Peoria County, Illinois - Chapter 2: Early History - French Settlement, 1880

1673 : Marquette and Joliet - Their Voyage up the Illinois River - Loss of the Diary of their Tour of Discovery - Joliet's Report to Frontinac. 1679 : LaSalle, Hennepin, and Tonti - Their Voyage to Illinois - From Green Bay, Wisconsin, to South Bend, Indiana - Down the Kankakee Hiver to the Illinois - Indian Village at Utica - New Year's Diy, 1680 - Arrival in Lake Peoria - Surprise of the Indians - Strategy of LaSalle - Distrust of the Indians - Mutiny and Desertion - Fort Crevecoeur - Preaching Among the Indians - Hennepin's Departure to Explore the Upper Mississippi - LaSalle's Return to Canada - Indian Against Indian - Tonti's Flight to Green Bay - Destruction of Fort Crevecoeur - Return of LaSalle - The French Settlement - Old Village of Peoria - Charge of Treason Against the French Inhabitants - Craig's Expedition Against the French and Indians - Letter of Governor Edwards to Secretary of War Eustis - Destruction of the Village - Population of the Village - Second Expedition to Peoria - Fort Clark - Colonel Hubbard - Destruction of Fort Clark.

From the time the world was created until the latter part of the seventeenth century, the history of the land of the Peorias was a lost volume. There are neither legends nor traditions to guide the mind and the pen of the historian in describing the condition of the country or the habits and pursuits of the people previous to the date of which we write. Vain would be the search for some tangible evidence of a higher type of humanity than the races or tribes known in history as North American Indians. True, the discoveries in archeology furnish data for conjecture, but scarcely more. Hence we must accept the histoi-y of the country as beginning when Marquette and Joliet, the missionaries of French civilization, ascended the Illinois river, on their return to Canada from the discovery of the Mississippi river in 1673.

The exact date of their passage through Lake Peoria has not been preserved, but from the best accessible evidence it is fair to presume that it was during the last days of the month of August, or the first days of the month of September, A. D., 1673. This conclusion is reached from the following facts :

It is known that these brave explorers descended the Mississippi river as far as the Arkansas, which they reached about the middle of July. The)^ had been on the river four weeks, and concluded they had descended far enough to decide that ,its outlet was on the Atlantic side of the continent. Their provisions were nearly exhausted, and they also feared if they visited the river below they might be killed by the savages, and the benefit of their discovery lost.

Influenced by these considerations they determined to retrace their steps. Leaving the AAansas village, they forced their way up the Mississippi to the mouth of the Illinois river, where they learned from the Indians that the latter stream afforded a shorter and more direct route to the lakes than the route by which they had descended. Acting upon this information they entered the Illinois river and found that, besides being much more direct, its current offered less resistance to their light canoes than the current of the Mississippi. Passing far up the river they stopped at an Indian town called Kas-kas-kia, which name, afterwards transferred to a different locality, became noted as the first capital of the Territory of Illinois. At Kaskaskia they secured a chief and some of his men to conduct them to Lake Michigan and proceeded hither by way of the Illinois, Desplaines and Chicago rivers. Following the west shore of the lake they entered Green Bay the latter part of September.

Marquette stopped at the mission at the head of the bay to recover his failing health, while Joliet hastened on to Quebec to report their discoveries. At the foot of the rapids above Montreal his canoe was capsized, and he lost the manuscript containing an account of their discoveries and two of his men. He said in a letter to Governor Frontenac: " I had escaped every peril from the Indians ; I had passed forty-two rapids, and was on the point of disembarking, full of joy at the success of so long and diflBcult an undertaking, when my canoe capsized after all the danger seemed over. I lost my two men and box of papers within sight of the first French settlement, which I had left almost two years before. Nothing remains to me now but my life and the ardent desire to employ it on any service j'ou may please to direct."

The loss of the papers here mentioned leaves analogy to supply the date when these bold adventurers passed up through Lake Peoria and probably landed at the place where the American settlement of Peoria county was commenced one hundred and forty-six years later. " Nowhere on this journey," Marquette wrote, "did we see such grounds, meadows, woods, stags, buffaloes, deer, wildcats, bustards, ducks, parroquets, and even beavers, as on the Illinois river.

