Flagg's The Far West, 1836-1837, part 2; and De Smet's Letters and Sketches, 1841-1842

There is also a tradition yet extant of a stratagem of war by which Fort Chartres was once captured, worthy the genius of Fabius Maximus, and partaking, moreover, somewhat of history in character. The name of George Rogers Clarke is familiar to every one who can claim even indifferent acquaintance with the early border warfare of the West. This extraordinary man, having satisfied himself, like Hannibal of Carthage, that the only way decisively to conquer a crafty and powerful foe was by carrying the war to his own altars and hearths, placed himself at the head of a few hundred of the Virginia militia in 1778, and set forth upon one of the most daring enterprises ever chronicled on the page of military history – the celebrated expedition against the distant post of Fort Vincent, now Vincennes. Our country was then at war with Great Britain, and this fort, together with those upon the lakes and the Mississippi, were in possession of the enemy and their savage allies. Colonel Clarke crossed the mountains with his little band; descended the Monongahela and the Ohio to within sixty miles of the mouth of the latter, and there concealing his boats, he plunged with his followers through swamps, and creeks, and marshes almost impassable, a distance of one hundred and thirty miles, and in a space of time incredibly short, arrived at night opposite the village of Kaskaskia. So overwhelming was the surprise, that the town, though fortified, was taken without a blow. History goes on to tell us that a detachment of troops, mounted on the horses of the country, was immediately pushed forward to surprise the villages of Fort Chartres and Cahokia, higher up the Mississippi; and that they were all taken without resistance, and the British power in that quarter completely destroyed.58 So much for History, now for Tradition. When the little band arrived beneath the walls of Fort Chartres, the numbers of the garrison far exceeding those of the besiegers, the latter, as if in despair of success, shortly took up the line of march and disappeared behind the distant bluffs. Days passed on; diligent examination of the heights was kept up with glasses from the walls, but no enemy returned. At length, when apprehension had begun to die away, early one morning a troop of cavalry appeared winding over the bluffs, their arms glittering in the sunlight, and descended from view apparently into the plain beneath. Hour after hour the march continued; troop after troop, battalion upon battalion, regiment after regiment, with their various ensigns and habiliments of warfare, appeared in lengthened files, wound over the bluffs, and disappeared. Alarmed and astonished at the countless swarms of the invaders, the garrison hastily evacuated the fortress, and for dear life and liberty, soon placed the broad Mississippi between themselves and the cloud of locusts! Hardly was this precipitate manœuvre well accomplished, when the alarum of drum and fife was heard, and the identical force which but a few days before had raised the siege, and in despair had retreated from beneath the walls, now paraded through the open sally-ports, their rags and tatters fluttering by way of "pomp and circumstance" in the evening breeze. This fortunate ruse du guerre had been accomplished through the favourable nature of the ground, a few extra stand of colours manufactured for the occasion, and a variety of uniforms and arms of like character. After winding over the bluffs into the plain beneath, they again ascended through a defile unobserved by the garrison, and once more appeared in different guise and order in rear of their comrades. "Distance," too, cast doubtless not a little "enchantment" over "the view;" and then the fear and trepidation of the worthy garrison probably sharpened their optics to detect all the peril in store for them, and, perchance, somewhat more. Now, reader, you can do as you choose touching belief of all this. And while you are making up a decision on the point, permit me to furnish yet another scrap of History, which may, peradventure, assist.

For sixteen days was Col. Clarke employed in his march from Kaskaskia to Vincennes, after the capture of the military posts upon the Mississippi. At length, after toils incredible, he reached the Wabash. High upon the eastern bank, its base swept by the rolling flood, stood Fort Vincent, the British fortress, at that period garrisoned by a superior corps of soldiery, with an auxiliary force of six hundred Indian warriors, and under the command of a skilful officer, Gov. Hamilton. On the western bank was spread out a broad sheet of alluvion five miles in breadth, completely inundated by the swollen stream. After five days of toil this wilderness of waters was passed; the rolling current of the Wabash was crossed in the night, and the morning sun beheld these daring men before Vincennes. As they approached the town – history goes on to relate – over the broad and beautiful prairie upon which it stands, at the moment his troops were discovered by the enemy, Clarke found himself near a small ancient mound, which concealed part of his force from the foe. Under this covert he countermarched his men in so skilful a manner, that the leading files, which had been seen from the town, were transferred undiscovered to the rear, and made to pass again and again in sight of the enemy, until his whole force had several times been displayed, and his little detachment of jaded troops assumed the appearance of an extended column greatly superior to its actual strength. The garrison was promptly summoned to surrender, and, after a brief defence, Gov. Hamilton struck his flag to a body of men not half as powerful as his own.59

