Tales of Kankakee land

Contents

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I. Kankakee Land = . i

II. Hickory-Nuts and Potash 14

II Hickory-nuts And Potash

My father was one of the earliest of those Anglo- Saxons who came into this region with the purpose of living the white man's life. He conducted a general store in the village at the head of the east fork of the Kankakee. A general store in those days carried in stock merchandise of a nature so varied as to meet nearly every personal want of any and every possible customer. Therefore, it would have been difficult to find an adult individual in all the country for miles around whose face was not more or less familiar at his counters. But of all the motley throng that entered there, none were more characteristic of the region, and perhaps none more interesting, than those that came up the Pottowattomie trail — an ancient path skirting the north shore line of the Kankakee marshes throughout the entire length of the river.

Very many of them were Indians, and not a few were half-breeds. The others were French, Scotch,

Hichorij-Nuts and Potash 15

English, and Irish, in large degree the lineal descendants of trappers and fur-traders, who for more than a hundred years had represented the white man in this paradise of the hunter. Among them was one, Doctor Sandy Illicott, of Scotch descent, though it was hinted that he had more than a little touch of Indian blood in his veins. Our family and the people of the region knew him as Doctor Sandy. His father, like the grandfather before him, had been a trader among the Indians and was sufficiently prosperous to educate his children, a numerous brood. All of them, enamored of civilized life — all, excepting Doctor Sandy — had renounced the wilderness forever. The latter, finding that the volume of his father's business was rapidly declining, had embarked in a more congenial and more profitable line of labor. He had come out of the schools an expert botanist and well versed in medicine. To these acquirements he subsequently added an extensive knowledge of the medicinal properties of native plants — a store of wisdom which he had derived wholly, or in part, from his Pottowattomie neighbors. He was thus well equipped for searching out and preparing for market numerous roots and barks and leaves and berries abounding in the marshes, and on the neighboring uplands, and at that time much sought after by the drug trade of our land and others. In fact, it was the matter of these medicinal plants that brought Doctor Sandy so often to my father's place of business.

It came about in this way. The travelling salesman of our time had not then been heard of, and so, the merchant annually found it necessary to make the long journey to some of the centres of trade in the East to select and purchase those wares essential to his wilderness traffic. During the fall, therefore, and sometimes in the spring, my father was accustomed to set out for New York and Boston. The route by which he travelled was the Great Lakes and the Erie Canal. The goods purchased in the East, following the same line of water communication, found a comparatively safe, though very tedious, transit to the southern extremity of Lake Michigan and the mouth of the St. Joseph River. If their arrival was delayed — as sometimes happened — until rivernavigation was closed for the winter, there was no alternative except to carry the goods by wagon fifty miles or more through the woods and across a series of little prairies, and so, finally, to our village.

But this seldom occurred, for the ice was not

Hickory-Nuts and Potash 17

often a hindrance on the St. Joseph in early winter, and there were numerous lines of barges and spacious canoes by which merchandise was poled up the river. There were also many miniature sloops, and later small steam-boats plied regularly, touching at piers that were strung along the current's course for three hundred miles or more. The incoming of any of these vessels with a stock of goods for a local merchant was an event in the village, and was duly celebrated at the landing by an unusual bustle and excitement, in which wellnigh every inhabitant participated.

But this bringing in of the annual supplies for trade and traffic was, in truth, less interesting than those affairs that invested the merchant's setting forth for his eastward journey; nor was it so significant of the peculiar conditions of the place and time. Although the days and weeks consumed in such a journey were an important matter, yet the item of cash expense, during this period when trade was mainly by barter and only a little money came into one's hand, long remained a factor for very grave consideration. How to twist and turn things so that the immediate profits of the trip might pay for his passage, was the first and the last thought of the thrifty tradesman who would sojourn for a brief season in those distant marts of Mammon. Consequently, he was on the lookout for weeks and months beforehand, collecting and stowing away for the eastern market any choice commodities which the environment of a wilderness village might supply cheaply and abundantly, always discriminating in favor of such articles as might find ready sale, and were not shut out by the limited facilities of transportation on our river. Thus, if nothing else offered, the cargo which my father took with him would consist of maple-sugar, cranberries, and dried huckleberries — such goods being derived chiefly from the Indian trade that came up from the Kankakee. The sugar was packed in pococks, a peculiar cylindrical vessel made of elm-bark. Great quantities of wild honey were quite generally a conspicuous part of these treasures gathered for the eastern market. One year, being unable to collect any adequate quantity of salable supplies, he employed the Indians to gather a barge-load of hickory-nuts. The latter seemed of superior quality that season and were very abundant. The venture proved a success, the nuts finding an easy market in New York. Often there was a large shipment of potash, which the soap-makers of New York were

Hickory-Nuts and Potash 19

at all times glad to secure. A little colony of industrious Germans had settled in the village, and finding nothing else to do, began to make potash under my father's direction, the abundant hardwood of the region supplying ashes that tempted this peculiar line of manufacture. Furs and hides were but a small part of these goods, although considerable consignments of such peltries as the trappers were still bringing in, were often accepted; and when disposed of at good prices, liberal commissions were to be derived therefrom.