Robert de LaSalle, Louis Hennepin, a Franciscan monk, and Henri Tonti, an Italian, were the next white men to visit this region. This trip was commenced up Lake Erie, on the 7th day of August, 1679. They passed over that lake, through the straits be}'ond and into Lake Huron, where they encountered heavy storms. They remained some time at Michillimackinac, where LaSalle founded a fort, and then passed on to Green Bay, the " Bait' des Puans," of the French.*

They remained at Green Bay until the 3d day of December of that year, and then, with thirty-three men - thirty working men and three monks - commenced ascending the St. Joseph river. The margins of the stream were glassed with sheets of ice, and the forests were gray and bare. In four days they reached the present site of South Bend, Indiana, and began looking for the Indian trail leading across the portage to the Kankakee river. t While hunting for this path, LaSalle became bewildered and did not find his way back to camp until the next afternoon. The path was found, and, with a Mahingan Indian for a guide, it was not long until the portage was crossed, and the party stood on tlie bank of the Kankakee, which zig-zagged its way among tufts of tall grass and clumps of elder. The current channel was so narrow that a man could easily jump across it, but they launched their canoes and started down it.s sluggish watei-s - the water was so shallow that the voyagers seemed sailing along on the surface of the ground, while their, evening shadows, unobstructed by banks, fell far beyond their canoes, and trooped like huge j)hantoms along by their side. By and by it grew to be a considerable stream from the drainage of miry barrens and reedy marshes skirting the banks. Then came prairies and woodlands recently scorched by the fires of Indian hunters, and here and there deeply scarred with the trails of buffaloes. They continued on down the river by easy stages until they entered the Illinois. They were then in the grazing places and home of the deer, but now wonderfully transformed into scenes of agricultural thrift, On the right, they passed Buffalo Rock, a favorite resort with the Indians. Farther down on the left, was seen a towering promontory, beautifully crested with trees, and destined to be crowned witli the bulwarks of an impregnable fortress, and now known as Starved Rock, fuller mention of which is elsewhen- made. A short distance lielow, standing on the right bank, was the principal village of the Illinois Indians - Utica, LaSalle county - but the inhabitants were absent, and their village was a voiceless solitude. The voyageurt went on shore, and being pressed for food, they took a sufficient quantity of

- Tonli's father had been Governor of Ci.ieta, but had fled to France to escape the [wlilical convulsions of his native country. He w.is an able financier, and the author of the system of hfc insurance, known .is Tuntine.

\ The Indian name for this river was Tktake. which means Wi<lf. and was so named becauseof a tribe of Tndians of that name who dwell about its source, but who were more commonly callcil .\l.i!iiii(;anN. Tlic Krciich ]iionounced Theake Ki-a-ki-ki, which was corrupted to Kank.»kcc. It is a sluggish, tortuous stream, with very low banks, and overflows and renders u,elcss thousands of acres of land in I.aPorle, Starke, jasper, Lake, and Porter counties, in Indiana.

"This day [January 1, 1680, wrote Hennepin in his journal] we went through a lake formed by the river, about seven leagues long and one broad. The. savages call that place Pimiteoni ; that is, in their language, where there is an abundance of fat beasts. When the river of the Illinois freezes, which is but seldom, it freezes only to this lake, and never from there to the Mississippi, into which this river falls. We found ourselves on a sudden in their camp, which took up two sides of the river. M. de LaSalle ordered his men immediately to make their arms ready and brought his canoes on a line, placing himself to the right, and M. Tonti to the left, so that we took almost the whole breadth of the river. The Illinois, who had not discovered our fleet of eight canoes, were very much surprised to see us coming so swiftly upon them, for the stream is very rapid at this place. Some Tan for their arms, but the most of them took to flight, with horrid cries and howlings.

" The current brought us, in the meantime, to their camp, and M. LaSalle went the very first ashore, followed by his men, which increased the consternation of his savages, whom we might have easily defeated, but as it was not our design, we made a halt to give them time to recover themselves, and see that we were no enemies. M. LaSalle might have prevented their consternation by showing his calumet, or pipe of peace, but he was afraid the savages would impute it to our weakness."

