Saline County, Missouri - The whole text, 1881 (part 4 of 28)

The Encrinital Limestone is immediately above the Chouteau and below the Archimedes rock, the most important limestone in this county, and is most extensively exposed in the southeastern part of the county. About Arrow Rock there are bluffs of it nearly eighty feet in height; along Salt Fork it crops out in many localities up to S. 29, T. 50, R. 20, and upon nearly all the streams of the county, and in the bluffs of the Missouri at Miami, and the Pinnacle bluffs.

The Archimedes Limestone may be seen at many places, but is evidently not a continuous stratum in this county, as the coal measures are often found reposing immediately upon the encrinital. It consists here of bluish-gray argillaceous limestone, with layers of blue clay. Its greatest exposure may be seen on Flat creek, where it forms bluffs of from ten to thirty feet in height.

Ferruginous Sandstone is a fine-grained yellowish sandstone, apparently destitute of mica. As coal has never been found below this rock, it most probably belongs to the lower carboniferous series. It varies much in thickness, and is often wanting. It attains its greatest thickness in the bluffs of the Missouri river, T. 52, R. 19, and T. 52, R. 20, forming here bluffs of from twenty-five to thirty feet high, and attains probably a thickness of about forty feet.

Coal Measures occupy one-half of the entire area of this county, and, coal can be found almost everywhere. In some parts the upper coal stratum is buried deep beneath heavy deposits of drift and loess, while in very many localities the deposit is very light, and in some places the coal outcrops at the surface. The coal measures here are, indeed, of such varying thickness and depth from the surface that it is difficult to find any two points, a few miles apart, which agree in their details, and sometimes their differences are so great that it seems impossible to account for them in any other way than to suppose that after the deposit of portions of the series, oscillations and changes must have occurred by which they were (exposed to denuding agencies. But there are many heavy and rich deposits of coal in different localities, notwithstanding the irregularities spoken of above. The thickest and heaviest deposits of coal are to be found in tovraships 49, 50 and 51, range 19, and in township 49, ranges 20 and 21, though coal is easily found in all the southeastern, southern and southwestern and in the northeastern portions of th^ county. In these sections nearly every farmer can obtain coal upon his own farm with a little extra labor, and the supply of coal is very nearly inexhaustible.

Township 49 and range 19, lying within the township of Arrow Rock, contains, perhaps, the richest deposit of coal in the county. The stratum of bituminous coal in this section varies from two to twenty feet in thickness, of the very finest quality of coal, and is interspersed in numerous places with huge pockets of cannel coal of a quality equalling the famous cannel coal of Kentucky. These pockets often present a face of from 30 to 40 feet of coal. In this region is the famous cannel coal mine on the farm of the late Gov. C. F. Jackson, besides numerous others, nearly all of them of great thickness, from 10 to 30 feet - of limited extent, and most of them, reposing on the lower carboniferous rocks. South of Blackwater there is much the same coal deposit as that in the region just described. Cannel pockets are also here, as is proved by those found on the farm of the late C. G. Clark, now worked by Mr. Laner. Coal has also been found along the northern edge of the county, near Miami, in township 52, ranges 19 and 21.

Quaternary

QUATERNARY. The Drift formation, which is generally found above the coal measures, is distributed over Saline county. It lies beneath the loess in certain localities, but immediately beneath the sub-soils and surface, where the loess does not exist. It is composed of beds of arenaceous clays, mingled with pebbles and a few boulders. Whitish pipe-clay also occurs in deposits near the upper part in many places. These beds of drift may be seen along many of the streams, and are often struck when sinking wells.

Bluff or Loess occurs along the bluffs of the river, and extend back over much of the country north and east of Salt Fork - if it occurs on the high prairies south of Salt Fork, it is of a character not easily ^distinguishable from the drift formation. The bluffs along the Missouri river are largely composed of this loess formation founded on encrinital and Archimedes limestones. The looseness and depth of the loess along these bluffs in township 52, range 23, are the probable cause of those sharp, high conical ridges which are known as the Pinnacle hills, an account of which is given elsewhere. The loess deposit here consists of fine light, yellowish and argillaceous material, and the same continues !ten or twelve miles up the river, and forms the boundary of the vast alluvial bottom north of the Petite Saw Plains. There are, however, no repetitions of the Pinnacle hills, there or elsewhere. Back from the river, as already stated, this deposit continues as far as the north and northeast banks of Salt Fork, varying in depth from 10 to 50, 60 and even 80 feet. The Petite Saw Plains are a vast bottom prairie of this same bluff formation in a large measure. The soil is made up of sands, clays, vegetable mold - the sand very fine and powdery and yellowish brown, the clays bluish brown and marly, the vegetable mold of a dark color, and the whole as rich, perhaps, as any in the world.

The Alluvium, or alluvial deposits, compose all the large bottoms of the Missouri river, being from ten to fifteen feet above the river at ordinary stage. These bottoms vary from one to five or six miles in breadth. The general aspect is that of a perfect level, but when closely examined, it will be seen that they are always a little lower at the bluffs than at the river bank, and are nearly all of them subject to occasional overflow. The alluviuift according to Prof. Swallow, is composed of black loam, with the usual very fine clays and arenaceous materials, soils, sand, clays, humus and marls, and are fertile almost beyond compare. All the river bottoms in this coimty are subject to occasional overflow, as already stated, and when the floods subside, lagoons, lakes, sloughs, etc., are left full of turbid water, which evaporate and deposit their turgid contents until these lagoons and sloughs are gradually silted up.

Saline county presents to the geologist a rich, and comparatively un worked field. Its geological history has been but little investigated, as compared with other portions of the state. A chapter in the " Geological Survey of Missouri, 1855, 1871," by Prof. F. B. Meek, contains much the most elaborate and reliable geological researches that have yet been made of the county, and from it most of the geological information detailed in this chapter has been obtained. The geologist has a rich field yet before him here, while the economical geology is both rich and abounding. As has already been said, in speaking of the coal measures, coal, that most important of minerals, abounds in this county in quality and quantities that the people have not yet comprehended. It - is true that the coal strata vary greatly in thickness and depth, but over two-thirds of the county rests upon the coal measures, and the supply of coal to be obtained, when the coal is systematically mined, will prove inexhaustible. No regular mining has ever been undertaken, but each farmer "drifts under," or " strips oft"" for fuel for his own use, and a few of them, by hiring a few hands, supply the wants of the villages nearest them.

The coal is generally of a good quality, and especially of a very fine quality in the great coal bed near the town of Arrow Rock. As the cannel coal is always here found in " pockets," there is no method of estimating the quantity of it, or how soon the supply may give out. As fuel, or for the production of gas, this coal has no superior. It has been thoroughly tested at the St. Louis gas works, and found to furnish abundantly the best quality of gas. It is thought that anthracite also exists, and will yet be found in this region.

Building Stone, Lime, Sand, Etc

Building stone Of good quality is found in nearly every township in the county, and in some of them is obtainable with very little labor. On Blackwater and its tributaries, and in other places, excellent building material is quarried from the sandstone arfd limestone of the coal measures. As yet, stone has been but sparsely used for building purposes, but the day will come when the people of this grandly dowered county will wake up from their lethargy, and will begin to utilize this, as well as many other sources of unbounded wealth, which remain dormant and almost untouched in nature's storehouses. Right at their doors lie quarries from which the cheapest and best houses may be built - houses that will last for ages - but as yet, they prefer to send to the east and north for their building material, at the highest prices, and to buUd houses of wood that will, only for a few years, resist the wear and tear of the prairie winds and storms. The encrinitial and Chouteau limestones, as also the Cooper marble, which abound in the county, furnish admirable building stone, while the lower carboniferous sandstone furnishes an excellent material for the building of Macadamized roads, of which there is not one in the county. All the limestones of the lower carboniferous, but especially the Cooper marble, make an excellent quality of lime. The lime made by the Cooper marble is snowy white and admirably adapted to plastering and whitewashing - but the people of this county prefer to pay tribute to the east for their lime and cement, though it could be obtained better and cheaper at home.

Sand of the finest quality is readily obtained along all the streams that flow through the coal measures, and also in many localities on the Missouri river. Numerous localities furnish an excellent clay for the making of building brick, and there is at least one bed of white pipe-clay that would make good pottery.

Historical Geology From Prof. Swallow, In History Of Missouri

If we go back to the time when this continent began to emerge from the primeval ocean, the geological record will inform us that Pilot Knob, Shepherd Mountain, and some of the neighboring heights, were among the first portions of land that appeared above the waters. When Pilot Knob became an island, there was an unbroken ocean on all sides, save an island to the northwest, the top of the Black Hills, a large cluster to

These islands were formed in the Azoic seas by the eruptions that forced up the porphyry, granite, the Azoic slates and iron beds of Pilot Knob and the neighboring heights .

In the tranquil cycles which succeeded, the ocean was peopled with innumerable species of mollusca, zoophytes, protozoans and trilobites. Plants, too, appeared in the waters. But for some reason these animals were not abundant in the waters about Pilot Knob.

This is what we call the Age of MoUusks;* and in'it were deposited the series of magnesian limestones and sandstones so largely developed in the southern and eastern portions of the state. In the middle portion of this age, mollusks, with conical shells as large as saw-logs, made their appearance.

