Kane County, Illinois - Chapter 3: How the Pioneers Came, 1908

We liere of today can form no just conception, no right idea of the conditions met by the hardy men who came to the, then, far W'est, in the '30s. We may enter a plush-seated car at Chicago, run over a track of steel for twenty-four hours, and leave the same car at New York, scarcely fatigued by the journey. We may start at Chicago at 10 p. m., and be in Buffalo, New

York, the following day for lunch. By road travel in a lumber wagon, we would have little difficulty in getting to New York in ten days or two weeks. But seventy years ago conditions were so different that we, with great difficulty, realize them. There was no regularly traveled road west of Detroit or Cincinnati. From those points west the country was unbroken and unknown, inhabited only by Indians and a few scattered settlements. The only avenues of travel were Indian trails and buffalo runs. Traveling meant going through an open wood and prairie, over hills antl through \alleys with no guide, save the stars and the sun. Where a buffalo run could be followed it materially aided progress. Of these buffalo trails a former writer, whose name is not given, but who appears to speak with authority, ajitly says :

"The roads of the country were originally buff'alo trails, as they once would go in great herds in their regular migrations o\-er the country. The habits and instincts of these animals were \-ery interesting. They seemed to have certain routes, running from the northwest toward the eastern and southern Atlantic sea shores, and over these they would pass at regular intervals. These travels came in time to be interfered with bv the Indians, who hunted them for game, and from them got their food and richest raiment. They were truly royal game. There were several well noted routes of those animals that could be traced, at one time, from the Rocky mountains to the Carolinas. On these great buffalo highways were found the Indian villages and wigwams of some of the most powerful tribes. The immense herds of buffalo in their travels would come to a large stream, and here they would regularly go into camp, to use an expression applied only to human action. They would stop, and for days tramp and eat down all \-egetation for a wide space, dig out mud holes and wallow in the thick mud, and each would be dreading to cross, yet all seemed to understand well enough that they would cross, and not turn back on their trip. They had no leader bold enough to make the plunge. If they had had one of that kind they would no more than have paused when they came to the stream. All seemed to equally dread to lead the way across, and all were eager to follow any one that would lead. When there was nothing more to eat on their grounds they would commence to circle, and every time those on the inner side would push those next the water a little and little closer to the water's edge. After a time, as they would again come around, they would push the outside ones into the deep water, when they would boldly turn their heads for the opposite shore and all would follow. A singular fact is, that where the buff'alo would have longest bivouacked, there, in time, would be found the largest Indian village, and these, in turn, are the places where we have built our great cities. In other words, the buffalo, and then the Indians, were the natural engineers to point out to civilization the natural sites for their great cities. This is true of every city in America at least. And it is, in nearly every instance, true that the early roads of the country are now the great trunk lines of the railroads, and these were but following the buffalo and Indian trails. The first pioneers were generally following the Indian trails. By doing this they reached the natural fording places of the streams, as well as the easiest passes in the mountains.

"A noted route passed from east to west tlirough Geneva townsliip, which crossed the Fox river at Geneva. This afterward became the great highway between Chicago and Galena, and finaUy the railroad route. This no doubt was a buffalo and Indian highway before America was discovered, or even the adventurous Norseman was born. The pioneers simply followed this old trail. It became a white man's great traveled route as soon as there were white men here to travel on it."

There appears to have been three means of reaching the West in the early days : by wagon, on horseback, on foot ; or by way of the lakes from Buffalo to Chicago. From Chicago to the Fox river the travel was by team or on foot. Joseph McCarty appears to have come from Elmira, New York, alone, and on foot, as did Christopher Payne, the first settler at Batavia. William Lance and his son, John Lance, came from Pennsylvania with a wagon drawn by eight yoke of oxen, in which rode a daughter, Mary Lance, who married John Lowders, and a younger son, who drove the team. The two walked all the way, their rifles on their shoulders. Provisions stored in the wagon, supplemented by such game as the rifles brought down, made up the meager meals enjoyed by the caravan as they camped by their lone fire in the wilderness of wood or prairie. Twenty miles a day was good traveling, and they came many hundreds of miles.