The Indians were distrustful and LaSalle's men become troublesome and mutinous, and it soon became evident to him that there were secret movements to foment ill-will towards him and his enterprise in the minds of the better disposed of his followers. Under these circumstances he determined'^ to build a fort as a precautionary measure of safety. The ground selected for the fort, which was called' Crevecoeur - meaning Broken Heart - was on the site uowoccupie.d by thB Fort Clark Elevator, in the city of Peoria. The distrust of the Indians was finally overcome, and the new fortification served more the purposes of a place of worship than as a place of protection against hostile foes. Hennepin, as long as he remained, preached to the Indians twice on the Sabbath, chanted vespers, and regretted that the absence of wine prevented the celebration of mass.

Such was the first French occupation of the territory embraced in the present limits of Illinois. For many years after the erection of Fort Crevecoeur the country remained the home of the Indians and pasture grounds for animals native to the soil, and herbs and grasses.

On the last day of February, 1680, Hennepin and two companions, Accan and Du- Gay, left Fort Creveccsur to make a tour of the Upper Mississippi. Two days later, March 2d, LaSalle set out on a return trip to Canada. Soon after his departure nearly all the men deserted and left Tonti almost alone. The Iroquois commenced hostilities against the Illinois, sacked their village (at Utica) and scattered terror before them everywhere. For safety Tonti fled to Green Bay. Fort Crevecceur was destro3'ed,and when LaSalle returned in December he found little except its ruins.

It has been said by some that the French commenced a settlement here soon after the erection and destruction of Fort Crevecoeur, but we can find no authority in support of the assertion. When Charlevoix visited the Illinois country forty years after LaSalle, or about 1720, he found no French inhabitants here, or, if he did, he made no mention of the fact. One hundred years later, Edward Coles, then Register of the U. S. Landoffice at Edwardsville, who was deputized to take proof of French claims to lands at Peoria, submitted a report to the Secretary of the Treasury, dated November 10th of that year, from which we extract the following:

" The old village of Peoria was situated on the northwest sliore of Lake Peoria, about one mile and a half above the lower extremity of the lake. This village had been inhabited l>y tlie French previous to the recollection of any of the present generation. About the ye.ir 1778 or 1779, the fii"st house was built in what was then called LaVille de Maillet, afterwards the new village of Peoria, and of late the place has been known by the name of Fort Clark, situated about one mile and a half below the old village, immediately at the lower point or outlet of Lake Pegria. The situation being preferred on account of the water being better and its being thought more healthy. The inhabitants gradually deserted the old village, and by the year 1796 or 1797 had entirely abandoned it and removed to the new village.

" Tiie inhabitants of Peoria consisted generally of Indian tradei-s, hunters and voyageurs, and had formed a link of connection between the French residing on the waters of the great lakes and the Mississippi river. From that happ}- faculty of adapting themselves to their situation and associates for which the French are so remarkable, the inhabitants of Peoria lived generally in harmony with their savage neighbors. It would seem, however, that about the year 1781 they were induced to abandon the village from apprehension of Indian hostilities; but soon after the peace of 1783 they again returned, and continued to reside there until the Autumn of 1812, when they were forcibly removed from it, and the place destro^-ed by Capt. Craig, of the Illinois militia, on the ground, as it is said, that he and his company of militia were fired on in the night, while at anchor in their boats, before the village, by Indians, with whom the inhabitants were suspected by Craig to be too intimate and friendly,

" The inhabitants of Peoria, it would appear from all I can learn, settled there without an}- grant or permission from the authority of any government : that the only title they had to their lands was derived from possession, and the only value attached to it grew out of the improvements placed upon it. That each person took to himself such portion of unoccupied land as he wished to occupy and cultivate, and made it his own by incorporating his labor with it, but as soon as he abandoned it his title was understood to cease, with his possession and improvements, and it reverted to its natural state, and was liable again to be improved and possessed by any one who should think proper. This, together with the itinerant character ot the inhabitants, will account for the number of persons who will frequently be found ; from the testimony contained in the report, to have occupied the same lot, many of whom, it will be seen, present conflicting claims.

" As is usual in French villages, the possession in Peoria consisted generally in village lots, on which they erected their buildings and made their gardens, and of outlots or fields, in which they cultivated grain, etc. The village lots contained, in general, about one-half of an arpent of land ; the outlots or fields were of various sizes, depending on the industry or means of the owner to cultivate more or less land.

" As neither the old nor new village of Peoria was ever formally laid out or had defined limits assigned them, it is impossible to have of them an accurate map. - - - - I have not been able to ascertain with precision on what particular quarter-sections of the military survey these claims are situated."

