewildered at the long row of big houses, he saw nothing of the inside of any of them. He had been dressed up in resplendent suit of "ready made," of the $10 pattern (certainly the finest dressed lad in the world) and with $105 in silver, had been started to find his way alone and enter Jefferson College in Washington County, Penn. His first steamboat ride was from St. Louis to Pittsburgh. He had been warned against all strangers, and with the weight of the silver in his pocket, sleeping with it clutched, and in dread of fell robbers all the time, his experiences in that twenty days from starting point to destination, would of themselves make a book of romance. He landed at Pittsburgh about midnight and the boat's porter shouldered his hair trunk, and for half a dollar landed boy and trunk in the Monongahela House. What a world! What an overpowering vastness and strangeness was here for him. He was at once taken to his room and the experienced colored porter kindly showed him how to turn off the gas. When alone in his room, the door securely locked, he drew a long breath of relief and began a survey of his surroundings. His eyes saw a printed card on the door that was full of interest, as well as conveying some information that was stunning in its effects, the most distinct item of which he can now recall was that each guest would be charged $2.50 a day. Merciful heavens! what new planet was this, where money flowed in a golden stream that enabled people to pay $2.50 a day for board which in Illinois could be had for 50 cents a week! and he went to bed and eventually was overcome by sleep, to dream of traveling from new worlds to other worlds, where the humblest house would pierce the clouds, and its immensity fill all visible space; the men as large as the mammoths of old, each with pockets as large as the boot of a Jersey coach, and all stuffed with gold. He was up and dressed, as was his habit on the farm, the next morning at early daylight, and hunted his way down stairs in some trepidation lest he was too late for breakfast. Upon reaching the hotel office, he saw the clerk, that marvellous development of the century, end the first look was like annihilation; there sat the " fronts" on a long bench, and the splendors of the marble tesselated floors and the awful grandeur of the general surroundings were only equaled by the clerk and waiters, who were too immense to be ordinary mortals. The overwhelmed lad wondered if these great people knew or suspected he was fresh from an Illinois farm, and an expert at ''splitting middles" in the corn rows. Was ever a boy in the hunt of an education so abashed? He finally found his way into the reading-rootn, where some of the earliest risers had soon gathered, and

-were busy looking over the morning papers, and in a hurry for an early breakfast A mirror in one end of the room gave it the appearance of being miles and miles in length, and this illusion was fearfully real to the strange boy. Another thing he noticed was, that below were steam works, and this added to the bewildering immensity of the place. A gong suddenly started its deafening noise - the first the boy had ever heard - and instantly he supposed the steam works had exploded. The people started up, and the frightened lad bolted out into the office; there were the clerk and the bell boys, happy and serene. The sudden shock of the supposed explosion - the real could not have been more real or the horror more sudden and appalling - then the counter shock - instantly in looking at that calm and majestic face of the clerk, was the realization that the world was not a wreck, in fact, that there was no explosion at all, but only a hideous and horrid din, calling the boarders to breakfast. Did that terrible clerk know why the lad had rushed so headlong out of the reading-room and into the office? No, he was too immense to see anything short of a paste diamond, and, thank heaven, he thereby missed the funniest sight a traveling innocent ever presented.

In a moment the traveler rallied his scattered senses and demurely followed the crowd to the breakfast-room. A long table ran the length of the room, and the youth found a seat finally, after all else had been accommodated. Before him was a plate turned, a knife and fork, a glass turned, and on it a slim piece of stale bread, and he furtively looked up and down the long table, and this was all it contained. $2. 50 a day ! and in all his life he had never seen hungry people set down to quite as slim fare as that ! A waiter, whose style was frightfully magnificent, poured out a tumbler of water and the lad fell to work, just as he had been accustomed all his life, to eating what was before him, bread and water though it was. And when he had finished his glass of water the colored waiter again filled it, and in less than five minutes he had devoured all in sight and he could see no further usefulness for him there and he got up and walked out, feeling as though he would not begrudge the $2. 50 for a home breakfast of honest fry and fatty biscuit. To this day he remembers a most peculiar look in the faces of the waiters as he passed out. What did it mean, anyhow ?