The same writer quoted above, wrote years ago as follows, his impression, no doubt, having been received from personal experience or first-hand statements of the pioneers :

"In 1834 the stream of immigrants began its mighty course toward this upper Mississippi valley, and the story of their coming, the rapidity of the growth of population and improvement, the wealth and splendors of civilization that have marked the half century from then till now, is much like a tale of enchantment. It is a wonderful picture to the mind. First the lone hunter and trapper, bearing about him but little more of civilization, except his gun, than were to be seen among the half-naked savages; then came the lone pioneer, on foot or on horseback, ready to get far into the hunting grounds, and far away from his own people, and content to live and be more of an Indian than a white man; then the other class of first-comers, bringing in an ox wagon their wives and children, seeking free homes and rich lands, with no other end in view than tilling the soil and accumulating land, and raising enough to eat and wear. In the splendors of the present the trials and hardships of the pioneer fathers are apt to be covered up and forgotten. That they first met obstacles that would have appalled any but the most resolute and daring, goes without the saying. That they met and conquered many of these obstructions our tender children even somewhat understand. Yet the innumerable evils and afBictions that lay in their paths - evils that lay in ambush, and that came upon them like the unseen waves of an epidemic - cannot now all be told, because these were silent heroes, strong and fearless men, who took their position in the front of their dependent ones, wearing their lives upon the sleeves of their buckskin wa'niuses, they faced, without a tremor, death in anv and everv form."

It would be of interest to modern residents of Kane county to have at first hand the detailed story of such a trip by ox-team or afoot through wood and prairie, where for many a hundred miles no human habitation would greet the eye; a settler's cabin at long intervals; an Indian camp here and there, more feared than the wilderness. Everywhere the tangled wood and tall tough prairie grass impeding progress. They who could afford to send their goods by steamboat were indeed fortunate. They who came by oxteam their tortuous way, deserved all that awaited them of enjoyment or property.

An incident of the difficulties of travel by wagon is given of Dr. L. S. Tyler and Mark Ranstead, who, in 1836, settled in Elgin township. Being out of tlour, wheat and corn, in December, they went with a team of horses to a neighboring cabin. Going, they crossed what is now Tyler creek, over the ice. On their return the ice had fallen in, leaving it slanting on both sides, the water running above in the middle. They had a load of twenty bushels of corn, and fearing to cross, unharnessed the horses, and in attempting to get them over the creek one fell on the ice. The horse would have drowned had not one of the men stood in the water hip-deep and held his head above the surface, while the other went about a mile to the cabin to get a team of oxen and a chain to pull the horse out.

Another incident of apparent fact is tliat of Samuel C. Rowell, founder of the Rowell family at Hampshire. \\'hen but eighteen years of age he started west alone on horseback from Vermont, and stopped in Kentucky three years. He then came northwest by the same means, crossing Indiana and entering Illinois near the middle of its eastern line. In crossing the prairies further south he found the houses often forty miles apart. Following old trails and new wagon tracks, pushing through prairie grass up to his horse's neck, swimming swollen rivers, and undisturbed save by a startled herd of deer or the yelp of a prowling wolf, he progressed from cabin to cabin. After his residence in Kentucky he had acquired the dress there common, long hair and whiskers, and suit of buckskin. He was one evening turned from a settler's cabin because of his resemblance to a gang of horse thieves who had shortly before visited the vicinity.

The coming of Amos Miner and Levi Leach to Kaneville was by lake and wagon route. With wife and child he jnurneyed from ^Vayne county. New York, to Detroit by boat, through the Erie canal and the lakes. The balance of the way was by wagon. Frequently the wagon would be swamped in the wet earth and sand. For miles they would find no dry land. At times the team would have to be hitched to the rear of the wagon and hauled out of a rut to solid ground. They had often to camp in swamps and sloughs swarming with mosquitoes. Upon reaching LaPorte, Indiana, the women of the party were taken sick, and a long encampment necessitated.

Cyrus B. Ingham, who early came to Kane county from Jefferson county. New York, wrote in 1869 as follows: "At Detroit we hired a wagon to Chicago, and were ten days making the trip. The route between Michigan City and Chicago we were forced to travel on the lake shore, with one wheel in the water and the other in the dry sand, w ith the wagon tipped sidewise at about a quarter pitch. All who could, were obliged to walk. We reached Chicago May i8, 1835. The next day we crossed the flats at Barrays Point, nine miles out (west). At that time almost the entire distance was under water often over our boot tops. We crossed Fox river at the old Indian village about a mile above where Aurora now stands. There was no wagon road then in that direction and we followed the Indian trail. Old Waubonsie, the Pottawattomie chief, was then still there, ruling his tribe in all his Indian glory."