This is the first written reference to the French settlement at Peoria we have been able to find, and it is indefinite and unsatisfactory. There is no aiithorify extant, so far as we can find, to show that there were any French people here previous to 17(iO, or until eighty years after LaSalle's party left.

Under a treaty made by the United States with Great Britain in 17s;?, and under the Jay treaty made in 1794, the French people in Illinois became citizens of the government of the United States. When the war broke out between (ireat Britain and the United States, it was trea.son under the terms of these treaties for the French to take sides with the Hriiish or Uiitish allies, the Indians. Hut notwithstanding this, the Peoria French were tli.irged with obtaining aninuuiition and other inuiiiliunr> of war from the British in Cauadu, and with furnishing ii to the Indians; with murdering the American settlei-s in the southern part of the Illinois Territory, and Captain John Baptiste Maillet, the chief military man at Peoria, who was afterward rewarded for his supposed fidelity to the government of the United States, was openly charged with stealing cattle from the settlers in the Wood river country, in Madison county, and driving them north to feed the Indians. Whether true or false, these stories had sufficient plausihility to demand investigation from Governor Edwards, and he ordered Captain Craig, of the Illinois militia, " to ascend the Illinois river - there were no roads between the southern part of the territory and Peoria then - to ascertain the trutli or falsity of these accusations, and to act accordingly That Governor Edwards believed they were founded in fact, is evidenced by the following letter to Mr. Eustis, then United States Secretary of War, under date of August 4, 1812, in which he said, speaking of the Indians :

" Those near Peoria are constantly killing and eating the cattle of the people of that village. The Indians on the Illinois are well supplied with English powder, and have been selling some of it to the white people. A few days ago they sent some of their party with five horses to the Sac village for lead." In a postscript to this leter he added: "No troops of any kind have yet arrived in this territory, and I think you may count upon hearing of a bloody stroke upon us very soon. I have been extremely reluctant to send my family away, but unless I hear shortly of more assistance than a few rangers, I shall bury my papers in the ground, send my family off, and stand my ground as long as possible."

Craig's command reached Peoria in small row-boats on the 5th of November, 1812, remained four days, and left on the 9th. In his report to Governor Edwards he stated that on his arrival at Peoria he was told the Indians had all left, but that he believed from the actions of the citizens the statements were false ; that the sentinels on his boats could see them passing through town with candles, and hear their canoes crossing the river all night during the time he remained. On the night of the 6th of November the wind blew so hard they were forced to drop down the river about a quarter of a mile below town, where the}' cast anchor, but the wind continued with such force that their cable parted and the armed boat drifted ashore. Between the break of day and daylight on the morning of the 7th, the boat was fired on, as Captain Craig thought, by ten or more guns, not more than thirty yards distant from the boat. Arrangements were made immediately to give the Indians battle, but it seems they fell back and escaped as soon as they had discharged their pieces. Immediately after daylight Captain Ci-aig landed his boats opposite the center of the village and sent to know what had become of the citizens, to which he received the reply from those interrogated that they had heard or seen nothing unusual. He then sent to the jjlace from which his boat had been fired upon, and found plenty of tracks leading up to the village. This was sufficient to convince Captain Craig that the Frenchmen there were not faithful to the Americans and that they were in league with the Indians and siding with the British, and ordered them taken prisoners. He found them all in one house, and their guns were empty and had the appearance of having just been discharged. We quote in full the concluding part of Captain Craig's report :

" I gave them time to collect their property, which was done immediately. Howard's express came on board my boat and told me that seven of the citizens went out (they said to hunt beef) the morning we were fired upon. They started about the break of day, and returned about daylight. He said perhaps there were more, for they would never let him know what they were going to do, and would talk together in his absence. We stayed two days after they were taken prisoners. I made them furnish their own rations all the time I kept them. I burnt down about half of the town of Peoria, and I would have burnt the whole and destroyed all the stock, but I still expected Hopkins' army to pass the place. I found four American muskets in their possession, and one keg of musket balls, and one musket in the house under the floor, and some brass musket moulds. On our way down the river, they were all unarmed. I gave them permission to camp on shore, while I anchored in the river. They always preferred the Indian side for their camping ground."