The day having finally arrived for embarking on this important journey, the goods were conveyed to the landing and stowed away in the big barges belonging to what was then known as the Red Dog Line of Keelboats. Our entire household and all the family's intimate friends were at hand on such an occasion; and, in fact, few in the village would miss the sight of these barges pushing out from the pier, swinging into the current, and gliding swiftly around the bend and away. In the harbor at the mouth of the river the goods were lifted into a sloop, whose plan it would be to work out into the lake well beyond the fishingbanks and then, if a good breeze was blowing, scud before it or tack from side to side. Touching at this harbor and that in the ship's course, there were prolonged delays before the maple-sugar, the hickory-nuts, the potash, and what not were all laid down safely on the docks of Niagara River and the Erie Canal.

It will be remembered that some of the goods were such as others had consigned to my father's care and keeping, with instructions concerning their sale or disposition. And it is this particular fact that explains the intimate and lifelong friendship between him and Doctor Sandy Illicott. My father marketed the entire product of Doctor Sandy's toil — the medicinal plants which had been gathered through the forests and on the hillsides and around the pools of the Kankakee. These transactions were important items in our business when I arrived at such an age as to be of some service at the store. Shortly before the time set for my father's journey, it was my duty and delight to spend a few days at Doctor Sandy's house, helping him in the assortment and packing of the roots and herbs, and seeing that each bale and box was in fit condition for safe shipment. I remember that there were many bales of snakeroot, and that we weighed it very carefully, knowing that it would bring at least a dollar per pound,

Hickory 'Nuts and Potash 21

and perhaps much more. There were great quantities, too, of ginseng, whose value, however, it was not so easy to estimate. The size of the larger roots would determine their selling price. I do not recall the names of many other plants which had their places in these garnered treasures. Most of them were designated by botanical terms or Indian words, both of which were then Greek to me. My reward for these labors, which were severe enough for some very real compensation, was a day's hunt on the Kankakee with Doctor Sandy.

Ill

In our hunting expeditions, we repaired always to the same place, reaching it invariably by the same route. The plan was to saddle our horses before daybreak and ride straight for the Pottowattomie trail, and then follow that path many miles down the river to an Indian village, where we could leave the horses and pursue our journey farther by canoe. The objective point was one of the delightful islands, or groves, peculiar to the strange sodden plains of Kankakee Land. Strictly speaking, they are not islands, but only great sand masses elevated some fifteen or twenty feet above the surrounding bogs. The one which was the favorite resort with us at that time, any person might easily distinguish from the rest, even now. It is three or four acres in extent, and unlike many of the islands, stands near the present bank of the river; that is to say, the stream touches the point of the island. This fact should help one to find it;

for at the very point is a huge bowlder, and the latter is also on the river-bank, where the current makes a sharp turn to the right. The great mass of rock is worthy of more than a moment's thought.

In its presence one comes face to face with fifty thousand years; for such a period of time has elapsed, we are told, since the rock broke away from the clutch of some mountainous iceberg that scoured the valley during the glacial epoch. Once established here, neither the power of the mighty floods that in the ancient days swirled through all this plain, nor the raging elements of innumerable storms; neither heat nor cold, nor any other agencies, though oft invoked, have availed to urge from its firm base this enduring monument, which still proclaims that these lands were once the Frost King's realm. The rock's position in the ancient glacial river doubtless determined the island's location and its heart-shaped outline.

The Kankakee of that remote age was like the Yukon not only in the volume of its cold and raging floods but also in its tendency to create these '^ heart" islands. Where the seething currents were parted by an immovable obstacle, they whirled into the quieter waters behind it and dropped their heavier burdens. And thus the mass grew behind the obstructing object and along Hnes radiating from it, assuming from the first a three-sided contour. The longer it grew, fewer and fewer were the contributions received by those parts near the centre of the triangle's base, so that the finished work was heart-shaped. Many of the islands of the Kankakee that were originally heart-shaped have received a tapering touch at the hands of gentler currents in later times, as may be seen from the low-lying points in which they terminate. And all of them are fringed with bushcovered flats cast up from the lake that inherited the ancient river's bed, when the foaming currents had utterly died away.

