DeKalb County, Illinois - Chapter 3: Manners and Customs of the Indians, 1868

The Indians who inhabited this County of DeKalb, at the time of its first settlement by the whites, were of the powerful tribe of the Pottawatomies. Their territory extended as far to the west as the Rock river, which stream divided them from the Winnebagoes. These two tribes, although living upon the most friendly terms, were of diverse origin, speaking a different dialect, and having emigrated from different parts of the continent. The Winnebagoes belonged to the Sioux branch and spoke that language. The Pottawatomies, with the Ottawas, Chippewas, Menomonies, Sacs and Foxes, and other noted tribes, spoke the Algonquin dialect which was originally the language of most of the tribes north of the Potomac and east of the Mississippi. This tribe came originally from Canada. Like most Indians, they were in person rather above than below the average height of Europeans. The usual expression of their countenances when in repose, was grave, even to sadness. They had high cheek bones, faces uncommonly wide below the eyes, retiring foreheads, long, sleek black hair, finer than a horses mane, but much resembling it, but no beards, for a beard was considered disgraceful, and untold tortures were endured in plucking out the first faint symptoms of one that sometimes appeared. They were of rugged health, straight and well limbed, and with a stoical indifference to pain that was either a wonderful exhibition of fortitude or, more probably, the result of physical insensibility. They were generally sullen, seldom impatient, or hurried into intemperate warmth, except in hatred of their enemies ; generally feigning a proud indif- ferencc to their families, yet often giving evidence of strong attachment to tliem ; and always indolent, except when engaged in the chase or the war-path. This was rather the natural character of the original Indian than that which most of them bore at the period of the settlement of this County. The use of intoxicating liquors had at this time demoralized them, and destroyed their native nobility of character. They had become more puerile and purposeless, and their most conspicuous traits, were their indolence and their disgusting personal habits.

Their pride in dress had mostly passed away, yet they were childishly fond of display. Their persons were anointed with vile paints and grease, as much for the purpose of utility as decoration, as it defended the body from cold and from the attacks of insects. In 1835 there were villages of them near Ohio Grove ; on Section 3, in the Town of Cortland ; in Kingston on Section 21 ; at Coltonville ; a large settlement at Shabbona Grove, under the good chief Shabbona, and another at Paw Paw Grove, under a chief of yet higher rank, called Waubonsie. There were some forty wigwams at Coltonville, but at this time they were not all inhabited. The first settlers found them making sugar from the maples of the adjoining grove, having, beside -the hewn troughs, quite a number of the backs of turtles for sap buckets ; and the early settlers were sometimes nauseated by seeing them cast into their boiling syrup, rabbits and woodchucks, entrails, hair and all, which they devoured, when thus cooked, with evident relish, and thought the syrup none the worse for the unusual addition.

Their modes of burial were various. The most of them were buried in shallow graves, with such of their bows and arrows, guns and trinkets, as their relatives thought they might need in the happy hunting grounds to which they had gone. The bodies of their chiefs, however, were treated in a different manner. A space was selected upon some conspicuous mound, and a square, about six feet by ten, fenced in with high palisades. Within this, the body was placed, braced up in a sitting posture, with knives, rifle, blankets, pipe, and a good supply of tobacco, and all were thus left to moulder and decay.

A chief of this tribe, whose name has not been preserved, was in this manner enshrined upon the farm of Calvin Colton, in Mayfield, at the first settlement of the country, and his skeleton was afterward begged of Colton by Dr. Richards and went, with the bullet in it which was the cause of his death, to adorn the collection of physiological curiosities in the medical school at St. Charles. The dried and mouldering corpse of the famous chief Big Thunder, of this tribe, was as late as 1840 a conspicuous object on a height in the present city of Belvidere, but the early settlers becoming destitute of tobacco, had carried off the old fellows supply, and left him destitute also of rifle, tomahawk and knives.