This is all we find in this report about the old French village of Peoria. Captain Craig does not give any estimate of the population nor the extent of improvements, and much less of the character of the inhabitants. Mr. C. Ballance, in his history of the city of Peoria, published in 1870, says on this subject :

" I apprehend that the men LaSalle and others brought here were of the lower class, and the most ignorant of the French population. If not. they had woefully deteriorated between the time they were brought here and the destruction of their village. I have not been able to ascertain the population of F'eoria, when the village was broken up by Captain Craig. Every man of them. I believe is dead, except Robert Forsyth, of St. Louis, who was then a boy. I wrote to him for a list of them, as near as his recollection could furnish it. and I suppo.se he knows, for besides being bom among them, he spent fifteen years in hunting them up, and bringing and conducting suits, in which he derived his title through them; but he has never answered my letter. Nor do I find any record or history giving the number of the population at that time. From all information I possess. I can only find the names of sixteen men who were there (here) at the time. this statement will probably be disputed, I here insert their names: Thomas Forsyth. Louis Pilette, Jaques Mette, Pierre Lavoisseur dit Chamberlain, Antoine LeClair, Michael LeCroix. Francis Racine, .sen., Francis Racine, jun., John Baptiste de Fond, Felix Fon'aine, Louis Binet, llypolite Maillel. Francis Buche, Charles I>aBelle, Antoine LePance, and Antoine Hourhonne. Of these. Mich.iel LeCroix escaped to Canada and accepted a commission from the enemy, and fought against us. Others claimed lots by reason of their residence at this place ; but the proof on file at the land office, an abstract of which can be found in the third volume of American .State Papers, page 422, shows that they had previously abandoned the place, some of them more than twenty years before. But I will suppose I have overlooked some, which is possible, and call the number twenty-five. Then, if these men had. on an average five in a family, which is the usual calculation, we have in this village, that has made so much noise and caused so much trouble, a population of one hundred and twentyfive .souls, all told ; and, except these, I know of no French inhabitants on the Illinois river in those days, nor between the Mississippi and Wabash, excepting, always, a very ancient Frenchman, by the name of Bissow (pronounced Hesaw), who always lived at Wesley, then called the Trading House. I have seen many affidavits and other papers signed by the.se men, but signed with a mark. I remember as exceptions to this rule that Thomu F'orsyth, Michael LeCroix and Antoine Lal'ance wrote their names. There were probably others that could write, but I do not remember them. I recollect no case where a French woman could write her name. The depositions in the Peoria French claims at Edwardsville, and in the many suits brought on them, will show if I am right. These were fishermen and hunters, and not farmers. All the fields they pretended ever to have in cultivation amounted to less than three hundred acres, even if none of the fields had been deserted before they left. When the village was burnt I think they had le^s than two hundred acres in cultivation. They, however, sometimes acted as -oyageun for the Indian traders, but of manufactures they had none. They had not a school-house or church, nor a dwelling-house that deserved the name. I saw and examined the ground on which their houses had stood, before it was disturbed, and I am able to state that there was not a stone nor brick wall in the village, for any purpose, nor w.is there a cellar. Some of the houses had a small place excavated under the floor in front of the fire-place, for potatoes. Some of the houses had posts in the ground, and some were framed with sills ; but instead of being boarded up as with us, the space between the posts was filled with pieces of timber laid horizontally, with mud between them. The chimneys were made of mud and sticks. That they had no gardens, in the common acceptation of the term, is manifest from this : many of the cultivated plants, when once introduced in a place, will never ce.i-se to grow there. This is true of all the fruits that grow in this climate, and it is true of many herbs, and of some culinary vegetables. Every one knows that long after a farm is deserted, the apple trees and gooseberry and curr.-int bushes will continue to grow; and tansey, flags, lilies, mustard and many other plants, were never known to voluntarily abandon the place where they had once grown. Vet, when the present population commenced to settle here, about forty (fifty?) years ago. there was not to be found in this vestige of a tree, shrub or plant belonging to Europe. They would have made wine of the sour grapes of the woods, if they had had sugar to a.ssuage its acidity and cellars to preserve it, but the sugar could not then be afforded, and the cellars they had not. And we know they had no French grapes, for the reason above - no vines remain * » * »."