Next in importance to Fort Chartres, of that chain of military posts commenced by the French in the Valley of the Mississippi, was Fort du Quesne;60 and of this celebrated fortress, so notorious in the bloody annals of border warfare, it may not be irrelevant, in concluding the present subject, to add a few sentences. This post was erected on that low tongue of land, at the head of the Ohio and confluence of the Alleghany and Monongahela rivers, where Pittsburgh now stands, commanded on all sides by lofty bluffs. It was built by M. de la Jonquier, at command of the Marquis du Quesne, governor of Canada. In 1754 the bold Contrecœur came down the Alleghany, with a thousand Frenchmen in canoes, and eighteen pieces of artillery; and, dispersing the small colonial force, intrenched himself upon the spot. This was the prologue to that bloody drama, the catastrophe of which deprived France of all her possessions east of the Mississippi. In 1758 Fort du Quesne was taken by Gen. Forbes; a more scientific and extensive fortress was erected on the spot, at an expense of sixty thousand pounds sterling, and, in honour of William Pitt, then Premier of England, named Fort Pitt. It is difficult to conceive what could have been the design of these commanders in erecting such a massive fortress on such a spot, unless to impress the minds of their savage but simple neighbours; for resistance to artillery planted upon the neighbouring heights would have been quite as vain as any attack of the Indians upon its walls with their primitive weapons. The same may be said of nearly all the early fortifications in the West, and of some of more modern date upon our frontier. Subsequently Fort Pitt came into the possession of our government as part of the estate of the Penn family, and is now only a heap of rubbish. Thus much for early military posts in the Valley of the Mississippi.

So deeply interested was I in listening to the "legendary lore" associated with the spot upon which I was sitting, that hours glided unobserved away, and the full moon was culminating in cloudless splendour from the zenith when we retired.

Early the following morning I was in the saddle. The heavy night-mists lay wavering, like a silvery mantle, all over the surface of that broad plain; and the crimson clouds, rolling up the eastern sky, proclaimed the rising sun. After a short ride I reached the former site of St. Philippe, a settlement of the French, since called Little Village. Its "common field" is now comprised in the single plantation of Mr. M'David. It was at this point that Philippe Francis Renault – from whom the village received its name, as well as a large section of the neighbouring region, known to this day as "Renault's Tract" – established himself in 1719, with two hundred miners from France, in anticipation of discovering gold and silver.61 He was disappointed; but is said to have obtained large quantities of lead from the region along the opposite bank of the Mississippi, in the vicinity of Ste. Genevieve; and to have discovered, moreover, a copper mine near Peoria. St. Philippe was once a considerable village. Previous to 1765 – when possession of the country was claimed by the English government, and, like the other French settlements, it was abandoned by the villagers – it is said to have comprised twenty or thirty families, a Catholic church, and a water-mill; while the surrounding meadow afforded pasturage for extensive herds of cattle.