For the bodies of their dead children they hads*till another mode of sepulture. Hollow logs were procured and halved, the corpses placed in them, covered with bark, bound down tightly with withes, and then fastened with similar Avithcs to the horizontal branches of trees. There they were left, until the withes decayed and the bleached bones perhaps already stripped of their flesh by carnivorous birds, fell in a mass to the ground. As late as 1830 when Mr. Calvin Colton moved to his present location at Coltonville, there were, he says, as many as fifty pappooses thus suspended in the trees of the grove adjoining his residence. The Indians cultivated small fields of corn - not upon the open prairies where it would be difficult to break the sod, but upon the bottom lanes, near the streams, and on the borders of the groves. Their only implement was a heavy kind of hoe, and they hilled the corn to a great height so that the traces of their hills may even yet be seen in some places. The squaws did all of this work ; the male Indians Avere too proud and indolent to labor. They kept their seed-corn by stringing it upon Ioav poles beloAV the surface of the ground, coverinir these with bark and then with

Their chief reliance for food, however, was upon the chase. Deer were plenty in these woods and upon the prairies at this time, and the prairie wolf, the rabbit, the polecat, the martin and the woodchuck were quite numerous. The buffalo had passed away, but many of their bones were yet to be found. Shabbona, their intelligent ami truthful old chief, states that about the year 1810 there was a winter of extraordinary severity, more terrible than had ever been known before or since that time ; that multitudes of Indians perished with the cold, and that all of the buffalo died and were never afterwards seen in this section of the country.

Near the present town line between Clinton and Shabbona is a small pond of water whose springs never fail to yield an abundant supply. Around this spring, could have been seen, twenty years ago, the bones and skulls of hundreds of buffalo. In times of severe drought, this was the only watering place on the open prairie for many miles around, and it is supposed that the old and decrepid buffalo, who always avoid the groves, resorted to this spot for water when nearly worn out, and died there. But although the buffalo were gone, the toils of the Indian hunters were yet rewarded with an abundance of game, and it constituted their principal supply of food.

Their courtship and " marriage was simple in the extreme. If an Indian fancied a certain squaw, he sent word that at a certain night he would visit her wigwam. He enters, stirs the slumbering embers of her fire, and lights a bit of wood. If she remains wrapped in her blanket and takes no notice of him, he is rejected, and departs without more ado. If she rises, blows out the torch, he is accepted, and they are man and wife henceforth

The Indians abandoned the County about six months after the whites moved in. They had a wholesome awe of the power of the government, which protected the white settlers, and gave them little reason to apprehend danger. They sometimes stole articles of trifling value, and sometimes annoyed the settlers by their begging for food. They often got whiskey of the whites, and, until that was gone, they had noisy powwows, dancing, screaming and singing all night long, very much as some of their successors do to this day ; but even in their debauch they were not quarrelsome, but generally silly and good-humored. Shabbona's tribe remained upon their reservation for several years, and they were occasionally visited by other Indians, and reports were occasionally circulated that they were dressed in the red war paint, had sent away their women and children, and were about to make war again upon the whites. Some isolated farmers sent daily messengers to watch them, and kept their horses harnessed at night, ready to fly at a moments warning ; but there is no evidence that these fears were well founded. Shabbona was, undoubtedly, a warm friend to the whites ; an Indian who knew and appreciated their power, who had become warmly attached to many of them, and felt the futility of all attempts to resist their onward progress.