A second expedition to tlie Lake Peoria country was planned and carried out in the Summer and Fall of 1813. Large numbers of Indians, disaflFected with the turn of affairs between tlie British and American Governments, collected among the Pottawatoraies and Kiekapnos, from whence they made frequent predatory raitls on the frontiers of Illinois and Mi.ssoiiri. Tliese harrassments were so annoying and tlucatcning tliat a joint expedition from IliiMois and Missouri was projected, an army of itOO men were collected, of whicli Gen. Howard - who had resigned the governorsliiii of Missouri to accept a Brigadier General's commission in the United States army - was placed in eomntanti. Most of the Illinois troops concentrated at .Camj) HnsselK near Edwardsville, in Madison county, from wlience one company was (udereil to the Mississippi, at a juiint called the Piasa, opposite the Portage dfsSitnix, wliere it remained several wei'ks. during which time the men siifft-red seriously from sickness. The Illinois troops were organized as the set'Ohil regimenlh, with Benjamin Stephenson, of Randolph county, as colonel ; W. B. Whiteside and John Moredock, majors, and Joseph Phillips, Samuel Judy, Nathaniel

Journey and Samuel Whiteside as captains. When the time for the forward movement came, the lUiuoisans marched up the Slississippi river by companies, to the Illinois, which they crossed a few miles above its mouth. The Missouri division marched up the west side of the Mississippi for a distance of one hundred miles, and crossed to Illinois, at Fort Mason, where a junction wns formed with the Illinois division. The Missourians crossed the Mississippi by swimming their horses, on which they were mounted, naked. Their clothes were carried across on a platform supported by two canoes. The Missouri division was commanded by Colonel McNair, who was afterwards made Governor of the State. After crossing, the whole force was re-organized, of which General Howard was commanderin-chief.

After the re-organization was perfected, the march was continued up the Mississippi, and at the present site of Quincy, the column passed the Indian camp and village, which had recently been deserted, and supposed to have contained one thousand Sac warriors. At " Two Rivers," the army turned east, and crossed the high prairies to the Illinois, near the mouth of Spoon river, and not far from the present site of the city of Havana, where the provision boats were met, and to which the sick were transferred. The march was then continued up the Illinois to Peoria, where there was a small stockade in charge of Captain Nicholas, of the U. S. army. Two days before the arrival of General Howard's command, the Indians had attacked the stockade, bnt were defeated and driven away.

In the heart of the enemy's country, accustomed to the stealthy habits of the Indians, and the troops being without thorough discipline, unprovoked night alarms were of frequent occurrence. The troops were often paraded and ordered to arms ; and under the general excitement incident to a constant dread of an attack, and not knowing from which side the attack would come, every little noise added to the uneasiness of the situation ; guns were incautiously discharged, and a state of constant alarm existed. In one of these panicky spells, one of the troopers, a young Kentuckian, was shot dead by a terror-stricken sentinel. "All this time," says the authority from which we quote, " the Indians were far awa3\"

From Peoria, Howard's army went up the river as far as Gomo's village, at the present site of Chillicothe, but the Indians had fled. After burning two of the deserted villages, the command made a retrograde movement to Peoria Lake, and went into camp at the outlet, and remained several weeks. As a precautionary measure of safety and protection in case of a sudden Indian attack, a small stockade was built, which was named Fort Clark, in honor and memory of General George Rogers Clark, the hero of Vincennes and Kaskaskia, whose gallant exploits in connection with the early history of the Illinois country are elsewhere detailed.

While Howard's army remained here, Major Christy, of the Missouri division, was sent up the river as far as the rapids to rout and chastise such of the enemy as might have stopped in that region. Major Boone, with another detachment, was sent out to scour the country in the direction of Spoon and Rock rivers, for a like purpose. Both expeditions returned without finding any signs of Indians, except the signs of alarm and retreat. In October the army left the port and took up its line of march for Camp Russell, and arrived there on the 22nd day of that month, 181.3.