This island, whose quiet haunts we loved to invade, was covered in most parts with an oak-grove, with here and there a giant shell-bark hickory. The soft turf spread beneath this grove was screened from view on all sides by the tops of dense thickets of dogwood, and marsh maples and soft willows that rose from the low ground surrounding the island, their upper branches glancing over into the higher plain which they could not invade. Here and there, over the interior, was a clump of sassafras or a billowy area of wild roses.

There was a place where a few white birches lifted their graceful, though ghostly, forms — a rear-guard of the forest flora that flourished here at the close of the ice age, but long since retreated to the far north, seeking the congenial conditions of colder soil and keener winds. Where a boggy indentation at the base of the island completed the latter's heart-shaped outline, there stood a dark, compact mass of tamaracks. The delicate foliage of their tender green rose in exquisite contrast against the dull gray wall of massive oak-trunks that leaned from the top of the bank and far on high spread out their leafy branches, as if with solemn invocation of peace. The surface of the island was in general a smooth, level floor. The great trees stood far apart, lifting their lowermost boughs thirty and forty feet in the air, conditions that prevail only in those forest tracts through which annual fires find their way. For these reasons the place was everywhere full of light, and everywhere one could look under the foliage and across to the opposite side of the island and see through to the narrow strip of blue sky beyond. And how sweet were the soft, cool airs that drifted through these vistas that were never dim, these shades that knew no gloom!

Near the point, or upper part of this island, was a circular, or slightly oval, depression, the bottom of which could not have been much above the level of the marsh-land. A powerful spring at the centre fed a pool whose shallow margins, as they receded from the brink, shelved down to dark and unknown depths. The waters were discharged by a rill that gurgled through a cleft in the embankment and made its way swiftly to a patch of flags in the outlying marsh. Long ages ago, before the waters of the spring had found their way to the surface of the ground, some vigorous vine had laid claim to this spot, and had driven its great tap-root down deep through soil and sand and gravel, on down and down to the clay-beds that underlie the marshes, that so it might daily quench its thirst on the living waters that there abide. A century or more it drank its fill, then threw off its leaves, snapped its tendrils, fell prone on the earth and died.

The great root, yielding to sure, though slow, decay, shrivelled and shrank from its tapering mould in the earth, and through the tiny corridor left vacant by its natural tenant, the waters had stealthily crept and then burst forth with joy into the light of day. With such vigor the Ijttle tide came forth, and from day to day its pent-up energies waxed so great and strong, that it tore away the sand and soil and fashioned for itself in the forest there a great bowl ; and this, for an age, its sparkling flood filled to the beaded brim. But now, itself grown old and its life-currents running with a feebler pulse, the waters have fallen back to the narrow compass of a shimmering pool, girt about by rushes that lean from its circhng brink, but with its heart still glad in the smiles of the blue sky. Here bird and beast and man may refresh the spirit and linger for pleasant meditation.

And surely, none who stand here in a thoughtful mood could overlook the ancient grass-grown hearths of the red man that a few paces back from the water's edge are drawn in a rude circle about the pool, themselves bowl-shaped depressions a few inches in depth and three to six feet in diameter, and paved with stones the size of your two fists. You must dig for the pavement with your cane, for the stones are now deeply embedded in thick turf and leaf-mould. Each fireplace stood at the centre of a lodge. Doctor Sandy was wont to declare that these hearths had been in use before the arrival of the white man. When the Indian had come into the possession of flint and steel and a swinging kettle, the light of his fireside might be kindled in any convenient place. But in the old days '^the seed of fire" was a sacred thing and must be guarded with greatest care. Slumbering on the hot stones of the spacious fire-bowl, the carefully covered embers would hold fast through one moon, and more, the life of the smothered flame.

But, alas, no more may those dancing fires rise and fall on the ancient hearth to light up the dark features that once knew the joys of this place. No more may they show forth the sloping walls of deer- skin with the lodge poles and their swinging burdens of cradle and otter-bag, of quiver and bow and war- club. Never again may the soft and pleasant voices, now long since hushed and forever gone, rehearse for mortal ear the glory of the war-path or the tales of the chase or the traditions of their people and the legends of their gods. But the oak-leaf flutters down on the pool, as of yore; the snow-flake falls and melts away; the moon and the white stars, in turn, still keep their solemn vigils with the faithful fountain of the isle. And if the spirits of primitive men ever neglect the joys of the eternal shore to speed down to an earthly spot to fond memory dear, those who once knew the charms of this peaceful haunt must sometimes stand together here to softly chant a spirit's song, softly whisper a spirit's tale, or sweetly breathe a spirit's love.