Towards the close of this age the higher portions of South Missouri became dry land, and the surrounding waters were filled with vast numbers of corals, trilobites, bivalve, spiral and conical shells. At the end of the Age of Mollusks, the land emerged as high up the Mississippi as Louisiana, and the waters of the Pacific and Atlantic were separated by a chain of islands along the line of the Upper Mississippi and the great lakes and the St. Lawrence.

The next period, the Age of Fishes, was characterized by tranquil seas filled with coral reefs, around which sported the primeval fishes. Huge nautili spread their sails over the placid waters, and plants clothed the rising continent in green.

For many cycles the seas remained tranquil, and continued to be filled with fishes, corals, stone lilies, trilobites, star fish and algae, while the vast beds of carboniferous limestone were deposited. Reptiles and insects appeared upon the land. But towards the close of the period turbulent times intervened. Rocks were broken up, rounded to boulders and pebbles, or ground to sand, and drifted to the sea and piled into vast beds, in the central portions of the Mississippi valley.

St. Louis now rose above the waters and formed a peninsula which had its connection to the south with the older part of the continent. A shallow bay extended around St. Louis to the north and west. It widened out over all the coal regions of Illinois and Kentucky, and out into the Pacific through St. Charles. All northwest Missouri and the coal regions of

*Thls term is used in the older works ; but in all the recent geological text books and standard authors the " Age of Mollusks " has been changed to " Age of Invertebrates," because it had many animal forms that were not mollusks, although it had none that were vertebrates, or back-boned animals. See geological chart on page 67.

Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Arkansas and the Indian Territory were covered with warm, shallow waters, steaming under the rays of a tropical sun.

A hot atmosphere filled with vapor and carbonic acid nourished the rapid growth of trees, ferns, lepidodendrons,sigillaria and other plants in vast forests. Steaming marshes, fens and lagoons abounded. These lands were many times raised and submerged, and the forests swept away into vast beds, which formed the coal deposits over more than 100,000 square miles ^ in the states above named. The turbulent waters deposited the clays and sands intercalated with the coal beds. Clear tranquil waters returned, filled with fishes, mollusks and corals, and the limestones of the coal measures were deposited.

At the close of this period the Pacific had retired westward to Sioux City and Manhattan; the Gulf of Mexico extended up as high as Cape Girardeau; and a part of Scott county was a large island.

During the succeeding age of reptiles, while the vast saurians, like the zeuglodon, were sporting in the waters that covered the lower Mississippi valley, and the flpng pterodactyli were flapping their wings over the shores of the Pacific, in Wyoming and Colorado, Missouri was quiescent, producing her quota of animal and vegetable life.

In the succeeding age of mammals, Missouri remained as before, but the regions bordering on the Gulf of Mexico and those on the upper Missouri and westward to the Pacific, underwent various depressions and elevations by which several dynasties of wonderful animals were buried in the rocks which now contain their remains. At the close of this vast period the continent assumed its present form, with some unimportant exceptions. The Gulf of Mexico still extended above the mouth of the Ohio. Our large rivers had cut their present channels to depths varying from 100 to 500 feet, and in width from one to ten miles. Mighty waters poured over the solid strata and wore for themselves these vast channels to the sea.

But a change came over the continent. Some mighty power of water or ice, or both, swept over the surface, grinding the softer rocks to atoms, and rounding the harder into pebbles. Vast boulders were moved hundreds of miles and dropped in strange places.

Another change, and a large part of the upper Mississippi and the lower Mississippi valleys were covered with a vast fresh water lake. The land was covered with forests similar to our own. The land and waters were , peopled with many of our present races of animals. The squirrel ate the same mast, and the deer ate the same herbage as now. But the huge elephant and mastodon were then lords of the soil. The bluff formation was deposited in this lake. Another change, and the lake was gradually drained and the waters subsided to the channels of the rivers. The currents of the great rivers were sluggish, they were spread from bluff to bluff, and the bottom prairie was deposited, covering the valleys of our great rivers.

The alluvial deposits were formed,, the gulf was driven back to its present limits, the swamp country was added to our state, the soil was formed, and Missouri wns finished. The Age of Man commenced, and the geological record gave place to [written] history.

[This brief but beautiful sketch of the changes undergone in preparing our state and county for the abode of man, would be incomplete without the following testimony by the same pen, in regard to " development," or " natural selection," with which it closes.]

But in this countless array of animals, whose orders and genera and species have come and gone through the vast cycles since Pilot Knob announced the rising continent, among them all, do we find one species of animal developed from another? Nay, verily.

Species come without progenitors, maintain their identity for countless ages, and utterly perish, leaving nothing developed to call them ancestors.

When we examine through their whole existence, they degenerate rather tham improve. In some instances they do Improve for a time ; but in all instances they retrograde again, and finally perish miserably.

The trilobite was one of the first animals that appeared in the primeval ocean; he lived through the entire Palaeozoic period. They sometimes improved and sometimes degenerated; but finally they dwindled down to a few insignificant species, and utterly perished.

The trilobite stood at the head of the primitive orders. He had the world for his field, and all time was before him. He perished by no catastrophe ; and yet, natural selection did not improve him, much less save him from utter extinction.

At the close of the Age of Mammals, the elephant and mastodon were at the head of the order on this continent. They had space enough, climates enough, time enough, and none to molest or make them afraid; and yet natural selection did not save them. They dwindled away and died out.

The genus Cyrtia and the species Sfirifer Cameratus, and a thousand others, might be named to show that natural selection, where it had the widest field, the longest time, and the most favorable circumstances, failed utterly to make [or develop] a new species. Such, at least, is the testimony of the rocks of Missouri.

In many portions of the North American Continent, but especially that part known as the great Mississippi valley, along the Mississippi, Missouri and Ohio rivers, are innumerable monuments which attest the former residence of some ancient 'but partially civihzed races of people, which have long ago disappeared utterly from the face of the earth, leaving no history, except what may be gathered from these monuments, and not even a name behind them. There are more or less distinct traces of villages, towns, and even large cities yet to be seen, and evidences of cultivated lands, which attest beyond a doubt that comparatively dense populations were once collected along the rivers of this great valley," whose customs, modes of life and institutions were very far superior to those of the Indians who were found in possession of the country by the white men from Europe. The evidences of a superior social state are numerous; and scattered all over the west, especially among the mounds and fortifications of Arkansas and Missouri, and of this vast population, generally now called the Mound-builders, New Madrid, in Missouri, would' seem to have, been the center. The labors of the archeeologist have enabled us to arrive at something like a connected history of these long-vanished people; to look in upon their modes of life and domestic scenes, their method of burial and gropings concerning a future existence, and their ceaseless struggles, like man in all ages, for the means of daily subsistence. Two things, however, seem lost never to be recovered - their name and their language. For ages they flourished in the great valley, lived, grew wealthy and civilized, until at length, as seems to be history in all ages and in all quarters of the globe, they were driven out from their country and their homes by a stronger, fiercer and more barbarous "people from the north," who came and occupied. They do not seem to have been conquered, and to have remained as a vanquished people, but to have been literally driven out, and to have departed toward the south by a universal exodus.

The general similarity, with only enough of exception to prove the general riUe, demonstrates the fact that the people covering this vast region were one and the same race, having the same manners, customs and language, and one religion common to all. Their religion was the worship of the sun, as the great central Deity or representative of Deity.

The state of Missouri presents as rich an archaeological field as any portion of the Mississippi valley, and many monuments of this vanished race are to be found in the county of Saline.

The mounds of the Mound-builders are heaps of earth or stone of various dimensions and every imaginable shape. In size they vary from four or five feet in height and eight or ten in diameter, to ninety feet in heighj and eight hundred in diameter; they are round, square elliptical, conical, and many of them shaped like birds, beasts, instruments, and some even have the human shape. In every case where they have been investigated they contain human bones, besides every variety of stone and pottery implements. There is a tradition, (but it is only tradition, and shadowy at that) that many hundreds of years ago the Lenno-Lenape (who are said to have been the remote ancestors of the Delaware tribe of the Algonquin family of Indians) resided in a far distant part of the northwest, determined to emigrate to the east in a body and after a long journey and many halts (often of long periods of time) they reached the Mississippi river where they were joined by the Minquas, who had also emigrated from a distant country. They found the country east of the Mississippi inhabited by a very powerful nation called by themselves the Allequi, who were remarkably tall and stout, and even had giants among them, and had their habitations entrenched by regular fortifications.

The Lenno-Lenape desired to settle in the country of this people, but were only permitted to pass through to the further east. They began to cross the Mississippi, when the Allequi became alarmed and attacked them. A great battle ensued in which many were killed on both sides. A long war followed, and at length, the Allequi, finding themselves too weak to continue it, and that the Lenno-Lenape were bent on their extermination, fled in a body down the great river, and settled the country afterward occupied by thd Natchez, whose ancestors they were.

