found along several of the wooded streams. The Kickapoo and the Pottowatomie Indians remained in the county until the years 1836 and 1837 and while they were friendly undoubtedly their presence served to retard settlement, for the Indian scare of 1832 was still fresh in the minds of the frontiersmen.89

Several colonies of some note came during the years 1834 and 1835. First to come was a Pennsylvanian colony numbering thirty-two people, all of whom were owners of considerable property. They settled at Milford, and two years later were joined by a party of Virginians.90 In 1835 a colony of Norwegians came, but in selecting a spot for settlement this colony was unfortunate and hit upon a place which was unhealthful. Sickness broke out among them and, discouraged by the outlook, the entire colony, numbering thirty people, left Beaver Creek in 1837 and went to Wisconsin.91

One example of a "paper town," we find in Iroquois county in 1835 during the period of the craze for speculation which swept over the country during the thirties. A company, known as the Plato company, bought some land, laid out a town and advertised it in New York and Boston as "the head of navigation on the Iroquois" and "one of the handsomest locations for a city in the world." Some lots were sold for higher prices than Chicago lots commanded but the undertaking proved a failure.92

Various small settlements were made during the decade but the settlers clung closely to the timber and remained there until the Illinois Central Railroad crossed the county.93 The pioneers came chiefly from Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky but representatives from Pennsylvania, Virginia, Canada and Europe were also present. The population in 1850 had reached 4,100.94 In 1830 the population of the counties of eastern Illinois amounted to 14,000 souls; in 1850 it numbered over 87,500,

89 Historical Encyclopedia of Illinois, 299.

00 History of Iroquois County, 138.

91 Ibid., 339.

92 Ibid., 388.

93 Settlements were located at Onarga, Ash Grove, Belmont, Upper Spring Creek, Lower Spring Creek and in Middlefort, Del Rey, Concord, Iroquois and Stockland townships. Ibid., 209-480; pt. II, 7-12.

4Seventh Census (1850), 702.

which seems small when the immense tract of land over which it was scattered is thought of. Little of the population was urban for in all this region there were but four settlements claiming more than one thousand inhabitants, and but nine more having over seven hundred and fifty.95

The reason for the lack of towns seems a simple one; cities spring up either where natural resources are to be exploited or where business will naturally concentrate. Industry in eastern Illinois was wholly argicultural and the products were stock and grain. The great requirement was a market, and inland towns such as Bloomington could not furnish it, because there were no lines of transportation, whereby the accumulated produce could be transferred to another larger market for distribution. Consequently a city could not exist in this agricultural region save only with an outlet. When the railroads were built from Chicago south and southwest, tapping this agricultural region, prosperity was assured and a market placed close at hand for the farmer. The produce buyers of the inland. towns no longer feared an accumulation of goods either agricultural or mercantile. The farmer, able to dispose of his produce, was inclined to buy more merchandise and the dealer realized his profits. Business increased with the increase of markets for farm produce, which was the work of the railroads.

The influence of timber upon the location of settlement is noticeable in this part of the state. Even in 1850 the pioneer felt safest when reinforced by a friendly strip of timber, and at this date the process of taking up the woodlands was still under way. In the southern and central counties these timber tracts had been wholly taken up and around each patch of timber was a circle of cabins whose occupants cultivated that part of the prairie lying close by. Where the well-traveled roads, such as the Hubbard trace or the National Road, crossed the prairie, there were always found a string of settlers' cabins. The filling up process which was to go on in the spaces inter

95 Bloomington and Newton were the largest towns.

Note the location of the county towns of eastern Illinois. Effingham, Danville, Charleston, Shelbyville, Sullivan, Decatur, Monticello, Urbana, Clinton, Bloomington, Pontiac, Watseka and Kankakee, were situated in the timber along the streams.

vening between the timber settlements had thus begun but as yet could not be carried on with any rapidity since transportation was no easier than before. On the northern frontier the timber had not all been claimed and here the development of settlement was not so far advanced as farther south. Besides in the northeastern counties of eastern Illinois the swampy lands practically prohibited settlement and it was not until these swamps were drained that the counties were settled with any degree of density.