Leaving St. Philippe, the winding pathway in a few miles had conducted me into the depths of a forest of gigantic cotton-trees upon the left, encircled by enormous grape-vines, and the ground beneath entangled by a wilderness of underbrush and thickets of wild fruit. In a few moments the forest opened unexpectedly before me, and at my feet rolled on the turbid floods of the Mississippi, beyond which went up the towering cliffs of limestone, hoar and ragged, to the sheer height of some hundred feet from the water's edge. They were the cliffs of Herculaneum, with their shot-towers.62 For the first time I discovered that I had mistaken my way. Perceiving the low log-cabin of a woodcutter among the trees, I had soon obtained the requisite information, and was retracing my steps; but a weary plod through the deep black loam, and the tall grass weltering in the night-dews, and the thickets of the dripping meadows, was anything but agreeable. There were but few farms along my route, and the tenants of those with whom I chanced to meet betrayed too plainly, by their ghastly visages, and their withered, ague-racked limbs, the deadly influences of the atmosphere they inhaled. As I wandered through this region, where vegetation, towering in all its rank and monstrous forms, gave evidence of a soil too unnaturally fertile for culture by man, whose bread must be bought by "the sweat of his brow," I thought I could perceive a deadly nausea stealing over my frame, and that every respiration was a draught of the floating pestilence. I urged onward my horse, as if by flight to leave behind me the fatal contagion which seemed hovering on every side; as if to burst through the poisonous vapours which seemed distilling from every giant upas along my path. That this region should be subject to disease and death is a circumstance by no means singular. Indeed, it seems only unaccountable to the traveller that it may be inhabited at all. A soil of such astonishing depth and fertility, veiled from the purifying influences of the sun by the rank luxuriance of its vegetation, in the stifling sultriness of midsummer sends forth vast quantities of mephitic vapour fatal to life; while the decay of the enormous vegetables poisons the atmosphere with putrid exhalations. Cultivation and settlement will, of course, as in the older states, remedy this evil to some extent in time. It is said that the southern border of a lake in this region is less unhealthy than the northern, on account of the prevalence of winds from the former quarter during the summer months; and that the immediate margin of a river, though buried in vegetation, is less liable to disease than the neighbouring bluffs, upon which hang the night and morning vapours. A dry and somewhat elevated spot is preferable to either for a cabin; and it should be well ventilated, and never closely surrounded by cornfields. The rank and massive foliage shields the earth from the sunbeams, which exhale its poisonous damps; and in its rapid growth, the plant abstracts from the surrounding atmosphere one of its vital ingredients. Indeed, most of the diseases peculiar to the West are superinduced by imprudence, ignorance, or negligence in nursing. Let the recent emigrant avoid the chill, heavy night-dews and the sickening sultriness of the noontide sun; provide a close dwelling, well situated and ventilated, and invariably wear thicker clothing at night than in the day, and he may live on as long and as healthily in the West as in his native village. Bilious intermittents are the most prevalent and fatal diseases in the sickly months of August, September, and October; and in the winter and spring pleurisies are frequent. The genuine phthisic, or pulmonary consumption of New-England, is rarely met. A mysterious disease, called the "milk sickness" – because it was supposed to be communicated by that liquid – was once alarmingly prevalent in certain isolated districts of Illinois.63 Whole villages were depopulated; and though the mystery was often and thoroughly investigated, the cause of the disease was never discovered. By some it was ascribed to the milk or to the flesh of cows feeding upon a certain unknown poisonous plant, found only in certain districts; by others, to certain springs of water, or to the exhalations of certain marshes. The mystery attending its operations and its terrible fatality at one period created a perfect panic in the settlers; nor was this at all wonderful. The disease appears now to be vanishing. But, of all other epidemics, the "fever and ague" is the scourge of the West. Not that it often terminates fatally, except by superinducing a species of consumption; but, when severe and protracted, it completely shatters the constitution; and, like Mezentius, the victim ever after bears about him a living death. In its lighter form, most of the settlers at some time or other experience it, as it is brought on by exposure: and when I consider that, during my ramble in the West, I have subjected myself to every variety of climate and circumstance; have been drenched by night-dews and morning-dews; by the vapours of marshes and forests, and by the torrents of summer showers; have wandered day after day over the endless prairies beneath a scorching sun, and at its close have laid myself anywhere or nowhere to rest; when I consider this, I cannot but wonder at the escape of a constitution naturally feeble from complete prostration. Yet never was it more vigorous than during this tour on the prairies.