This is mere tradition, but the evidences are sufficient to suggest to us that mighty nations with various degrees of advancement, have from time to time occupied the Mississippi valley, empire succeeding empire, rising, falling and disappearing, corresponding to the early changes in Asia and Europe. The earthen mounds, whether constructed for fortifications, observations, temples or tombs, exhibit little art, though immense labor. The pottery so often found in these mounds, is generally made of clay, with a considerable intermixture of sand, sometimes flinty and sometimes calcareous, but generally of a whitish color. The earth-works found along the Missouri river are manifestly of a defensive character, and generally crown the summits of steep hills, and consist of an embankment and exterior ditch. .

On the Missouri river, near the Pinnacles in Saline county, in section 19, township 52, and range 21, and section 2,4, township 52, range 22, in the field of Mr. Edward Casebolt, there is one of these old forts, in which have been found at various times human bones, entire skeletons, jaw-bones, and leg-bones, much larger than those of men at the present time. This field of Mr. Casebolt's, and also that of Mr. Richard Williams, contains numerous mounds. West by southwest from this old fort in the Pinnacles are to be seen a series of conical shaped mounds, varying from three to seven feet in height, and having a circumference of from fifty to one hundred feet, which evidently, (as well from the remains found as from their conical shape), belong to the sepulchural class of mounds . Many specimens of pottery have been found here - jars, double-handled jugs, very similar to those used in early times in eastern countries. One human, skull was here found with an arrow point sticking in it, entering about the center of the frontal bone. An iron crown was also found here, indicating that, somewhere in the far shadowy past, royalty dwelt in these fair and favored regions. Pikes, hatchets, axes, and clubs of stone and iron, have here been picked up, and arrow points in great abundance. Mortars and pestles, not for the compounding of drugs and medicines, but for the preparation of food, were found near this old fort, but made of a peculiar stone that does not belong to this region. Many have been led to believe from the vast quantity of human bones found in this vicinity that there was either a common burial place here, or that once a great battle was fought in this locality in which the slain were numbered by the thousands. Indeed these mounds are to be found, at intervals of a few yards to a mile, all along the high ground bordering the adjacent river bottom.

The mounds of the Mound-builders are to be found in almost every part of the county, on the bluffs of the streams. They are by no means confined to the Pinnacles, though the most important of them are probably there. These mounds all antedate the recollection of the Indians who were found here by the first white men. They told the earliest settlers that they were utterly ignorant of the origin of theni. They abound all along the river bluffs, from Arrow Rock up. Near Arrow Rock a jawbone was found, that, upon close investigation, was determined to have belonged to a child not over ten years of age, yet it was fully as large as the present adult jaw-bone. How it was determined that the wearer of the jaw-bone was only and exactly ten years of age, is not recorded. The pottery found in these mounds is very similar to some made by the Pueblo Indians in New Mexico.

This structure, elsewhere alluded to, is situated in section 24, township 52, range 22. It crowns the summit of one of the "Pinnacles," and comprises an area of perhaps six acres. In a complete sense it is not at all a fort; it is merely a breastwork of an irregular elliptical form, made to conform to the topography of the land it encloses. The ground slopes from the breastwork or embankment on every side but one - that next the main land. This sloping, in nearly every part, is quite steep, and the crest of the Pinnacle is several hundreds of feet above the main land below, Immediately at the foot of the Pinnacles is the Missouri liver bottom, along which, or over which the river ran at the time the fort was built. Upon the eastern side of the works a narrow neck of level ground leads to the main land; and at one place on the side next the river there is an inclined plane leading down to the bottom. This plane is not covered with trees of any considerable size or age, alt hough the surrounding land is heavilytimbered.

- Very many descriptions of this so-called "fort" have been written, and very many theories of its origin and purpose advanced; but all of them in all reasonable probability, have been inaccurate. The examinations seem to have been cursory and very imperfect. At the time they were made the site of the fortification was covered with timber and underbrush, and could not be carefully inspected. Prof. G. C. Broadhead, a learned and accomplished scientist, in the Western Science Review, June, 1878, gave the following description of the "fort:"

In 1872 I visited an interesting locality in Saline county, about four miles southwest of Miami, where were observed ancient earthworks, walls and ditches, on a high ground in a dense wood. It approached a circular form, though of quite irregular shape, caused by ravines breaking off near the periphery, the walls becoming re-entrant at such places. The space enclosed was about forty acres, around which there extended three ridges and two valleys or depressions, the remains of former ditches. Two ridges extended entirely around the enclosed area, and apparently were formed of the earth excavated from the ditches, and are about three feet above the bottom of the ditches. They have undoubtedly been much higher, the ditches correspondingly deeper, at some former period in the remote past. No rocks were seen by or in the inclosure. Black oak trees from three to five feet in diameter were noticed as growing over the walls and ditches and the inclosed area of the entire space was covered with a dense growth of bushes, vines and trees. In the neighboring fields human bones, spear heads and fragments of pottery have been plowed up. I, myselJE, observed in the neighborhood many fragments of pottery, with arrow and spear heads of flint.

It will be observed that the learned professor puts the area of space enclosed at ^forty acres," the number of "ridges" as he styles the embankments, at three, two of which "extended entirely around the enclosed area." The professor's examination was" hastily and imperfectly made. He examined but one side of the fortification, at a point where there were three ridges, two of which were well defined and longer than the third. In point of fact but one of these ridges is over fifty feet in length! A heavy rain was approaching at the time of the professor's visit, and in company his guide. Dr. Dunlap, of Miami, he soon left the field. Seeing three ridges at the point he examined, be concluded that they extended entirely around the ground of the fort, circumscribing an area of "forty acres," ten times the real size.

Dr. Dunlap, the gentleman alluded to as Broadhead's companion, is himself a gentleman of no mean attainments as a geologist and archasologist. The doctor had given the "fort" the best examination he could, and written several descriptive articles for the press in which he gave a description of

Latterly the site of the fort has been cleared of timber and brush and a considerable portion of it cultivated, at least one crop of corn having been raised by a negro whose house is near by. It is quite an easy matter now - to view the shape and peculiarity of the fort as they probably were. The investigation by the writer discloses that the fort is as described in the beginning of this article.

Its origin is probably as follows: About the year 1720 the French ascended the Missouri and established forts and trading posts at difTerent points on the river. This was one of them. The breastwork bears every mark, almost, of comparatively modern origin. In some places it has been washed down; in others it is quite well preserved, and here are to be seen angles in the manner of modern fortifications. Upon the side of the works where the neck joins, connecting with the main land - the only place where the works could be readily reached by an attacking force - are two large piles of earth, the remains, no doubt, of a bastion erected to defend the approach. At the point where the inclined plane slopes down to the old river-bed, no breastwork seems to have ever been made. This was doubtless to allow passage to and from the river. Near the center of the ground is a pile of earth thirty feet long and not so wide, and at one corner of this elevation the writer and other representatives of the publishers of this work, accompanied by Dr. Dunlap, discovered an abandoned well, nearly filled, but yet quite well defined. It is circular in shape and yet about four feet in depth. A stick thrust into it was made to penetrate very easily a distance of many feet, while but a few feet away it could not be sunk but a few inches. The trees mentioned by Prof. Broadhead have since his examination been cut down. Not one of them exceeded four feet in diameter, and a careful examination and close counting of the rings of growth show that the age of none of them is more than a hundred years. Not a particle of pottery, not an arrow-head or lance-head, not a mound, or any other indication of a Mound-builder or any sort of pre-historic origin has ever been discovered. A few years since, however, a cannon-ball ivas found by Mr. J. A. Lewis within the limits of the fortification.

The occupants of this fort, whoever they were, and whenever they lived there, were undoubtedly among the first whites that were ever in Saline. To be sure they were not settlers, in the correct sense of the term, and yet they were inhabitants. Just when they were here can never be determined; but it is reasonably certain that it was near the year 1720. They may have been here contemporaneous with Renault's men, and abandoned their fort when Ft. Orleans was built; or they may have been here before, and left the place when they heard of the approach of the Spariish expe- dition from Santa Fe. Whenever the place was evacuated it would seem that the block houses and other buildings inside of the breastworks were burned, for this is what the character of the soil composing the " heaps before mentioned indicates. In these views generally Dr. Dunlap, formerly a believer in the theory that the works were those of the Moundbuilders, now concurs. i

The "old fort on the Pinnacles," is fast disappearing from human sight. It is rapidly being converted into a cornfield. A vandal "of African descent " is leveling its walls, dismantling its escarpments, destroying its bastions, and filling up its moat and ditches, in order that the entire site may be made to serve his base uses as a "truck patch." These pages will be read by some when there will be no sign or token of the old fort - when, where once it stood will be waving corn and golden grain and all the accompaniments ^f agriculture and a time of peace and plenty.

In the northeast part of the county the mounds seem to be in parallel ranges from southeast to northwest, the ranges being about six miles apart, with great variations in the distance between the mounds. The ranges extend, some of them, from the bluffs into the interior. They were precipitous on the northwest side, sloping gradually to the southeast. There is one very large mound on Morrison's place where the old Glasgow and Marshall road entered the bottom, 10 to 15 feet high and 200 feet in circumference at base, and 20 feet at cone. Very large oak trees are growing on these mounds, and one 18 inches across on the one on Morrison's place. In digging a grave to bury old Mrs. Williams, in one of these mounds, pottery was dug up, but nothing to indicate that Indians were buried there.