Among all the earliest settlers the men wore hunting- shirts. This was a loose frock, reaching half way down the thighs, with large sleeves, and open before, and so wide as to lap over when belted. It generally had a large cape and was made of cloth or buckskin. The bosom served as a wallet, to hold bread, jerk, tow for wiping the gun, or any other necessary article for the warrior or hunter. The belt, which was tied behind, answered several purposes besides that of holding the dress together. Moccasins for the feet and generally a coon-skin cap, completed the dress. In wet weather the moccasins were only a " decent way of going barefooted," and caused much rheumatism among the people. The linsey petticoat and bed-gown were the dress of the women in early times, and a Sunday dress was completed by a pair of home-made shoes and a handkerchief.

The people "-forted" when the Indians threatened them. The stockades, bastions, and cabins were furnished with port-holes. The settlers would occupy their cabins and reluctantly move into the block-house when the alarm was given. Couriers would pass around in the dead hours of the night to warn the people of danger, and in the silence of death and darkness the family would

The settlers, as a rule, married young. Here were no distinctions in rank, and hut little in fortune, and nearly the only source of amusement that was enjoyed by all was the wedding; this was anticipated from the time announced until the gay frolic was over, with the keenest anticipations by the whole people of the country for miles around. Any other general gathering of the people was either a log-rolling or a house-raising, where the men had to precede the night's roystering with a day of hard work. But at the wedding alone, it was different. All the world, at least every one who heard of the affair in time to get there, was invited. This would be the only invitation issued to even the closest friends, and the welcome was as cordial as the implied invitation had been universal. At the cabin of the bride the people would begin to assemble at an early hour - tho whole family, from the cradle to the white-haired sire and matron with weak and trembling voices and the bent forms of great age, tottering to the seats of honor by the favorite side at the fire-place, or, if the weather was warm, at the side of the door; and these dear old ' ' grandsirs " would catch the infection of the occasion, grow gleesome and garrulous about the long ago, kindling the fires of nearly extinct memories, until their blood would once more course through their veins in a rush and flow that would lighten up their eyes with the erstwhile flames of their lusty youth. During all the forenoon the people would continue to come, till about the hour of high noon. Cooking, chatting, joking and welcoming guests, without the slightest show of formality anywhere, gave all something to do or say. The young girls in some secluded spot - perhaps, if only one room in the house, a sheet hung across the corner of the room - busy arranging the bride, and in the greatest glee, joking and talking, tittering and laughing ; the married people nursing their children, assisting in the cooking and preparing the long table (generally a couple of bare planks on wooden trussels), or exchanging sweet gossip with their neighbors ; the young men standing about the premises in quiet groups, trying to talk about the weather, crops, or a coon hunt, and all the time distracting their attention from each other's words by furtive glances toward the girls. If there was a low rail fence in front of the house they perched upon this, or standing with one foot on the third rail, busily whittling their riding switch; and further away down the line of fences were the young men's saddle horses and the family wagons standing hitched.

In the meantime there is at the home of the groom an assembling of the young men on horseback. They are to be his gay escort to the wedding, and one is selected before - they leave the house to run the " race for the bottle." At the house of the bride are outlooks for this groom's cavalcade, and when discovered in the distance, the young folks, boys and girls, mount their horses and start to meet them, having first made their selection to contend in the race on behalf of the bride and against the groom's man. They meet at some point where there is a long stretch of straight road and the riders prepare and the race is run. "What fun alive! Whether old plow horses or burr-tailed colts, under whip and spur, they do their best, and the winner takes the bottle (generally an old black bottle gaily-rigged out in narrow pink ribbons) and this, marching at the head of the crowd, he holds aloft - the proud and envied hero of the day. When this joyful procession reaches the house, the groom is conducted to the bride, the preacher takes up^his position in front of the door, the people press around, and all is hushed; the happy pair emerge, and just stepping outside the door, stop in the close presence of the preacher and slowly and solemnly he asks "John, wilt thou?" and " Mary Jane, wilt thou?" and then by the authority of heaven and the power of the law, he impressively pronounces them man and wife. "Whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder. Salute your bride!"

Then follows dinner, and immediately after that dancing. The afternoon, the evening, all the night long until breakfast next morning, a single fiddle, the fiddler generally one-eyed and beating time with his foot, and away the high- stepping, fleet-footed dancing racers go; pirouetting, bounding like India rubber, whirling, double- shuffle, pigeon'swing, the reel, the jig, the hoe-down, the walk - talk - ginger-blue, terpsichore ! what dancing, what life, what endurance! filling their innocent hearts with gladness and their legs with soreness and pain.