A vivid picture of the arrival of a caravan from the east was written by Mr. Jesse C. Kellogg, of Sycamore, in the Sycamore Sentinel in 1855. He wrote : "Soon after the Indians had done their sugar-making, when the groves began to grow leafy and the prairies grassy, as the sun sank low in the west, and the prairie wolves began to howl, and the sandhill crane to scream and poke along the ponds and 'sloughs' for their evening meal of crawfish, a close observer might have espied, afar off on an Indian trail, suspicious looking canvas, supposed to be the sail of a 'settler's' wagon, evidently Hearing some grove, and in a strait to get 'somewhar' before nightfall. Presently, emerging from the dusky prairie, the settler's wagon, propelled by some four or five yoke of oxen, canopied with sundry bolts of sheeting; within containing the family bedding, clothing and provisions; without, implements of cooking and husbandry, chickens in coop and pigs in pen, backed by a drove of cows, calves, colts and other young stock on foot, would loom up plainly to view, 'fetching in' near some point, bay or plum thicket, where in after days 'Bonny chiels and clever hizzies' were to lift the latch and force the way to a happy cabin home. It was no uncommon thing in those days for the mistress of the wagon to 'pail the keows' in the morning and place the milk where, by the incessant motion of the wagon during the day, it would churn itself. In this way the family were provided with a constant supply of good, fresh butter ; and old chanticleer and his dames in the coop behind, never caught napping when hens should be awake, would keep up the laying process, so that with other supplies from the wagon a settler's wife could usually 'scare up' a pretty good meal on short notice. In this hitherto neglected spot, where 'full many a flower" was 'born to blush unseen and waste its sweetness on the desert air,' the weary, yet blithe and happy groups might have been seen to alight, strike a fire, prepare, and after craving God's blessing, eat their frugal meal ; when, guarded by a watchful dog and a still more watchful Providence, they would retire for needed repose into the inmost recesses of the wagon home. And at an early peep of dawn one might have seen the anxious settler reconnoitering, with hurried steps, grove and prairie, when after being 'detached here' - 'countermanded there' - bothered almost to death for fear that among so many good chances he should fail to secure the best, at least he would bring himself to the 'sticking point,' seize the ax and 'blaze' the line in the 'timber' and anon, hitch the team to the prairie plough and 'mark out the furrow on the prairie.' "

A history of Elgin, published in 1875 by G. P. Lord and a Mr. Bradford, then real-estate dealers here, contains an account of the coming of Hezekiah Gifford and his brother, James T. Gifford. The account was published in the

"The journey, it may easily be imagined, was not a pleasant one. For a road the travelers had but the army trail left by Scott's troops during the Black Hawk war, some time before. Part of the way the gentlemen rode and part of it they walked, but at length they reached the banks of the Fox, where St. Charles now stands, forded it near the present bridge in that town, and in a very short time afterward were hospitably received in Mr. Ferson's log cabin. A very few moments after their reception they were kneeling on the floor of the aforesaid cabin, eating off a trunk, in lieu of a table, some excellent venison steaks, and drinking coffee with a relish that invested the Rio with qualities unknown to the connoisseurs who delicately discussed the excellencies of a better kind.

"After a needed repose. Messrs. Gifford and Dur3-ea took their journey down the river, and soon arrived at the present site of Geneva. This short journey absolutely entranced them with the beauty of the country through which they passed. Still following the river and an Indian trail, they walked to the spot where Aurora now stands, and here they found a man digging bowlders in the midst of a solitude that would have charmed a hermit. In reply to a question, the delver said he was digging stones for a prospective dam. The news was quite welcome to the travelers, as foreshadowing civilization, and with the feeling that they were not altogether in a desert, they pursued their journey to where Yorkville now stands. From this place they proceeded to Indian creek, Somonauk and Blackberry, and at last rested at the cabin of a man named Hollenbeck. Mr. Duryea had now become tired of the \\'est, but seeing the patriarchal comforts by which Hollenbeck was surrounded; seeing him as a Pasha of many corn fields, surrounded by game of every kind, and living ostensibly in the happy condition that is exemplified by

"From Buffalo Mr. Gift'ord at once proceeded to the home of his brother, Mr. James T. Gifford, in Yates county, where he was received with extreme gratification, as during his sojourn in the West his father and other members of his family were unaware of his whereabouts. ^Ir. James T. Gifford at once commenced asking him about the \\'est. and soon the conversation led to a description of the Fox river country. Maps were produced, and a full account of its beauties was poured forth by Hezekiah. It was agreed that the latter should visit his father's family in Oneida county, and some acquaintances in Chenango county, among them a young lady who might possibly be going to Illinois before long; that James T. would endeavor to sell his property as soon as possible ; and arrangements were made that the brothers should emigrate to the West, and share in the toils and benefits incident to its settlement.