These Mound-builders - so manj' traces of whom are to be found in Saline county, as well as in all parts of the Mississippi valley - who were they? Where did they come from? And what became of them? These are questions that must ever be the subjects of conjecture and speculation, and can never be positively determined. It is impossible, in a local work like the present, to give the many different theories, and the different arguments by which they are supported. That the whole of this great valley was once, in the far distant past, the empire of a vast population, whose civilization was far above that of the tribes who were found here by the Europeans, there is no doubt. At what period of the past they flourished it is impossible to determine, except that it was many, many centuries before Christopher Columbus first found his way to the west. The tendency of great migrations is always from the north to the south; and the most reasonable' theory of the origin of this Mound-building race is that they came from the northern races of Asia, crossing high up, where the distance between the continents is comparatively small. That the moundbuilding race or races obeyed the usual law and disappeared to the south.

may be set down as almost certain, while the most probable theory is that the Aztecs of Mexico were the last remnant of this ancient civilization. The existence of the Mound-builders, their undoubted partial civilization, and the deep obscurity which clothes their history, presents no obstructtion to the Christian religion, and no stumbling block to the enlightened Christian. The Christian scientist, says Prof. Conant, pursuing his investigations, regardless of aU dogmatic theories concerning divine revelation, and bringing, at last, all right results of his work to the subjective light of that old, old record, which, thus far, they have only served to glorify, discovers now and then the golden key, by which the sublime and occult truths condensed in its sententious statements may be unlocked, and the long aeons understood, which are comprehended in the evening and the morning of the creative days.

In the year 1720, Philip Renault, a son of a celebrated iron founder of France, established a fort on the Illinois bank of the Mississippi river, .about ten miles above the town of St. Genevieve. He had been appointed by the king director-general of the mines of the French possessions in America, and left France the previous year with two hundred artificers and miners, well provided with tools and appartus and whatever else was considered necessary to develop the supposed innumerable mines of gold and silver believed to abound in Missouri and Arkansas. In his passage to America, Renault touched at the Island of San Domingo and purchased five hundred slaves for the purpose of doing the "heavy" mining work. The fort which Renault established was named Fort Chartres. From this fort he dispatched parties of miners to " prospect " for silver and gold at different times and in different directions, but chiefly as to the former the same season of his arrival, and mainly as to the latter west of the Mississippi river.

One of these prospecting or exploring parties of Renault's penetrated into the interior of the present state of Missouri certainly as far west as Lafayette county, and remained for some time in the southeastern part of this county, being engaged in digging for the precious metals. They seem to have made considerable effort in this direction, for many of their shafts were of quite a depth in 1812, and can still be seen, although overgrown with trees and shrubbery, and partially filled with soil subsequently formed.

These "diggings" of Renault's men are in Black Water and Salt Fork townships, on the Black Water river, and here was where white men first stepped upon the soil of Saline county. Furthermore, it may be claimed

Proofs of the presence of Renault's men in Saline, while not as " strong as those of Holy Writ," yet exist. Failing to find anything valuable in the line of minerals except lead and iron ores, he established furnaces for smelting the former, and sent a report of the fact to his government. In Williams' Life of Thos. Jefferson appears a letter from the distinguished statesman, written in 1803, about the time of the Louisiana purchase, and in reference to that scheme. In this letter, speaking in regard to the immense value of the territory sought to be acquired, Mr. Jefferson says :: * * * . * "That there is immense mineral wealth in the territory of Louisiana is a fact well established. More than eighty years ago valuable mineral^ were found to exist as far west of the Mississippi river as one hundred and eighty miles northwest of the town of Saint Genevieve, as appears by reports made to the regent of France by M. de Renault."

" One hundred and eighty miles northwest of the town of St. Genevieve " would be about in Black Water and Salt Fork townships, Saline county. Renault could make no report to his king of the existence or non-existence of mineral here, unless he was in possession himself of reports on the subject, which reports, it is reasonably certain, he obtained from one of his prospecting parties, that dug the holes yet to be seen on the Black Water. How long Renault's men remained on the Black Water, is not known. From here they went on the Tebo, in Lafayette county, where it is said traces of their presence have been discovered, although it has hitherto been believed that the Spanish were the authors of the work there done, as well as that done on the Black Water, in this county.

From time to time parties of French and Spanish explorers and traders passed through the county, and it is said that evidences of their encampments in the county were plain about the year 1812.

Near the site of one of these supposed camps, not far east of Miama, a son of Mr. Ingham found a very old French coin but a few years since. And in the neighborhood of the old fort on the Pinnacles, there was found in an early day pieces of crockery resembling the queensware of to-d^^

The next representatives of the Caucasian race to visit Saline county, of which there is certain knowledge, were the members of Lewis and Clark'^ expedition sent out by President Jefferson, in 1804. Very soon after the acquisition of the Louisiana territory, Mr. Jefferson projected an expedition to explore the newly acquired district from the mouth of the Missouri toits source and thence across to the Pacific ocean. The president's private secretary, Captain Merriwether Lewis, then but thirty-one years of age,, was given command of the expedition, with Captain William Clark, of the regular army, as second in command. The company consisted of nine young Kentuckians, fourteen soldiers, two Canadian voyageurs or boatmen, a hunter, and Captain Clark's negro servant. In May, 1804, this expedition passed up'the Missouri along Saline county, and two years afterward, or in September, 1806, passed down the river and through Saline county, reaching St. Louis, and terminating the expedition on the 23d of the month.

Captain Lewis was the second governor of Missouri territory - then called Louisiana territory - and Captain Clark the fourth. Lewis committed suicide in 1809, while passing through Tennessee on his way to Washington. Clark was appointed governor in 1810 and served until Missouri was admitted into the Union, in 1821. He died in St. Louis, in 1838.

In the year 1807 ia company of traders with head quarters at St. Louis, sent Captain George Sibley, of St. Charles, to establish a trading post within the present boundaries of Saline county. The site chosen, after a careful survey of the country was where the town of Arrow Rock now stands. Here Captain Sibley erected quite a substantial building of logs a story and a half high, with one door and no window, which could be used for a trading house and converted into a fort or block-house at a minute's warning. Sibley had with him a clerk, an interpreter, one or two assistants, and his family. The trading house had no windows and no side openings save a door and numerous port holes. Sibley was agent for the Sacs, Foxes, lowas, and Miamis. Upon the breaking out of the war of 1812 he returned to St. Charles or to St. Louis, and it is believed never after came to the county. Sibley's house stood on the bluff, some say upon the present site of High street, and others say a mile north of the . town.

The Pioneer

THE PIONEER. Lo! here the smoke of cabins curled - ^ The borders of the middle world; And mighty, hairy, half-wild men Sat down in silence, held at bay By savage kindred. Far away The redmen's boundless borders lay; And lodges stood in legions then. Striped pyramids of painted men. What stout, uncommon men were these! These settlers hewing to the seas. Great horny-handed men and tan; Men blown from any border land; Men desperate and red of hand;

And men in love and men in debt; And men who lived but to forget; And men whose very hearts had died, Who only sought these woods to hide Their wretchedness - and hid in vain! Yet every man among them stood Alone along the sounding wood; And every man somehow a man. A race of unnamed giants these, That moved like gods among the trees. So stem, so stubborn-browed and slow. With strength of black-maned buffalo; And each man notable and tall, A kindly and unconsci9us Saul, - A sort of sullen Hercules. -* * * *

They pushed the mailed wood aside, They tossed the forest like a toy, - That great forgotten race of men. The boldest band that yet has been Together since the siege of Troy - And followed it, and found their rest. * * * *

Actual Settlements

The first settling of Saline county was by settlements. Eligible locations were discovered, and half a dozen or more families, usually from the same district in Kentucky or Tennessee, would congregate together. This was for the reason that not only was life more enjoyable by the means afforded for social intercourse, but it was necessary, in order that the settlers might be the more able to defend themselves from attacks by hostile Indians by banding together. In union there is strength, and the early settlers of Saline practiced the precept thoroughly.

From Cooper's and Howard's forts numerous small hunting expeditions had crossed the river to the Saline side and explored the territory. These expeditions invariably reported that, save along the river and its tributaries, the country was almost worthless; that it was largely destitute of timber, and consequently could never be worth much either for hunting or agricultural purposes; that, although there seemed to be plenty of f^ame there then, it was undoubtedly only there temporarily, attracted by the salt springs, and would soon go back to its natural haunts in the timbered regions of the country. It must be borne in mind that even in this year of grace, A. D. 1881, according to statements of reliable persons, who speak understandingly, there is at least three times as much timber in the county as there was in 1815, notwithstanding the improvement and " clearing " that have been done.

Notwithstanding the unfavorable report given by the Joshuas who were sent to " spy out the land " across the "Jordan " of the west, many of the settlers of the Boone's Lick country were attracted westward to it, and soon began to organize settlements and begin to possess the land. The first of these settlements was

The Settlement On Cox'S Bottom

Above the " Arrow Rock," as it was then spoken of, and opposite from Cooper's fort, in Howard county, on the north side of the river was, in the early part of the present century, a considerable expanse of fine bottom land, covered with a heavy growth of timber and abounding in game, which was called Cox's bottom.