Fort Clark is thus described by Mr. C. Ballance. It was a simple stockade, constructed by planting two rows of logs firmly in the ground, near each other, and filling the space between them with earth. This, of course, was not intended as a defense against artillery, of which the Indians had none. This fort was about one hundred feet square, with a ditch along each side. It did not stand with a side to the lake, but with a corner towards it. The corner farthest from the lake was on the upper side of Water street, near the intersection of the upper line of Water and Liberty streets. From there the west line ran diagonally across the intersection of Water and Liberty streets, nearly to the corner of the transportation warehouse, at the lower corner of Liberty and Water streets. At this corner was what I suppose military men would call a bastion ; that is there was a projectinj^ corner made in the same manner as the side walls, and so constructed, as I imagine, as to accommodate a small cannon to command the ditches. And the same had, no doubt, been at the opposite corner, but when I came to the country in November, 1831, there was no vestige of it remaining, In fact, at tliat time there was but little to show that there had ever been a fortification there, except some burnt post* along the west side, and a square of some ten or twelve feet at the south corner witli a ditch nearly filled up, on two sides of it, and on the west side of the square. The fort had been burnt down to the embankment of this square and of the west side, after which the embankments had been mostly worn away by the rains and other means until that part of the logs that was under ground had become charred posts. Some of them, however, had become entirely decayed and were gone. On the other sides there was but little to be seen of logs or embankment. I lived where the transportation warehouse is for more than ten years, and when I leveled down the southerly angle, for my own convenience, one of those posts become high enough and was strong enough for a hitching post, and I employed a blacksmith, Isaac Evans, to put liooks in it for that purpose. That post was thus used until I removed from there in May. 1844. It was then taken up by Mr. Drown, and sawed up into walking canes and sold on speculation at fifty cents each. "

Colonel G. J. Hubbard, an Indian trader in Illinois, was prominently identified with the affairs of the commonwealth and of Chicago in after years, is authority for the statement that Fort Clark was burned by the Indians in the latter part of the year 1818. In a letter to Mr. Ballance, under date of " Chicago, Dec. 30th, 1867," he says :

" I have to say that I was in Peoria in the last days of l8l3, for the first time on my way to St. Louis passing there, returning about the 2oth November, and wintering about one mile above Hennepin. It was my 6rst year as Indian trader.

" As we rounded the point of the lake above Peoria, on our down trip we noticed that old Fort Clark was on fire, just blazing up. Reaching it, we found about two hundred Indians congregated, enjoying a war dance, painted hideously, with scalps on their spears and in their sashes, which they had taken from the heads of Americans, in the war with Great Britain from 1812 to 1S15. They were dancing, rehearsing their deeds of bravery, etc. These were the only people then there, or in that vicinity."

This statement of Colonel Hubbard has been the subject of some controversy, as af)- pears from a paragraph on page forty-four of Ballance's History of Peoria, in which he writes :

"Since writing the above I have talked with Josiah Fulton and William lilanchard who first came here in 1 8 19, and they are both positive that they found it (the fort) on fire, and put it out. Perhaps they are both right. Perhaps when it was first set on fire it was only partly consumed. Earth having been filled in between the pickets, they would not burn fast, and the fire would be easily extinguished."

On page forty-five, Mr. Ballance says: "In the Spring of 1S19, seven men. then living in a settlement called Shoal Creek, Clinton County, Illinois, to wit - Abner Eads, Joseph Hersey, Seth F'ulton and Josiah Fulton, S. Dougherty, J. Davis, and T. Russell, made up a company to emigrate to Peoria, then calleil Fort Clark. Eads and Hersey came through by land witli two pack-horses. The others came up the Mississippi and Illinois rivers in what was then known in the west as a keel boat."

Mr. Blanchard's name does not appear in this paragraph. And, according to Mr. Ballance's own statement (see page forty-seven in hi.story of Peoria"), that gentleman did not come until alK)ut the 10th of June oi' that year. Eads and Hersey arrived "on the 10th day of April, 1 Si'.), and pilciied tiieir teiiLs a;,'aiiist some of the remaining timbers of P\jrt Clark, which iiad l)eeii burnt by the Indians." The other live men arrived on the 17th. If Mr. Fulton came in April and found the fort on fire, how could Mr. Blanchard, who did not come until June, help him extinguish the burning timbers? But Mr. Fulton said to tiie writer on the -27th of September, 1879, that only the west side of the fort was burned away when he came here in April, 1819. This is no doubt true, for it has always been stated that Eads and Hersey, who arrived on the 15th of April, of tliat year, pitched tlieir tents against one side of the fort. Hence Colonel Hubbard is right in so far as one side of Fort Clark was burned in the last days of the year 1818. The other parts of it were burned at a later period, and at a time wlien Fulton and Blanchard were present and extinguished the flames, as Mr. Fulton claims they did, but does not fix the date.