The "infair," the day after the wedding, at the house of the groom's parents, would be simply a continuation of this feasting and dancing for another twenty-four hours. Then, in a few days, the men all assemble and by night the cabin for the new couple is completed and they move in, and commence the serious work of married life - and the wedding is over.

The tin grater, the hominy block, the handmill and the sweep, and the ox-mill and finally the water mill were the order of the coming of the mechanic arts in bread making. Nearly every family was its own tanner, weaver, shoemaker, tailor, carpenter, blacksmith and miller. The first water-mill, or even horse-mill, was a grand advance in the solid comforts of civilization.

Amusements often are imitations of the business of life, or at least of some of its particular objects of pursuit. Many of the sports of the early settlers were imitative of the exercises and strategems of hunting and war. Boys were taught the use of the bow and arrow at an early age, and acquired considerable expertness in their use. One important pastime was learning to imitate the noise or call of every bird or beast in the forest. This faculty was a very necessary part of education, on account of its utility in certain circumstances. The imitation of gobbling and other calls of the turkey often brought these keen-eyed denizens of the woods within easy range of the hunter's rifle. The bleating of the fawn brought its dam to her death in the same way! The hunter often would collect a company of mopish owls to the trees about 'him and amuse himself with their hoarse screaming. His howl would raise and obtain a response from a pack of wolves, so as to inform him of their neighborhood, and thus guard him against their prowling depredations. This imitative talent was often used as a protection or a deception of the enemy in the strategy of war. The Indians would often when scattered about in a neighborhood, call themselves together, by the turkey calls by day and the howling like wolves by night. And sometimes a whole people would be thrown into the greatest consternation by the screeching of an owl.

Throwing the tomahawk was another amusement in which often great skill was acquired. This instrument, with a handle a certain length, will make a certain number of revolutions in a given distance. At one distance, thrown at a tree, it will stick with the handle down, and at another distance with the handle up. Practice would soon enable the boy to throw it, and with his eye so accurately measure the distance as to stick it any way he might choose. Wrestling, running and jumping were the athletic sports of the young men. A boy at twelve or thirteen years of age, when possible to do so, was furnished with a rifle, and in killing game he would soon become an expert. Then he was a good fort soldier, and would be assigned his port-hole in case of an attack.

Among the early settlers of the Mississippi Valley was a wide-spread belief in witchcraft. This was true at that time over nearly all the Old World. To the witch was ascribed the power of inflicting new and strange diseases, particularly incurable diseases on children; of secretly destroying cattle by shooting them with hair balls propelled from noiseless witch guns; and a great variety of other modes of destruction. Hunters, even to a recent date, had no doubt but that witches could put " spells " on their guns, or that men were changed into horses, whom the witches would bridle and saddle, and ride at full speed over hill, dale and mountain, and through the air to all parts of the world, to attend the witches' pow-wows at their distant places of rendezvous. They would return the poor human horse to his bed and sleep just before daylight; but, especially in children's hair, would be found the witches' stirrups, that, the child would fully and painfully realize when these tangles were being combed out by the iu other. The horrid and fatal powers of the witches were ample, their works abundant, their wrecks everywhere, calling up men's dread and fears, and appalling and weakening in their forces men's reason and intellect. States and Government invoked the laws to stamp out this terrible evil, and witches were hunted out, drowned, burned and executed in various ways. Accusers were encouraged, and it soon came to be a fact that to be accused was to be condemned. The victims would be thrown into the water, if they sank and drowned this proved they were innocent, 'if they swam ashore this proved their guilt, and according to law they were at once executed. A community which could make such laws were terribly in earnest, and certainly sincere and honest in their beliefs. They s aw their own and their neighbors' cattle dying of the murrain; and was not this plainly the work of the witches? Cases of epilepsy, fits, insanity, strange fevers, in fact, the multitudes of diseases which they could not understand, and if not witches' work, what could it be? The first victims were always old, ugly women, especially if they* lived alone; then, when these did not furnish victims enough, others were selected and executed. The ablest men then living had no doubt but that there were plenty of witches, and the most learned divines denounced them as satraps of the devil ; learned judges from the bench sent them to the rack and the gibbet. No one doubted, and many of the accused confessed, and told wonderful stories of their crimes and orgies, and would sometimes even beg to be executed. People throughout the Christian world were thus murdered by the hundred thousand, and matters had reached that climax that when one neighbor desired to be rid of another, all he had to do was to lodge a complaint against him of being a witch, until fathers deserted and denounced their own children, children accused their parents, neighbors suspected each other and horrid suspicions began to reach all, and the dark wings of death and universal gloom hovered over the world like a hideous pall, and by its growing intensity the public craze buraed itself out and men began to sober up from the mad frenzy of the hour.