Jesse Cox was a native of Madison county, Kentucky. He left that state in an early day and settled in Illinois. Afterward he came to Missouri, and located in the settlement on Loutre Island, in the Missouri, below the mouth of the Gasconade. In 1810, about one hundred and fifty families left the island, under the leadership of Col. Benjamin Cooper, and came to the Boone's Lick country. Cox's family was one of these. The same year he crossed the river to the Saline side, and, according to J. R. Letcher, built a cabin and cleared a " patch " of land. The following year he removed his family to his new home, to which he was accom- panied by his son-in-law, William Gregg (pronounced by some old settlers Grag). Cox's cabin stood in the upper end of the bottom. It was built of unhewn logs, was about sixteen feet square, a single story in height, had a clap-board roof, a fire-place built of undressed stone, cemented with mud and topped by a mud-and-stick chimney, and both the floor and the door were made of roughly hewn puncheons. Both cabin and garden, as well as the "truck patch" adjoining, have long since disappeared; for over the site where once they stood the mighty Missouri rolls on its way to the sea, and has rolled for many lustrums of years.

During the next two years or more - that is to say after the breaking out of the war with Great Britain, in 1812 - Cox was frequently " run in " to the forts on the opposite side of the river, by the savage Indian allies of the British. He always kept a sharp look-out and escaped danger quite frequently. The settlers across the river tried to induce Cox and Gregg to remain with them, at least -until the war was over, but the latter had eluded the savages so often that they had no fear of them, and grew to imagine that they could not be harmed by their crafty foes, whom they considered less crafty than themselves. But, alas! the pitcher went to the well too often.

The Indians, who were either Sacs, Foxes, lowas or Miamis, were very numerous and annoying. About the year 1813, Wm. McMahan, then living in Fort Cooper, crossed the Missouri to this side to hunt. Not far from the river, just out from Cox's bottom, he shot a fine buck. He was in the act of cutting the animal's throat, when he was fired upon by an Indian. The ball struck his shot-pouch and luckily stopped among the other bullets. The operation of butchering the stricken deer immediately ceased! McMahan caught up his gun, which had not been reloaded, and started for his canoe and Fort Cooper, with the Indian in hot pursuit. In the race for the river McMahan won. He jumped into his canoe and was a considerable distance out in the stream when the savage reached the bank. The latter fired at McMahan, but missed, and McMahan was soon at Fort Cooper relating his adventure, and declaring that there was plenty of game on the other side of the river, some of which a white man might hunt, and some of which would hunt a white man !

It seems that no attempt was made to settle the bottom until after the war, besides that of Cox and Gregg, save by William and Frank Cooper, who were cousins, and who crossed in the year 1813, and made " clearings " near Cox and Gregg.

In Christmas week, 1814, the little settlement was attacked one afternoon by a band of Sac and Fox Indians. That morning the Cooper boys had started on an exploring expedition to " the mountains." It is to be regretted that no very full account of the affair can be given. The particulars do not seem to be remembered alike by the old pioneers. Mr.

J. R. Letcher took great pains to get at the exact facts, but his labors ' were illy requited. This much is certain : The Indians killed William Gregg, Cox's son-in-law, and destroyed the settlement. One account is that Gregg was shot down in his own door-yard and dragged into the house by the women, who barred the door against the savages, and held them at bay until relief came from Cooper's Fort. The other and more probable story is that Gregg had gone out from the house to drive in some calves, when he was shot and tomahawked by the Indians, who came on to the house, robbed it, and carried Miss Patsy Gregg, daughter of Wm. Gregg, away with them as a prisoner; that Cox was also from the house at the time, but returned in a short time and sounded the alarm to the fort. A party was soon organized at the fort and hurried in pursuit of the savages. The latter crossed the Missouri, and the party from the fort overtook them on the Charijon river, in what is now Chariton county, and recaptured Miss Gregg.

She was on horseback, seated behind an Indian warrior, to whom she was tied by one hand. The horse they were riding lagged behind all the rest of the party, by reason of its extra burthen. Miss Gregg was constantly looking back, hoping to see some friendly rescuing party. At last she discovered some horsemen, and with her freed hand motioning to them to be cautious and carelul, she prepared to escape. She waited until the white men were within fifty yards of her, when with her unbound hand she suddenly seized the Indian's knife, drew it from its scabbard, cut the thongs which bound her other hand and -sprang from the horse's back to the ground and into the brush at the side of the trail - all this in almost an instant. As soon as Miss Gregg alighted, the pursuing whites fired at the savages, and the latter retreated with great precipitation. . Miss Gregg was soon in the hands of friends, and speedily carried back to the fort, where she was joyously received by the inmates, who, while sorrowing over the tragic death of her father, were glad to know that his daughter had escaped from a fate worse than death.

The very excellent memory of Mr. Jesse McMahan, one of the oldest settlers of the county now hving, is authority in part for the latter version of the story of the attack on the settlement in Cox's bottom. Other old settlers remember to have heard the particulars from the lips o.f the pioneers when they were alive, substantially as here given.

Cox is described as a muscular man, weighing about 180 pounds, with dark complexion, hair, and eyes. " He was a man of but few words," says one who knew him. " He had a quiet, Quakerish look," says another. It may here be remarked that when a pioneer had black hair and eyes, and a "quiet, Quakerish look," he "wouldn't do to fool with," as the darkey remarked of the 120-pound cannon. Cox sold out in 1818, and settled in Terre Bean Grove, (now called Tebo or Tabo) in Lafayette county, where he died.

In June, 1816, Daniel Thornton, Isaac Clark, and William Clark settled with their families in Cox's bottom. They were from Tennessee. They had made a wearisome, toilsome voyage of twelve weeks in a keelboat, propelled, as circumstances demanded, by oars, poles, sails and cordelle. Following these, from the same state, and in November of the same year, came Henry NavCj Abraham Nave, John Thornton, Jacob Nave and William Collector,, with their families. They made the journey all the way by land. There was no road worthy of the name between St. Charles and Boone's Lick, and they lost their way. They experienced much difficulty in getting through by reason of high water, and, their provisions running out, they suffered some from hunger. Subsequently Fred Hartgrove, who had been engaged in running a ferry at the Arrow Rock, John Hartgrove, and James Sappington joined the settlement.

Daniel Thornton was a native of South Carolina, and grew to manhood in that state. He was born October 26, 1788, and died August 31, 1855. His wife was a sister of Henry and Isaac Nave. Their step-mother changed the name from Nave to NefF, as it is now generally written and known. '

The settlers in Cox's bottom were mostly East Tennesseeans. It was said that every man in the bottom, when asked where he was from, would answer: "Old Tennessee - Cocke county - Kit Boler's mill, on Big Pigeon, where there's better whisky and purtier gals than anywhar else in creation!" They were universally brave and warm-hearted, hospitable and jovial.

Soon after the settlement got under headway its members were nearly all taken sick. The miasm of the Missouri was very abundant and very noxious. Chills and fever, or " the shakin' ager " prevailed almost universally, and fevers, from the intermittent to the deadly typhus, were frequent. Doctors and medicines were hardly to be had, and there was considerable suffering. Many a settler, as he sat in his cabin, shaking with ague, or lay burning with fever, heartily wished himself back among the green hills and the pure air of old Tennessee. Nearly all the settlers moved away - either up the river to the Big bottom, or across into Howard county. Some of them went up and settled in Clay county.

In September, 1820, Isaac Nefi, a Mr. Neal, one Ekel, Abraham NefF, and a Mr. Hill arrived at the bottom. Hill's wife was with them. The party was from Cocke county, Tennessee, and had come all the way in a keel-boat built by the Neff brothers, and laden with a cargo of iron castings, brandy and whisky. The boat was forty or fifty feet in length. It was "cordelled" all the way up the Mississippi and Missouri rivers.

When this party arrived there were in the settlement Jacob and Henry- Nave (Neft'), Fred Hartgrove, and two or three other families. The settlement now became identified with the history of the county in general, and does not need separate or especial mention.

The second wagon or wheeled vehicle ever brought into the county was by Henry Nave to Cox's bottom, in 1816.* It was of the very old fashioned kind, with wooden axletrees, a stiff tongue, and a very capacious bed, turned up behind and before, and resembling the hull of an old schooner. Nave lived in this wagon until he built his cabin. The first orchard ever planted in the county was also planted in this settlement, by Henry Nave, on section 13, township 50, range 19. He brought some apple and peach seeds with him from Tennessee, selected from the best orchards there, put them in a gourd filled with earth and kept it near his fireplace through one winter. The next spring there were some young sprouts, which were set out and ultimately became a first-class orchard.

Mr. Nave and Daniel Thornton are entitled to the distinction of having raised the first crop of wheat in the county, which was sown on the first piece of prairie ever ploughed in the county. They sowed about three pecks of seed and harvested twenty bushels. This was in the year 1819.