An examination of the nativities of the early pioneers discloses a different state of affairs than existed in southern Illinois or in northern Illinois. It differs from southern Illinois in the fact that a considerable number of settlers came from the states north of the Ohio, but west of the mountains. In comparing the population with that of the northern counties it is found that the percentage of settlers from New England or the Middle Atlantic states is much smaller in eastern Illinois than in the northern section of the state. Here there were no great trunk lines of transportation to influence settlement and since many of the pioneers came from the neighboring states, it seems reasonable to believe that the settlement of this part of Illinois was the result of a natural movement of the agricultural classes such as has taken place within recent decades from those states east of the Mississippi river to Kansas, Nebraska, Minnesota and the Dakotas. The impelling force was not one which caused whole communities to move, but a force which came from the belief that conditions for the accumulation of wealth were better "farther west.'

7797

97 The biographies of 1,138 early settlers in this part of the state have been examined with the following results; two hundred and eighty came from Ohio, two hundred and ten from Kentucky, one hundred and six from Tennessee, eighty from Indiana, eighty from other parts of Illinois, one hundred and sixty from the southern states, eighty from the Middle Atlantic states and but a few from New England. Six hundred and seventy-seven came from the four western states, Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee, and four hundred and sixty-one from other places.

CHAPTER IX

THE LEAD REGION

Long before the rest of northern Illinois received any settlers the lead district had been explored. Hennepin's map of 1687 locates a mine in the neighborhood of the present site of Galena and it is said that the French traders at Peoria purchased lead from the Indians as early as 1690.1 A map of Louisiana published in 1703 shows plainly the location of Dubuque's mines west of the Mississippi and also the Galena mines.2 Forty years later a score of miners eked a scanty existence here by means of surface mining. In 1769 Martin Duralde received a concession of land on Le Seuer's River of Mines for the purpose of mining and after a lapse of nearly twenty years Julien Dubuque appeared in the region and began mining on both sides of the Mississippi, working 'diggings' as far east as Apple River.5

It soon became known to the Americans that valuable lead mines existed in this region and accordingly negotiations were entered into with the Indians for the purchase of a tract of land fifteen miles square, to be located somewhere on the right bank of the Mississippi. In 1804 the treaty was signed and Congress passed a law providing for leasing the tract for terms not to exceed five years. No leases were made, however, until 1822. Now the miners began to come one by one, to share in

1 Thwaites, Notes on Early Leadmining, in Wis. Hist. Collections, 13, 272. 2 Ibid., 274.

* Ibid., 276.

* Ibid., 278.

5 Ibid., 280.

Davidson and Stuvé, Illinois, 346.

Washburne, Lead Region and Lead Trade of the Upper Mississippi in Hunt's Merchant's Magazine, 18, 288.

the industry which the Indians carried on to the best of their ability. In 1816 the first boat load of lead-seventy tons-was sent down the river. Col. Davenport, of Rock Island, an agent for the American Fur Company, established a trading post at Portage near the mouth of Fever river.10

Even now the United States government had not convinced itself of the exact location of the mines, for in the treaty concluded with the Indians, August 24, 1816 at St. Louis, when all lands lying north of a line drawn due west from the southern extremity of Lake Michigan to the Mississippi River were conceded to the Indians, a reservation of five leagues square on the same river was made by the treaty. This reservation was to be designated at some later time by the President and it seems evident that the sole object of this reservation was to obtain control of the lead mines whenever their location could be definitely determined.11

The exact date of the first permanent settlement by whites in this region is not known. Boutilier, 12 Shull and Muir were probably here before 1820 and tradition has it that a man named January had for some years previous conducted a trading post at the mines.1 In 1819 an expedition consisting of six or eight boats carrying possibly one hundred men left St. Louis under the command of Col. R. M. Johnson bound for Fever river. After a slow trip of twenty days it reached Galena and the business of making a treaty with the Indians was accomplished after a parley of nine days. This negotiation concluded, "the mines were then for the first time opened for civilized enterprise."'14

For three years little or no addition was made to the settlement. Estimates of the size of the settlement vary1 probably

8 Thwaites, Notes on Early Leadmining, in Wis. Hist. Collections, 13, 285. Personal Recollections of Col. John Shaw, in Wis. Hist. Collections, 2, 228. 10 History of Jo Daviess County, 233.

11 Thwaites, Notes on Early Leadmining, in Wis. Hist. Collections, 13, 286. 12 Davidson and Stuvé, Illinois, 346.

13 History of Jo Daviess County, 231.

14 Bonner, Life and Adventures of Beckwourth, 20.

15 Tenny, Early Times in Wisconsin, in Wis. Hist. Collections, 1, 95, says there were but two cabins at the mines; the author of The History of Jo Daviess County (228), gives the number of cabins as ten or twelve.