the appearance of the "wizards." These were men, witch doctors, who were supposed to possess all the evil power of the witches, but instead of generally exercising them for bad purposes they would cure those afflicted by witches, and in many occult ways thwart the spirits in their fell works. These witch doctors boldly stood in the way of the malevolent influences of the bad spirits. Hence they were called witch-masters, and from patient to patient they practiced their profession as regular physicians. They would make "silver tea" (boil a silver coin in water) and give it to the sick cattle. They would carry to the bed-side their witch balls (made of deer and cow's hair) and in a strange manner, and muttering a wild jargon, pass them over the sufferers, and exorcise the evil ones. One mode of cure was to make a picture of the supposed witch on a' stump, and shoot at it a bullet in which was a small portion of silver. This bullet, it was supposed, transferred to the real witch a painful, sometimes a mortal spell, on that portion of the witches' body corresponding to the part of the picture struck by the bullet. Other and many disgusting practices were employed as remedies, and the witch had but one way of relieving itself of any spell thus inflicted, and that was to borrow something, no matter what, of the family to which the witches' victim belonged. Thus often would an old woman only discover that she was a "suspect" when she had applied to borrow of a neighbor, and had been peremptorily refused. Cattle were sometimes burned in the forehead with a branding-iron, or when dead, burned to ashes. This, it was held, inflicted a spell on the witch, which could only be removed by borrowing as above recited. Witches would constantly milk their neighbors' cows. This, it was believed, they could do by fixing a new pin in a new towel, one for each cow milked, and hanging the towel over the door and then by incantations the milk would be extracted from the fringes of the towel, after the manner of milking a cow. Singularly enough, the cows were never milked by the witches, except when they had about gone dry for the want of proper feed. It is stated as a historical fact that the German glass-blowers once drove the witches out of their furnaces by throwing living puppies into them.

The Voudoo was brought to this country with the captured slaves from the jungles of Africa, and it is here yet, and in some form believed in by a majority of the negroes in the country. It is but another form of witchcraft. It is the negroes' horrid incantation and magic, and in the cauldron where is boiled the voudoo, instead of ' ' tongue of viper and leg of newt " are human remains, robbed of graves opened at midnight. Nothing, save the imagination of Edgar A. Poe, can equal in repulsive horrors the genuine voudoo. In the year 1790 a black slave was hung at Cahokia, who acknowledged that by his power of devilish incantations, he had "poisoned and killed his master; but that his mistress had proved too powerful for his necromancy." In the same village another slave was shot down in the street for his diabolism. One of the first acts of the first civil Governor of Illinois, John Tod, was an order to the Sheriff to take from the jail a convict negro slave, to the water's edge, burn him and scatter his ashes to the four winds of heaven for voudooism.

The red children of the forest were as superstitious as the whites or blacks in regard to witches. The One-eyed Prophet, a brother of Tecumseh, who commanded at the battle of Tippecanoe, in obedience, he said, to the commands of the great Manitou, fulminated the penalty of death against those who practiced the black art of witchcraft or magic. A number of Indiana were tried, convicted, condemned, tomahawked and consumed on a pyre. The chief's wife, his nephew, Billy Patterson, and one named Joshua, were accused of witchcraft. The two latter were convicted and burned; but a brother of the chief's wife boldly stepped forward, seized his sister and led her from the Council house, and then returned and harangued the savages, exclaiming: "Manitou, the evil spirit has come in our midst, and we are murdering one another! "

It is a sad confession that no civilized white man had the sense or courage thus to rebuke the murderers among his own people. Pity that this one-eyed savage could not have been employed and empowered as a missionary, to go among civilized people and save them from their own murderous superstitions. In the history of the world, the most revolting cruelties have been the inflictions of superstitious ignorance, and were it not yet a matter of daily demonstration, one could not easily believe how long these prejudices held fast in people's minds, and how when they are crushed in one shape, they will duly appear in some other form. The fell monster that has ever laid waste and made desolate the earth, is the earnest bigot, full of error and superstition, holding toward heaven in supplication, hands dripping with the blood of innocent mothers and prattling babes.