"A short interval passed. Hezekiah was married ; James T. sold out. and was ready for the start ; a lumber wagon was provided and filled with tools ; a double team was procured, and the advance made. The young men drove all the way to Chicago, at every step leaving civilization further and further behind until, on the 24th of March, 1835, they reached the wished-for hamlet by the lake. Here, learning that the place then called Milwaukee Bay was a magnificent site for a settlement, they left their wagon at Chicago and rode to that point, in company with a man named Goodwin. On the way they did not meet a living soul, and being scantily provided with edibles, were necessitated to divide even their few biscuits with their horses. At length, arriving at Milwaukee, they procured food and corn, but soon discovered that people from Chicago had claimed all the land in the vicinity, and then came back the old thought, 'let us go to the Fox river.'

"Accordingly they took up the line of march, sending their horses back to Chicago by Mr. Goodwin, he being desirous of returning thither without delay. An abortive attempt to cross the country from Milwaukee was now succeeded by partly retracing their steps to the neighborhood of the present city of Racine, where they met a half-breed trader, named Jock Jumbeau, who invited them to rest a few days. Jock, who had been a trapper, told the Gififords that he knew the country well, and that by taking the trail from his cabin they could reach the waters of the Fox river in half a day. He also said they would very possibly find settlers on its banks. This was agreeable information; and a negro boy, who acted as cook, page, etc., etc., to Jock, having prepared the brothers some cakes, they struck into the woods and were soon on their way.

"Reaching the river they walked down stream for miles, but encountered no signs of human life. Anxious to explore the west bank, they were prevented by the depth of the stream, until when quite fatigued, they met a lone Pottawattomie in a canoe, who ferried them across, but could give them no information of settlers or settlement. Now the explorers found themselves with a broad and deep river between them, and, as they feared, all white men, but still they walked on. Night overtook them, and they camped without supper. Next morning they were up betimes and, still marching southward, but no settlers were yet to be seen, and being without a compass, they dared not leave the bank of the river for fear of getting lost. Creeks were waded through that chilled them to the very bone, but yet, hungry, wet and tired, they kept on. At length, when they had been forty-eight hours without food, they thought they descried something that seemed like a 'claim mark,' and stopped to examine it. The examination did not prove satisfactory, and again they pushed southward. After journeying for some hours, Mr. Hezekiah Gifford saw through the trees a little edifice called a 'punshon,' or hut, then much in use among Indians and settlers. He approached it, calling to his brother to follow. On reaching it thej' hallooed, but no response came, and then, raising one of the planks, looked in, hoping to find some human being in the habitation. But, instead of white settlers, or even Indians, the famishing men only saw squatted in all the majesty of repose, decked with his blankets and innumerable little evidences of high rank, a dead Pottawattomie chief, taking the sleep that knows no waking. The body was in a sitting posture, and but little decomposed, and was a terrible evidence to the travelers that they were further than ever from civilization and succor. And now, dis- couraged and weakened by privation, the journey was resumed : night came on, and the wayfarers having lighted a fire, lay down to sleep. Rain fell during the night, and getting up to replenish the fire, wild animals became frightened and went crashing and howling through the woods. In the morning they started once more, and after a long time, the stream now called the Xippersink, in McHenry county, was reached. Here they had to wade up to their waists and hold their clothes over their heads to keep them dry. The mud, too, at the bottom of the creek almost engulfed them, and. long after that day, the Messrs. Gififord laughingly remarked that the creek alluded to might be called the Nip-or-sink with increased propriety. But now. at length, they were, although unconscious of the fact, drawing near relief. They had walked at this time to the bend in the river above the present village of Algonquin, and stopping to survey the situation, they descried afar ofi a figure moving. Their pace was quickened, and they soon came to a white man, who was splitting rails. On being questioned, this man said that he worked for Samuel Gillan, who owned a cabin near by. Mr. James T. Gififord. absolutely overburdened with joy, cried out, 'Oh! now we'll have a good meal!' Mr. Gillan and his wife kindly received the travelers, heard their story of suffering and travel, and soon placed before them a meal of corn dodgers and coffee. A good night's rest was afterward taken, a hearty breakfast eaten ; a few miles further passed, and the ground on which Elgin now stands was reached."