Previous to this experiment the opinion prevailed that the prairies could never be successfully cultivated. Indeed, this opinion has obtained long since that date. At one time application was made to congress for the donation of one entire township of land for experimental purposes, to test whether or not the prairies could be profitably cultivated, by first ascertaining if timber would grow in the soil; for it was held that nothing beneficial could be raised where timber would not grow. The first settlers in this county, and, indeed, throughout Missouri and the entire west, when they first came to the country, avoided the prairies as " bad lands," and plunged into and settled in the thickest, heaviest bodies of timber they could find. A farm would never be good for anything, they argued, unless it was made by clearing the land of thick, heavy growths of timber, burning the logs and brush, grubbing, etc. For in this way had they seen farms made in Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, Indiana and Pennsylvania. They would not settle on the best body of prairie land that lay under heaven's canopy.

Thornton and Nave's experiment was known of far and near. Its success was a thing of great marvel. It was a subject of comment in the city of St. Louis, then a town of a thousand or more inhabitants, but the metropolis of the far west. " The prairies have actually been cultivated ! They return a yield of twenty fold ! Well, there is no teUing what a day or Missouri soil will bring forth !"

From Cox's bottom the first exports of produce from the county were made. In the fall of the year 1820, Henry Nave, Jas. Sappington and John Hartgrove built a queer craft by making two dug-outs of cottonwood logs and fastening them together - a sort of catamaran - loaded it with bacon, floated down the river to St. Louis, bartering along the way. Not finding a ready market for their cargo at St. Louis, the party proceeded on down the Mississippi to Herculaneum, where they sold out. Returning, they traveled on foot to Washington county, where they procured horses. One of these soon died, and Sappington and Nave " rode and tied" time about, until they arrived at home. The whole trip occupied about three weeks. There is something of a contrast between the manner in which Mr. Henry Nave conducted a traffic in provisions, and that now pursued by his son, the head of the extensive house of Nave, McCord & Co.

In the fall of 1815, James Wilhite and Wm. Hayes came from West Tennessee to Cooper's Fort with wagons containing their families and all their household goods. On the road from St. Charles to the fort they ran out of provisions, and lived on parched com. They were warmly welcomed at the fort, and well provided for. Mr. Wilhite told Mr. Jerrold Letcher that during the winter of 1815 - 6 he and Hayes crossed the river and explored the country on this side to find homes for themselves. In October, 1816, they moved over with their families and settled near the lower extremity of the "Big Bottom." Mr. Wilhite's house was on section 19, township 51, range 18, and Mr. Hayes' on section 18 of the same town ship and range. Their camp fires were the first that ever blazed on those sections, save those made by the Indians. They did not succeed in completing their cabins in time to be fully prepared for winter, and they and their families suffered greatly in consequence.

On the 1st of January, 1817, Charles Lucas entered the southwest quarter of section 18, township 51, range 18. This land is in Clay township, about a mile from the Missouri river, and is now owned by A. Miller, Bettie Wilhite and J. P. Duncan.

Peter Lausson entered all of section 19, township 51, range 18, on the 4th of April, 1817. This is also in Clay township, and occupied now by J. Thornton, P. Thompson, E. P. Colt and others.

Lucas formerly lived at New Madrid, and being driven away by the great earthquake, settled his land on a " New Madrid certificate." Lausson was a Frenchman, and also from New Madrid.

Some time in the year 1817, George Tennille, afterward county judge, entered, on a New Madrid certificate, a tract of land in section 4, township 51, range 18. Tennille entered this land on a certificate owned by himself and one owned by Charles Castonget. Portions of this land were afterwards settled by Robert Stone and other parties. Stone lived thereon in 1818. Tennille sold part of the land to Duff Green, who in turn sold to Wm. Job, the date of the latter sale being September 18, 1818. " Gen." Duff Green was afterward known throughout the United States as the editor of the Washington Telegraj)h, at Washington, the personal organ of Gen. Jackson. This tract of land was long ago washed into the Missouri, and indeed but a small portion of the section now remains.

In the fall of 1817, Jacob Ish came into the settlement. The new colony had now a population of near three hundred. There had been a large immigration from Indiana and Kentucky the previous summer, and to use the words of Mr. Wilhite, as reported by Jerrold Letcher, the cabins stood along the river "just far enough apart to enable the women folks to raise chickens," from near Glasgow to where Cambridge now stands.

The settlers were in a certain sense commwnists. Their work was largely on the co-operative plan. They cleared and fenced in a large field, which they divided into lots, without any partition fences, whereon each man planted his crop. The entire settlement contributed toward making the " big field," as it was called. It contained at first but about forty acres, but it grew until at last it contained as much as a thousand acres, if not twelve hundred. Each settler was entitled to cultivate what he cleared, and helped to fence - that is, made rails for, etc.

Mr. William Hayes took the first wagon into the Big bottom. It was a rather shackly affair, and would hardly compare with the Studebakers, the Schuttlers, or the Mitchells of to-day. The women walked and carried their babies in their arms, and assisted in driving the few head of stock during the day, when on their way to the settlement, and upon camping at night built the fire and prepared the evening meal. To them belongs fully as much credit for the settlement of this county as to the men. They endured all the privations of pioneer life with scarcely a murmur, and performed their part of the labor incident to the development of the coupty willingly, and even zealously.

The country abounded with all sorts of game, and wild meat of some kind was always to be found on a pioneer table. In the interior of the county, near and at the Salt Springs, were always buffalo, although not in large numbers. Elk were not very rare, while deer, turkeys, raccoons, opossums, squirrels, rabbits, etc., were so plentiful as almost to be had for the taking up anywhere. The hollow trees in the woods either contained raccoons or honey. The few hogs in the settlement ran wild, as did the cattle. The former fed largely on the wild potatoes, which grew very abundantly. These animals were brought over from Cooper's fort, and occasionally they were known to swim the river and return to their old haunts. In the first settlement hogs were very scarce. Henry Nave had none ; but his wife had a side-saddle which she had brought with her from Tennessee. He heard that a young man across the river, in Howard county, desired a side-saddle, and would trade some young hogs or " shoats " for it. Nave crossed the river on the ice, with the saddle and traded it for five little shoats, which he brought home with him. In 1876, when he told this to Jerrold Letcher, Mr. Nave said: " And my smokehouse has never been without hog-meat since."

It was almost impossible to raise hogs and sheep when the county was first, settled, and it was difiicult to rear cattle. The woods were infested with wolves, catamounts, panthers, and bears, and they evinced a decided fondness for beef, pork, and mutton au naturel. Eternal vigilance was the price of pork and beef in those days. However, this state of affairs did not last long, and bacon soon became a leading article of export.

In the fall of 1816 a drove of elk, numbering about 30, crossed the river above Arrow Rock. They had been chased by the Howard county settlers and were met by the hunters of Saline, some of them killed, and they turned down into Cooper county and recrossed the rivei', swimming it in both instances. Some of the men from the Big bottom managed to secure a carcass or two of. these animals.

In the latter part of the summer of 1816, a bee-hunting party was organized at the Big bottom. Mr. Hayes, Daniel Thornton, Wm. Mc- Mahan, and James Wilhite composed the party. They took a canoe and went up the Missouri, landing at the Little Rush bottom, below Frankfort. There they found a number of bee-trees,and plenty of honey. They had a jolly, time. They were gone just a week and got 58 gallons of pure strained honey. They left seven fine bee-trees standing for the benefit of the next hunting party.

An incident connected with the arrival of Jacob Ish in the Big bottom is ,worth preserving. Mr. Ish arrived in the fall. The long bottom grass, taller than a man on horseback, was dry and sere, and would burn readily. He had driven his wagon into the tall grass, and made his camp. He turned his horses out to graze, and that night they strayed away. The next morning, accompanied by his son, Mr. Ish started in search of them. He had not long been gone when suddenly six painted Indians appeared at the wagon, and began talking wildly and gesticulating alarmingly to and at Mrs. Ish. The poor woman was frightened, and did not know what ihey meant. Directly she saw a volume of black smoke rising in and approaching from the west. Still she did not know what to do. Then the Indians caught up fire-brands, and, setting fire to the grass, soon had quite an area burned over. Into this cleared place they rolled

Ish's wagon, and removed all his other property and his family. Hardly was this done when the conflagration was upon them ; but the fire passed them by on either side, and there was not even the smell of fire upon their garments

Mrs. Ish was so overjoyed at the deliverance of herself and her children from what would have been a most horrible fate, that she gave her dusky but noble deliverers the last bit of tobacco her husband had ; and, when Ish returned and found what had happened, he shook each Indian heartily by the hand, and told him to consider him his best friend forever. The Indians remained firm friends of the family ever after, and visited Ish's cabin frequently, where they were always welcome. It is said that Ish afterward bought them a whole caddy of tobacco, of which they were very fond.

In the summer of 1 826 came the " big rise " in the Missouri. The. water covered all the bottoms to a depth varying from three to ten feet. Cox's bottom was entirely submerged, all but about half an acre. The Big bottom was also almost completely overflown. This did great damage, and caused many of the settlers to remove to higher ground, and thereafter to avoid the bottom. As the water subsided there was a great deal of malaria, and much sickness and suffering resulted.

The first birth of a white child in the county was in the Big Bottom. It was a daughter, born to Jacob Ish and wife, some time in the year 1817. She was taken back to Tennessee by her mother's sister, and there grew to womanhood and married.