He was a man of remarkable nobility of character, and worthy of being held in respectful remembrance by all inlyibitants of this State. He was born in Canada sometime about the year 1780. Of his early years we know but little, except that he was attached to some roving party with which lie traveled extensively over the State. His knowledge of the country was extraordinary. He Avas a sort of aid to Tecumseh, and with him visited the Creeks in 1812, originating that bloody Indian Avar which devastated Georgia and Mississippi, and in which Gen. Jackson acquired his first prominence. He remained with Tecumseh, actively engaged against the Avhites, until the death of that celebrated warrior. His account of the killing of Tecumseh is as follows, and there is no doubt of its truth. He says: "The battle Avas terrible; Indians Avere killed on very fast ; still so long as they could hear the "big Avhoop" of Tecumseh, the Indians held on ; then came the charge. Col. Johnson riding his horse, rushed down among them. Tecumseh raised his tomahawk to strike him off, but quick as thought the Colonel presented his pistol, leveling it across his wounded arm, which was very bloody, and shot the warrior dead. The Indians hearing his voice no longer, at once gave up and dispersed." Shabbona loved the memory of Tecumseh ; he said he was noble and brave, and did what he thought Avas for the good of his people. This was Shabbona's last effort against the whites; from that time forward his aim was peace. He was styled the Peace Chief of his tribe ; he concluded it was useless to contend against what he knew to be a superior race. This County soon after became his residence. When in 1831 and '32 Black Hawk began his agitation for war, Shabbona opposed him from the beginning, using every art to keep peace. Finally, he secretly left the last Indian Council, held somewhere on the Kishwaukie, and rode southward, sending out some of his own family in other directions, warning the whites of the approaching danger. On the Indian Creek, near "old Munsontown," in La Salle County, was quite a settlement of whites. He arrived there on his panting pony, told them Black Hawk was coming, and begged them to leave. They would not believe him. He went on towards Holdermand's Grove, and thence up Fox River, warning all and saving the lives of many. Black Hawk, following, soon after surprised these people at Munsontown, killed thirteen of them and took two girls prisoners. Only one person, Green Hall, escaped. He was near the creek, saw the Indians coming, jumped down the bank and hid under some flood-wood. The Indians, after hunting some time, concluded he was drowned. xVfter they went away, he wandered down the creek nearly dead, with a broken arm, and finally reached Ottawa.

Shabbona has been blamed for his conduct on this occasion - on the plea that he was a traitor to his tribe. His defence was this, almost in his own words : He did not like Black Hawk, who was ambitious and cruel ; he had lived long on terms of intimacy and friendship with the whites; he loved his white friends and their children ; he hated baby-killing and woman-scalping ; and he knew Black Hawk would fail in the end. Certainly his course was right.

At the treaties following the Black Hawk war, his grove was reserved for him. January 1st, 1836, the first house was raised at Shabbona Grove, by Edmund Town, assisted by David Smith, both living yet, and residents of the town. While building this house, they lived in the deserted wigwams of the Indians, who had gone west about three months before. A few days before the raising, Smith found two bottles of whiskey hidden in a tree and left by the Indians ; so they had whiskey at the first raising.

The Indians never after made a permanent home at this place till LS44, but came and went every year or two. In the meantime many settlers had been attracted to the grove, between whom and the Indians there existed close friendship. At this time his band numbered some twenty-five in all, consisting of himself, his third wife, Pokanoka, (his first wife was buried in the grove and his second wife lived with her tribe near Council Bluffs) two sons, five daughters; sons-in-law, nephews, neices and grand-children. He was then between sixty and seventy years of age ; a fine, portly man with an intelligent pleasant face, and distinguished for his kindliness of disposition and social qualities. He was prompt and honorable in his dealings ; and in every way an agreeable person except wdien in liquor. Drunkenness seems to be an especial vice with, an Indian. His son Smoke was a magnificent fellow ; tall, and well proportioned, with fine expressive features, dignified and courteous in his bearing, and distinguished as being perfectly temperate ; he disdained to touch whiskey. He was a real "Uncas." Smoke died in IowTa. It seems he was attended by the whites in his last moments who gave him Christian burial. Shabbona told the story thus : "White man kind to Smoke ; make him box, (describing with his hands the shape of a coffin) put him in ; then one white man bend down and say, "0 God! 0 God! 0 God!" over Smoke. Ugh! white man much good, much good." The other son, Wynonwy, was a heavy, good-natured fellow. They hunted, generally riding their ponies over the prairies after game ; raised some corn ; made sugar in the grove. Like all Indians, they Avere extremely disgusting in their domestic habits, though these were not in person very unclean. They were generally pleasant, intelligent and agreeable, and visited, borrowed and loaned with the whites, being usually prompt and honorable. Shabbona was particularly so. He sometimes attended meetings with his grandchildren, whom he was particular to keep in good order. There seemed to be strict discipline kept up among them. As, for instance : Mr. Isaac Morse relates that he went down into the timber to work, one day, and, noticing a pen built up around a tree, went there and found within, an Indian girl apparently about fifteen years old. To his questions she made no reply : at noon he tried to get her to eat of his lunch, but she would not eat nor speak. Next morning she was there yet : he again tried to converse with her, and pulled the pen down. She then told him she was "bad Indian," and must stay another day, carefully the while replacing the sticks.