At length, after a ride which seemed interminable, I found myself at the foot of the bluffs; and, drawing up my horse, applied at a cabin attached to an extensive farm for refreshment. A farmer of respectable garb and mien came tottering towards the gateway; and, to my request, informed me that every individual of his family was ill of the "fever and ague." I inquired for the state of his own health, remarking his shattered appearance. "Yes, I am shattered," he replied, leaning heavily against the rails for support; "the agues and fevers have terribly racked me; but I am better, I am better now." Ah, thought I, as, returning his kind good-morning, I resumed my route, you think, poor man, that health will revisit your shattered frame; but that pallidness of brow, and those sunken temples, tell me that you must die. Consumption's funeral fires were already kindling up in the depths of his piercing eye. At the next cabin, where I was so fortunate as to succeed in obtaining refreshment, I was informed that the poor fellow was in the last stages of a decline brought on by undue exposure to the chill, poisonous night-dews of the bottom. The individual from whom this information was received was himself far from enjoying uninterrupted health, though thirty-five years had seen him a tenant of the spot upon which I met him.

Monroe County, Ill.

XL

"'Tis many moons ago – a long – long time."R. H. Wilde."Rich, silent, deep, they stand; for not a galeRolls its light billows o'er the bending plain:A calm of plenty! till the ruffled airFalls from its poise, and gives the breeze to blow."The Seasons.

In the course of my journeying in the regions of the "Far West," it has more than once chanced to me to encounter individuals of that singular class commonly termed "Squatters;" those sturdy pioneers who formed the earliest American settlements along our western frontier. And, in my casual intercourse with them, I have remarked, with not a little surprise, a decision of character, an acuteness of penetration, and a depth and originality of thought betrayed in their observations, strangely enough contrasting with the rude solitude of their life. For more than half a century, mayhap, Nature and whether, in the present exhibition of intellectual energy, we are to claim an argument for the influence of natural scenery upon character, or may find a corroboration of the theory of diversity of mental ability; or to whatever circumstance it may be attributed, very assuredly it owes not its origin to the improvements of education or the advantages of society. There is also remarked in these rude men a susceptibility and refinement of feeling, and a delicacy of sentiment, which one would suppose hardly compatible with a protracted continuance of their semi-savage life.

"Had been to them a more familiar face

Than that of man;"

It was at the frugal, though well-spread board of an individual of this class that I was pleased to find myself seated, after my tedious morning ramble of several hours through the weltering vegetation of the prairie. Mine host was a man of apparently forty, though in reality some eight or ten years in advance of that age: his form, of medium stature, was symmetrical, erect, and closely knit, betraying considerable capability of endurance, though but little of muscular strength: his countenance, at first sight, was by no means prepossessing; indeed, the features, while in repose, presented an aspect harsh – almost forbidding; but, when lighted up by animation, there was discoverable in their rapid play a mildness which well compared with the benevolent expression of a soft blue eye. Such was the physique of my backwoods pioneer, who for forty years had been a wanderer on the outskirts of civilization, and had at length been overtaken by its rapid march.

As I had before me but an easy ride for the day, I proposed to mine host, when our repast was over, that he should accompany me to the summit of the range of bluffs which rose behind his cabin, towering to the height of several hundred feet above the roof. To this he readily assented, and well did the magnificent view commanded from the top compensate for the toil of the ascent. The scene was grand. "Yonder," said my companion, seating himself on the earth at my side, and stretching out his arm to the southeast, "yonder lies the village of old Kaskaskia, with the bluffs of the river beyond, rising against the sky; while a little to the left you catch the white cliffs of Prairie du Rocher. In that heavy timber to the south are the ruins of Fort Chartres, and to the right, across the lake, fifty years ago stood St. Philippe. The Mississippi is concealed from us, but its windings can be traced by the irregular strip of forest which skirts its margin. Beyond the stream, stretching away to the northwest, the range of heights you view are the celebrated cornice-cliffs64 above Herculaneum; and at intervals you catch a glimpse of a shot-tower, resting like a cloud against the sky, upon the tallest pinnacles. The plain at our feet, which is now sprinkled with cornfields, was once the site of an Indian village. Forty years ago, the ruins of the wigwams and the dancing circle surrounding the war-post could be distinctly traced out: and even now my ploughshare every spring turns up articles of pottery which constituted their domestic utensils, together with axes and mallets of stone, spear and arrow heads and knives of flint, and all their rude instruments of war. Often of a fine evening," continued my companion, after a pause, "when my work for the day is over, and the sun is going down in the west, I climb up to this spot and look out over this grand prospect; and it almost makes me sad to think how the tribes that once possessed this beautiful region have faded away. Nearly forty years ago, when I came with my father from old Virginia, this whole state, with its prairies, and forests, and rich bottoms, was the hunting-ground of the Indians. On this spot we built our cabin; and though I have since lived far off on the outskirts of the Missouri frontier, I always had an affection for this old bottom and these bluffs, and have come back to spend here the rest of my days. But the Indians are gone. The round top of every bluff in yonder range is the grave of an Indian chief."