The first mill in the county was established in the Big bottom in 1817. It was situated about a mile below where Cambridge now stands, on a little branch called Shockley's branch. It was run by horse-power, and merely ground the corn and wheat of the settlers; it had no bolting apparatus. The pioneers came to this mill not unfrequently a distance of thirty or forty miles. Clark, its founder and proprietor, is said to have been a " reformed preacher."

Prior to the establishment of this alleged " mill " the settlers depended mainly on their mortars and pestles for meal, or upon a mill across in the Boone's Lick settlement. This latter establishment did a rushing business. Like Clark's, it was a " horse mill " - run by horse power. The settlement, becoming tired of pounding corn, sent Jacob Ish to this mill, once on a time, to get some meal ground. He crossed the Missouri at the Arrow Rock, and encamped in the bottom on the opposite bank, in company with a number of other settlers fi-om different parts of the country en route for the Boone's Lick mill. The night was spent very agreeably around the camp-fires, telling stories of encounters with Indians and wild beasts, of adventures in the war of 1812, etc., and in listening to the spirited music of a violin. There were two or three good performers on the instrument, and some of the members of the camp were limber as to legs and frisky as to heels. A few " pigeon wings" and " double shuffles" were executed in admirable style, to the great admiration of the lookers-on.

The next morning camp was broken up early and the settlers started for the mill. Many of them had brought corn and shelled it in the wagons as they traveled. Upon reaching the. mill it was found to be thronged with customers, many of whom had been there a week, patiently waiting their " turn." The miU ran night and day. About four hundred yards away was a cabin in which a very inferior article of corn whisky was dispensed. Ish and party visited this establishment, and its occupants, on learning their business, said to them:

Mr. Ish had came forty-five miles, and did not propose to have all his trouble for nothing. He kept away from the grog-shop, and very wisely made friends with the miller's wife! He found some men who had been waiting their turn for two weeks, but he trusted in the Lord and the spouse of the jolly miller. Behold the sequel. The same night a man whose " turn" had come had gone to the grog-shop, and was oblivious to the fact that he had come to mill at all, or that corn had any use save to be liquified by a certain process, and made to possess certain properties. The miller's wife persuaded her husband to give Ish the " turn" of the boozy settler, and the next morning by nine o'clock he was on his way to the Big bottom in triumph, with forty bushels of unbolted meal in his wagon for himself and neighbors.

The pioneers of the Big bottom, and of Saline county generally, were people mostly from the states of Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana, and Virginia, and accustomed to frontier life from youth. For the most part they were hunting people, and did not care much about acquiring extensive tracts of land, or raising large crops, or becoming farmers with no other avocation. They raised just as much corn as they thought would serve for the use of their families in furnishing bread and mush, and enough vegetables to give variety to their dinners of game. They raised almost - everything they ate; they manufactured almost everything they wore. Their smoke-houses were always well supplied with meats of various kinds, and honey of the finest flavor, and after the first year or two there was always plenty of meal in the chest, and butter and milk in the cellar. Very little coffee and sugar were used, and tea was almost unknown. The family that had coffee once a week - Sunday morning for breakfast - were considered " high livers."

selves, and cutlery, scissors, needles, thread, and a few simple articles for the use of the women. These latter articles were very rare. At this day the widow of Gov. M. M. Marmaduke, now residing in Saline county, retains a vivid recollection of searching for two or three days for a brass thimble she lost when she was a young miss in this country. The intrinsic value of such an article now-a-days would be about two cents, yet then it represented goodness only knows how many muskrat skins.

Their dress comported well with their style of living and their circumstances. The male portion were clad chieflj'^ in buckskin. A huntingshirt was generally worn, made of this material, as were the pantaloons or "leggings." An inner shirt was worn, sometimes of linsey, or flannel, or even cotton, but more commonly of nettle linen. A 'coonskin cap, with the tail hanging down the back, and a pair of moccasins, completed the apparel. Sometimes a dandy of the settlement made his appearance, arraj-ed in a suit of Kentucky jeans with a woolen hat, leather shoes, and prouder than Solomon in all his glory. As the settlement grew older, shoes, made by themselves, of home-tanned leather, were substituted for moccasins. The tanning was done in a trough dug from the trunk of a tree, and by a decoction or preparation of oak bark.

The women at first prepared a linen from the bark of nettles, which grew abundantly in the bottoms and on the islands in early days. The fibers were prepared similarly to the way in which flax is treated. The nettles were cut, spread out upon the ground, rotted by the fall and winter rains, and the next spring "broken," "scutched," hateheled, spun and woven. It answered very well in the place of flax. This, mixed with cotton, furnished the material out of which their wearing apparel was ^ chiefly made. After a time every family raised a small patch of cotton, which the women picked,- ginned by hand, carded, and spun . They went barefoot in the summer, and in the fall and winter wore on their feet either moccasins or shoes made of home-tanned leather. When they could procure enough calico to make, for themselves, caps to wear upon their heads they were happy, and the woman who could wear a dress made entirely of " store-goods " was the envy of dozens of her sisters.

Old. pioneers say that buckskin makes a very fair article of clothing, but it has its drawbacks, or rather, its draw-w^s, for when buckskin gets wet it shrinks or contracts. Oftimes a pioneer went out to hunt with his pantaloons of proper length, and having to wade through streams or wet grass, came home with the bottoms of his nether garments nearly up to his knees. In such a case, the next morning, before the rest of the family arose, he would take them out of doors, and, fastening one end oi them to the logs of the cabin or to a sapling, would take hold of the other end and stretch them back again to their proper length.

ambition" trouble them, or breed any discomfort or dissensions. The planting and hoeing of the corn-field, the chase, the hunt, bee-hunting, the shooting match - matters of this sort engrossed their time and their thoughts. They concerned themselves but little with either politics or religion. They were not irreligious to any distressing extent, but churches did not exist then, and preachers were few and scattering. Whenever religious services were held anywhere in the country within a reasonable distance they attended, taking their guns with them, and paid dose attention to what the preacher said. But occasions of this kind were rare.

About the middle or latter part of September the men would go down to Old Franklin, St. Charles, Booneville or St. Louis, trade for ammunition, etc., get their gups put in order, and upon returning home prepare for the annual fall hunt. By the fall of the first white frost they were ready to set out. On these occasions they would be absent some weeks, and always returned with their canoes and pack ponies laden with the finest and choicest trophies of the chase to be obtained. Buffalo, elk, bear, and deer meat were brought back in great abundance, and there was always honey enough to fill all the gums and spare household vessels in the settlements. The smoke-house was uniformly well filled with venison and other choice wild meats, and though he might suffer other ills, the settler was able, after the first year or two, to snap his fingers at want and bid defiance to famine.

In 1819 there was a great deal of sickness in the settlement. Nearly every one was prostrated by some kind of ailment. The prevailing diseases were occasioned by the malaria of the bottoms. There was great distress, and the settlers long remembered that season. All left the settlement that could, and went to Howard county and elsewhere, and some never returned. Many sold 80 acres of partially improved land for an apology for a wagon and an insignificant pony or two in order to be able to cart away tlie wife and wee-weans to a place of safety. Many more would have gone, if they could have disposed of their little property, but they could find no one to purchase it, for in those days markets were not to be found for such things as the settlers had. Emigrants had previously bought something from them as they passed through on their way farther west, but now emigration had ceased. Corn rotted in the fields and pens, bacon spoiled in the smoke houses, cattle and hogs strayed away into the woods and became wild - what the bears, wolves, and panthers left of them. In portions of the bottoms the rushes grew so rank and luxuriantly that near the ground they could be found green, tender, and nourishing even in midwinter, and cattle could live from fall till spring without much feed from the hands of their owners. One spring a settler slaughtered a bullock, which had run wild the preceding winter, and lived on rushes and wild-pea vines, that weighed over 1,100 pounds net. Had it

There was no crime in the Big bottom until the year 1819. One of the settlers was regarded by his neighbors as no better than he should be, but nothing criminal was ever alleged against him until the year mentioned. Two young fellows, claiming to be from Arkansas, came into the settlement " hunting work." The settlers could afford to hire but little labor, and they were not given employment at once - although it is doubtful if they really desired it. They resorted to the house of the settler under suspicion and made it their abiding place during their stay in the bottom. One of the settlers had five fine horses. The suspicious character and the two "Arkansas travelers " were , missing for a day or two - and so were three of the horses. The citizens were loth to believe that the animals had been stolen, and that the three men referred to were the thieves, until the conviction forced itself upon their minds. It was ascertained that the rascals had departed with their plunder for Arkansas. Some of the best patroUers of the settlement were sent in pursuit, and followed the thieves for some days, but the track, in hunters' parlance, was very "cold," and the most of them sodn returned. Three or four of the patroUers, however, went on to the White river, in Arkansas, where they captured two of the thieves and horses, and brought them back to the bottom. The thieves were tried by an improvised court, convicted and sentenced - not to the penitentiary, but to be soundly whiffed. The sentence was thoroughly executed, and the rascals left the country.