Another time a number of them were coming over from Paw Paw in a wagon. They had been drinking, and one, being particularly disorderly, was tied hands and feet and left on the ground : then another and another, as they drove along, was served in the same manner, and left till evening, when they were released.

Shabbona sometimes went to Chicago with his neighbors, in those old days of overland expeditions, and was noted for his sociable and agreeable qualities. Mr. Harvey Allen tells an incident which he witnessed : One of the Band, "Joe," had been down to Ross' Grove, and returned with two bottles of whiskey, one of which he gave to Shabbona. They parleyed awhile in their Indian language, and finally loaded their rifles, went out and put up a mark. " Joe " shot first, just missing the mark ; Shabbona hit the center; Joe delivered the bottle to tlie old chief, who laughed immoderately over the incident. He had a "big drunk."

About twenty years ago, the large log house now standing at the grove, and known as the Shabbona house, was built by Gates for him. He never occupied it except for storage, being displeased because it leaked. He and his family left to go to Kansas in the spring of 184'.). In the fall following was the Dixon Land Sale, at which his "Reservation " was sold, as will be related in the history of the town. It seems that he never understood the matter, nor why he was dispossessed, as, when he left, he gave his premises and left some things in charge of Mr. Norton, telling him to keep the same until he came back, asking nothing for the use of his land the first year, but wanted " something saved for Shabbona the next, because maybe he come back poor." He was gone some three years. On his return Mr. Norton informed him of the sale of his land, and that his farm was gone. The poor old chief dropped his head upon his breast, muttering, "All gone; Shabbona got nothing now." His band camped at the springnear the present road leading into the grove below Mr. James Greenfield's house, while Shabbona, dispossessed, started off* to find another home. Upon his return he received a terrible cursing from the man who owned the timber upon which they were' encamped, because they had cut some poles and burned some old wood. Sorrowfully and at once they gathered up their things, and Shabbona with his band left the grove forever.

Mr. Tracy Scott relates the folloAving incident which occurred at this time : He was returning from Aurora, and, coming through Big Rock timber, saw the Indians encamped. Shabbona seemed utterly cast down ; and, in reply to Scott's inquiry as to why he left and where he was going, said he had always been a friend to the whites ; that he had treated them well ; that his wife and some of his children were buried in the grove ; that he had lived there, and wanted to die there - that he had lost all - was very poor : then he told that, because his hand had burned a few sticks of wood, "big white man call me, damn Indian! Shabbona never damn white man!" and pointing upwards, while the tears ran down his old cheeks, he continued, "No big white man - no damn Indian up there - all 'like; all 'like!"

Thus ended the residence and connection of Shabbona and his band with the County of DeKalb. He went down near Morris, Illinois, and died, some five or six years ago, in extreme poverty. On the 5th of July, 1865, his wife Pokanoka and two of her daughters came back to the grove, took quiet possession of a thicket near the old house, and remained there three days. Soon after, in crossing a small stream, she was thrown from her wagon (she Avas very old, fleshy and helpless) into the water and drowned. The family are scattered, no one knows where.

These are simple statements, just as related by the old settlers, and as known to the writer hereof, without an embellishment : but what a mournful story ! Is there in the whole field of reality a more pitiful case ?