The island was well known to many of us, nor were our experiences confined to any particular season of the year. During the school holidays of midwinter we sometimes skated down to the place, following all the windings of the river — unless during a time of exceptionally high water, when we preferred the ice on the open marsh. But it was a hard push and demanded an early morning start; for every skater must be back again and off the ice before night-fall. Both the river-ice and that on the marsh were peculiarly treacherous, since springs rise at frequent intervals in the river-bed and elsewhere, and where they are of sufficient volume the ice does not form, or quickly melts away. In other places, where some mere trifle of a bubbling current has kept steadily at work, the frozen surface is gradually thinned out from beneath, threatening a cold plunge, if not a terrible disaster, for the incautious footstep of man or beast venturing thereon. But the practised eye is able to detect a tell-tale change in the shading of the surface; and as an extra provision against danger, we were accustomed to carry a staff, or pole, strapped to one wrist. Therefore, in the winter time there were no moonHght expeditions on the Kankakee, and as soon as the dusk of evening had fallen, the skaters knew that to be safe one must be away.

Yet we felt that we were repaid for the severe labor, and for the danger which we had braved. Nowhere else could we find such flocks of cedarbirds, nowhere so many cross-bills; and here, if nowhere else, there were sometimes a few white buntings mingling with the linnets and chickadees that infested every tangled thicket of weeds and briars. Here in the marsh it was not unusual to find a snowy owl dropped down on some dead limb or on the first convenient stake he could find when overtaken by the daylight. It is not easy to distinguish him where the frost has powdered thick every bush and heaped a crystalline clump on every earth hummock. Nor would one be apt to dream of his presence, had not the sharp eyes of the bluejays caught a glimpse of the strange, animated snow-tuft. Blind and almost helpless, the startled and angry owl must submit to their jeers and taunts and even their buffets, in which they may almost throw him from his perch. They are the worst dare-devils of the marshes, as you may see; for they will not desist until the most reckless one among the flock has softly winged his way to a point in mid-air some distance above and a little behind the owl, and then dropped like a stone on the hot head of old Bubo, giving the latter's neck a very uncomfortable twist. The jays will then make off with a most outrageous clatter of selfsatisfaction that furnishes a very near approach to derisive laughter. There will be a fierce glaring of fiery, though sightless, eyeballs, much uneasy stepping about on the perch and a furious snapping of the hard, white mandibles — demonstrations that bode no good to the impudent jay that is caught on the perch when darkness has set in once more. The snowy owl is ravenously hungry now, for he has been frozen out of the far northland and has descended on the Kankakee to see what he can find. Ten to one he will wring the necks of more than one blue-jay before his ire is appeased and his appetite fully satisfied.

The winter birds on the marshes show many varieties. An occasional duck whistles by or drops into a pond which the springs have kept open. During the very dead of winter these open pools gather to themselves many strange migrants that are not to be found in the region during any other season of the year. The red duck of San Francisco Harbor and the canvas-backs of Chesapeake Bay are sometimes found huddled together in the same pool. The wonderful pinions that have swept the continent in search of hospitality, have settled at last among the unfailing comforts of Kankakee Land. Sometimes a bevy of plump bob-whites rises before you on whirring wings, sails off beyond the bushes, drops to the ground and runs away. At noon the ruffed grouse leaves his fallen tree in the woods and finds delicious pickings in the frozen huckleberry-patch. The crows are everywhere — in the distant tree-tops, on the wing far up against the sky, or pacing the icy floor with stately tread. On the big eagle- tree near the point of the island are the downy woodpeckers working industriously over a great spread of warm bark, which they must surrender in the spring to the red head and the golden wing.

Mention of the eagle-tree calls to mind that it is said to have been for a period of many years the nesting-place of a pair of bald eagles. The great bird which supplied us with the national emblem is still at home along the Kankakee, and was formerly a common feature in its life. We can believe that in the old days the young eaglets were indeed nestled in their traditional tree. The latter is a white oak of monstrous size, rising from a spot in plain view of the river, and the great naked arm which it still lifts high in air has always remained a favorite lookout for the birds of prey that scan these fields. The island as a whole seems never to have been distinguished by any name or title, but those who fared this way knew the spot from the circumstance of the tree, and called it Eagle Point.