The Settlement Of Bdmondson'S Bottom

THE SETTLEMENT OF BDMONDSON'S BOTTOM. The first settler in this locality was he for whom it was afterward named - Richard Edmondson, a native of Madison county, Kentucky, who settled and built a cabin, and made a clearing on a New Madrid claim, located by General Thomas A. Smith, being section 34, township 53, range 20 - Jefferson township. Just at what time Mr. Edmondson came to this bottom is not certainly known, but it must have been prior to November, 1816, for at that time he sold his cabin and " truck patch " to Abel Garrett and then removed farther west. Garrett was originally from Loudon county, Virginia. In 1817 Garrett was joined by Adam and William Hopper, Daniel Stout, John Young, George Yount, Thomas and Daniel Tillman, Richard Cummings, Mr. Rucker, Thomas Rogers and others, who improved and cultivated the " big field," an enclosure of one hundred acres, and cultivated as was the one of the same name in Big bottom - that is to say, in common by the settlers.

In the spring of 1818, Wm. J. Wolfskill left Howard count}' and came into this settlement. At first he joined in tilling the " big field," but after one crop he opened and settled on a farm out on the prairie, where he lived for the next fifty years. Mr. Wolfskill was originally from Madison county, Kentucky. He was a soldier in the war of 1812, being a member of Colonel - afterward Vice-President - R. M. Johnson's regiment of Kentuckians, and fighting, among other occasions, at the battle of the Thames, in Canada, where Tecumseh was killed, and where Gen. Harrison gained such a decisive victory over the British and Indians. He was a thorough pioneer, and well conversant with all the details of frontier life.

About this time, that is to say, shortly after the settling of Wolfskill, - there joined him James Burlison, Wm. McDaniel, Rice Downey, the Browns - James, Henry and Coger - Jas. Wells, Uriah Davies, Jas. Wilkinson, and Isaiah Huff. In 1819, came Jonathan Harris, with his sons, Timothy and William, and Mrs. Wheeler, with her sons, Samuel, William, and Alfred. Mrs. Wheeler was the widow of Thomas Wheeler, a gallant Kentuckian, who had fallen under the cruel knife of the cruder savage, in " Dudley's defeat," on the river Raisin, in southeastern Michigan, during the war of 1812. Wm. Ish, Jas. Kuykendall, and Samuel Duckworth came about the year 1820. Of these settlers, Cummings, Rogers, and McDaniel were Tennesseeans; Davis, the Harrises, and Wheelers were from Kentucky; the Tillmans, the Hoppers, and Young were Virginians.

All of the settlers were hunters of greater or less degree ; but William Hopper, Cummings, and Rogers were proficients. The accuracy of their shots was as remarkable as their frequency. It is said that Hopper seldom killed fewer than three deer a day, even when these animals had become scarce. Cummings and Rogers hunted bear together, but on one occasion Cummings' gun was accidentally discharged, the ball striking Rogers in the knee, inflicting a painful wound. "After this," said Rogers to his companion, " when tue hunt 'bar,' by golly, Pll go it alone!"

Like the other bottoms, Edmondson's contained plenty of rush and peavine pasturage, and afforded fine range for stock, both summer and winter. Cattle and hogs " boarded themselves " during the winter, and came out looking fat and thrifty in the spring. The soil was exceptionally productive, and furnished corn, beans, potatoes, etc., in abundance, and of good quality. At quite an early day, fiat-boats and keel-boats took cargoes of produce, as well as other commodities, from the settlement - bacon, corn, potatoes, furs, peltries, etc., - down the river to St. Charles, St. Louis, Herculaneum, and other points on the Mississippi below.

In this settlement Lab&n Garret claims he taught the first school ever taught in Saline county. In 1876, Mr. Garrett stated to Mr. Jerrold Letcher that this school was taught in the year 1817, in the cabin built by Edmondson, and previously described. There were many children in the settlemeqif and Mr. Garrett had a flourishing school, which lasted more than four months. The terms of tuition were $1 per scholar per month, payable in any sort of currency or commodity recognized by the com- munity as " legal tender." This included gold, silver, corn, potatoes, beaver, 'coon, and other skins, days' labor, and, it may be, something else. At the close of Garrett's school the settlers gathered in, and there was a barbecue and a grand good time generally. The school closed in the latter part of the summer of 1817. Garrett at that time vsras a spry and spruce young man of 20 years, and regarded as a personage of some distinction and consequence, because he could teach school. According to Mr. Garrett, the second school taught in the county was by Mr. Rogers, in the Big bottom.

Edmondson's bottom was not without ministers and religious services either. Revs. Smith and Hancock, Presbyterians, expounded Calvinism and predestination ; Rev. Harris, Methodist, proclaimed free grace ; Longdon, Chism, Scott, and Rogers, Baptists, lifted up their voices in the wilderness, cried aloud, and made straight the paths of those who were to come after them. Subsequent!}' came Trap and Day, "Schismatics," who created quite an interest, not to say excitement, in the vicinity of

Settlement Of The Miami Bottom

In 1'815 the Miami bottom was occupied by a band of Indians of the Miami tribe, some of whom, after their overwhelming defeat by "Mad" Anthony Wayne, in Ohio, in 1791, had come west to grow up with the country. Their fort and village stood immediately on the bank of the river at the foot of the bluffs, near where the Marshall and Brunswick road crosses the discharge. From this tribe of Indians the rich bottom on the Missouri in the northern part of the county and the thriving town of Miami take their names. The bottom is fully the equal in fertility and general excellence, except in extent, to that of the same name in the state of Ohio.

In the year 1815 the Miamis had left their fort and village and gone into camp for the summer in a grove about one mile and a half east of the present town site of Miami. At this time a band of Sacs and Foxes came down from the north and attacked the white settlements in Howard county. They succeeded in shutting up the settlers in the forts and carrying off considerable plunder left outside. The Sacs and Foxes retreated through the camp of the Miamis, and stopped and sold to them much of the property they had captured and stolen. The settlers found this out, and many of them believed the Miami's had a hand in the attack on the settlements, and that, notwithstanding their professed friendship for the whites, they were really in league with the Sacs, Foxes and lowas, and had done even more than to " give aid and comfort to the enemy." Their property was in the hands of the Indians, that was certain,4 and they believed that there was but one way in which it could get there. / The Miamis had about three or four hundred warriors in good fighting condition, and there were only about two hundred and fift}' " men of valor" in the settlements. It was a hazardous experii^ent, therefore, to undertake a forcible recovery of their property, and so Uncle Sam was called upon for assistance. Major, afterward General, Henry Dodge was sent up to Boone's Lick with a battalion of regulars to make an attack on the fort and village of the Miamis, and not only recover the property taken from the settlers, but punish the savages for their rascality as well.

Dodge was joined at Boone's Lick by two hundred and fifty mounted riflemen under Col. Benjamin Cooper. Dodge assumed command of the expedition by virtue of his rank ana position. The command crossed the Missouri at the Arrow Rock, swimming their horses, and followed the old Indian trail up to within the vicinity of the Miami fort, when it halted, and began to arrange for an attack upon the tortification with all the "pomp and circumstance of glorious war." An assault was made, the works scaled, and the fort captured in gallant style - but not an Indian could be found! Every Miami was down in the grove, serene and happy and wholly unconscious of what was taking place at the fort.*

The whereabouts of the Miamis was soon discovered by some friendly Shawnees, who had accompanied the whites, and they at once surrendered. They said they had purchased the property claimed by the whites from the other Indians, that they were "innocent purchasers for value," and denied that they had joined in or aided and abetted the attack on the white settlements. The men from Boone's Lick immediately recognized several articles in the Miami camp as belonging to them, and began to take possession of them. Major Dodge commanded that this sort of proceeding cease, and that the articles must be restored in quite a different manner - by an investigation, etc. The pioneers despised any sort of red-tape proceeding, and refused to obey. Dodge called out his regulars to reforce his authority. Whereupon Colonel Ben Cooper drew his swor d, and taking Dodge by the collar with one hand, with the other lifted his weapon

Other officers interfered, and the affair was quieted and arranged to the satisfaction of all concerned. But the men from Boone\ Lick got the The Indians protested that they were guilty of no intentional wrong, but very many disbelieved them, and this was one reason that led to their removal not long afterward. Subsequent developments showed, however, that they were as innocent as they claimed to be. The Sacs and Foxes had visited and attacked the settlements, secured what property they could and returned through the camp of the Miamis and traded it to them on terms very advantageous to the latter.

*Some accounts are to the eifect that the Miamis had been apprised of the approach of the whites-, and had abandoned the fort to avoid a conflict with them.

It is not certain where the Miamis were removed to. The "Annals of the West " (1840), says they were " taken back to the rest of the tribe, in the Wabash country." Many old settlers declare that they went west, reserving the right to return and hunt in Saline county, from time to time, which they often did.

Gen. Henry Dodge was afterward United States marshal for Missouri. In the Black Hawk war he was the principal commander of the Americans, and it was he who fought the most of the battles of that war. He was an old resident of Missouri, but settled in Wisconsin, and shortly after the admission of that state into the Union he was elected United States senator. He served in the senate with his son, Gen. A. C. Dodge, then senator from Iowa, the only instance on record where father and son were at the same time members of that body.