While my singular companion was making these observations, somewhat in the language I have attempted to give, interrupted from time to time by my inquiries, I had myself been abstractedly employed in thrusting a knife which was in my hand into the yielding mould of the mound upon which we sat, when, suddenly, the blade, striking upon a substance somewhat harder than the soil, snapped into fragments. Hastily scraping away the loose mould to the depth of some inches, the femur of a human skeleton protruding from the soil was disinterred, and, in a few minutes, with the aid of my companion, the remnants of an entire skeleton were laid bare. Compared with our own limbs, the bones seemed of a size almost gigantic; and from this circumstance, if from no other, it was evident that our melancholy moralizing upon the destinies of the Indians had been indulged upon a very fitting spot – the grave of one of its chieftains. Originally, the body had no doubt been covered to the depth of many feet, and the shallowness of soil at the present time indicates a lapse of centuries. Still these graves of the bluffs, which doubtless belonged to the ancestors of the present aborigines, will neither be confounded nor compared with the gigantic earth-heaps of the prairies. Strangely enough, this has been the case, though a moment's reflection must convince one that they are the monuments of a far later race.

Descending the bluffs by an ancient path in a ravine, said to have been made in conveying oak timber to Fort Chartres at the period of its erection, my host conducted me into one of the enclosures of his farm, a spot which had evidently once been the ordinary burial-place of the ancient Indian village. Graves, sufficient, apparently, for hundreds of individuals, were yet to be seen upon every side. They were arranged parallel to each other in uniform ranges, and were each formed by a rough slab of limestone upon either side, and two at the extremities, terminating in an obtuse angle. From several of these old sepulchres we threw out the sand, and, at the depth of about four feet, exhumed fragments of human remains in various stages of preservation, deposited upon a broad slab of limestone at the bottom. When taken together, these slabs form a complete coffin of stone, in which the body originally reposed; and this arrangement, with the silicious nature of the soil, has probably preserved the remains a longer period than would otherwise have been the case. But the circumstance respecting these ancient graves which chiefly excited my astonishment was their marvellous littleness, none of them exceeding a length of four feet; and the wondrous tales of a "pigmy race of aborigines" once inhabiting the West, which I had often listened to, recurred with considerable force to my memory. Resolved to decide this long-mooted question to my own satisfaction, if possible, the earth from one of the graves, the most perfect to be found, was excavated with care, and upon the bottom were discovered the femur and tibia of a skeleton in a state of tolerable preservation, being parallel to each other and in immediate proximity. Proof incontestible, this, that the remains were those of no Lilliputian race four feet in stature, and affording a fair presumption that the limbs were forcibly bent in this position at the time of burial, occupying their stone coffin much as the subject for scientific dissection occupies a beef-barrel. In this manner may we satisfactorily account for the ancient "pigmy cemetery" near the town of Fenton, on the Merrimack in Missouri, as well as that on the Rivière des Pères, in the same vicinity, already referred to, and those reported to exist in various other sections of the West, in which, owing to the dampness of the soil, the remains have been long resolved to dust, and only the dimensions of the grave have remained.65