There was still another tradition associated with this venerable oak, and, in fact, inscribed upon its massive shaft. Doctor Sandy would point to a broad scar on that side of the tree which was turned toward the river, a spot at one time plainly visible from that direction, though now obscured by intervening foliage of recent growth. The scar — so he maintained — was an Iroquois sign made by a war-party of the Five Nations during one of their memorable expeditions against the Illinois. The Iroquois had left a message to their friends coming after them, and its terms had been cut in the white wood and were doubtless sometimes renewed or changed in after years. The Kankakee was the favorite route by which, for a long period of years, that cruel and relentless foe made its disastrous incursions into the lands of the less warlike tribes of the West — the Miamis, the Illinois, and the Wisconsin Indians. It therefore seems not improbable that the old eagle- tree was also the "witnesstree" — as Doctor Sandy was wont to say.

What dreadful import may have lodged in the message inscribed and painted thereon, and how it froze the hearts and palsied the utterance of the captives brought back from the Illinois, or what new anguish it may have foretold for them, not any record may now reveal. But full well we know that the signs emblazoned here contained no honeyed phrase for the western tribes; for never did an eagle in all the life of this aged tree pitch from the heights above on its cowering victim in the grasses below with half the vengeful fury that impelled the murderous onslaught of the Iroquois. Long ago the rains from heaven washed out the colors in the fatal sign; long ago the life-currents of the tree drew the nice folds of the new growth over and across the hated mark; but the scar must ever abide, like the white man's memory of the Iroquois' cruel heart.

IV

By the side of an ancient path leading down to the big bowlder that formed the very point and beginning of the island, was a small plot of ground, a natural terrace, whose surface was covered by the plum-grove. Overtopping growths of the foxgrape made still denser the thick shades of the interwoven plum branches. The place afforded a fine covert for the hunter, who was screened by the ample canopy overhead and by the tops of the willows in front rising from the lower ground farther down the slope. He could sit back in the shade and, glancing over the willows, find it easy to watch the marsh on either side and all the plain through a wide sweep for miles and miles away down the stream. Stationed here when ducks and geese were on the wing, one could know long in advance what birds were coming, and could have his nerves all steadied down and be ready to step out on the grass in front of the plum-trees and draw a bead on the flock as it passed over or swung to either side. And the grove was also his camp, a single sheet of sloping canvas furnishing a water-shed. Along one edge the canvas was made fast to the boughs, while the opposite border was secured near the bottoms of several of the small tree-trunks. A few armfuls of dried reeds spread on the ground beneath this sloping roof were covered with blankets. These simple arrangements left little to be desired for the comfort and convenience of the hunter. Advantages like these were worth going a long way to find, and when found would be kept in mind and sought out again and again. It was the plum-grove with its fortunate location and natural convenience that more than anything else had made Eagle Point a favorite resort for Doctor Sandy and myself. The hunting — or rather the shooting— was left to me. The doctor was something of a hunter, too, but it was the remarkable floral wealth of the island that moved him most, rather than the bird-life or that of other denizens of the parts. While I was intent in watching the movements of the ducks, he was busily at work searching for some rare flower or gathering his store of roots or herbs. I recall that he found pipsissewa more abundant here than elsewhere. It is a small plant with evergreen leaves, and was formerly well known as an Indian remedy for rheumatism and kindred ills.

On the occasion of one of our visits to this spot, Doctor Sandy, having finished his labors early in the afternoon, returned to the inviting shades of our camp. It was a hot day and no ducks were on the wing. So we sat in our cool retreat beneath the plum-trees and the vine, watching three marsh harriers. Throughout the day hawks of this species are unremitting in their careful patrol of these regions, bog and pool and the rustling rice. The harriers were circling over one of those immense tracts of reeds that thrive so wonderfully in. this place, the stems standing very thick and attaining often a height of seventeen and eighteen feet. The heavy frosts had left every leaf-blade dead and sear. The remark that a firebrand dropped into this tinder-box of withered foliage would spread speedy havoc, was confirmed by Doctor Sandy with something more than his usual emphasis.

No other man understood more thoroughly how awful might be the fury of such a conflagration; for a lifetime he had studied the power of these flames and their effects on the fortunes of the Kankakee. He began to speak of these effects and to show that the rank vegetation would long since have filled up the entire valley and made it dry land, had it not been for the annual ravages of the flames burning great holes and veritable gulfs in the deep peat-beds during a dry season. Talking in such a strain as this, Doctor Sandy ran on, until his memory, jogged by the conversation, finally gave up a detailed account of one of those great marsh-fires such as from time to time have ravaged the wide, watery plains of Kankakee Land. Not the least of the charms in the tale's rehearsal was a certain simplicity of statement comporting well with personal experiences such as few have ever sustained or would wish to, and from whose shock a man might never entirely recover. Indeed, all the minor details, as well as the more startling facts, gave the account such an air of reality that no listener could fail to receive them as the calm, though very forcible, statement of one of the many real and fearful tragedies enacted in this wilderness through ages past.