Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 172, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 July 1912 — STARVED ROCK A MONUMENT [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

STARVED ROCK A MONUMENT

VN purchasing Starved Rock and 9 its surrounding acres for a pubipfl lie park the state of Illinois has tv done more than preserve the scene of an Indian tradition. It has made permanent a monument of the earliest recorded history of the upper Mississippi valley. The park includes the site of the oldest fort and permanent European settlement in the valley and part of the site of a great community that even now would rank with the largest cities of the state. The old and all but forgotten Kaskaskia ; and its suburbs were larger than the 3 present city of Alton, larger than. Freeport, twice as large as the near-by city of Ottawa. When it is recalled that only a century ago the stockaded Fort Dearborn that had been Chicago was a scene of desolation It is difficult to turn the mind back still another century and more to the beginning of Fort St. Louis, on the Illinois river. Perhaps that is why the Indian legend of a later date has become known, while the recorded history of the place has been forgotten and Fort St Louis has become Starved Rock. ; It wsb in the summer of 1673 that Joliet and Father Marquette entered the Illinois river atits month after a trip down the Mississippi, from the ■Wisconsin. They were on their way back to eastern Wisconsin by way of i Chicago and stopped only three days at the Indian village of Kaskaskia WhicH stood on the flood plain of the Illinois, across the river and a short distance west from a great- white rock, forest capped, that rose sheer from the water at a height of 126 feet. The village then contained 74 lodges and nearly ten times that number of families. The lodges were permanent structures, not the tepees of the western nations. % The Indians were Kaskaskias, a tribe of the Illinois nation, whose village was larger than that of the Peorias, another Illinois nation, who lived near where the city of Peoria now stands. 1 The great rock above the village did not attract special attention. It was one of many rocks and, moreover, It was the Indians that interested Marquette, whose report contains the -only first hand account of the voyage, since that of Joliet was lost in the St. Lawrence river. To these Infflans Marquette endeavored to return late < in 1674. Winter and sickness caught ' him on his way. He and his companions built a cabin on the bank of the Chicago river at what Is now Robey street and remained there until the spring, when they descended the Desplaines and Illinois to Kaskaskia and there established the mission of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin. 0 Display Pictures of Virgin. : On the meadow between the river and the present city of Utica Marquette raised an altar and displayed four pictures of the Virgin before 500 chiefs and old men, 1,500 young warriors and perhaps 4,000 women and children, a large audience to* be gathered there nowadays. Soon after Easter he and his two companions made their way back to Lake Michigan by the Kankakee and St. Joseph rivers. On the bank of the lake Marquette died.

Allouez was Marquette's successor at the mission of the Immaculate Conception.' He found at Kaskaskia 351 lodges. Before the coming of La Salle in 1679 he left the place and La" Salle found a deserted city. The inhabitants had gone hunting farther west He went on to Peoria lake, built Fort Crevecoeur there and returned, leaving his lieutenant Tonty, at the fort It was not until this return voyage that the great white rock caught his eye. It must have impressed itself on his mind as he sat in the deserted village across the river, resting on the Journey northward. Here was a fort that was no Crevecoeur, a lofty rock, inaccessible except at one paint, and there only by a narrow and difficult path, otttjpf arrow range from the other and the bluff a quarter of I • imarflhhiy. So he sent word to the Tonty ib examine the rock and to remoth thither from Peoria lake if he thought It well to do so. - But this not to >e easily made. . There were troubles with the Indians and the French assistants, and it wns three years later that La Salle and Tonty began the fortification of the rock. The only \ approach to the half-acre area of the !■ fuanit was protected with earth-

works and a palisade, and within the palisade were built cabins after some of the forest growth had, been removed. Civilization took its stand in the midst of the wilderness. At the foot of the rock, on the level bank of the river, a bowling alley was laid out*for the Frenchmen. Around this were other shelters, of French and of Indians. The fort had become a suburb of Kaskaskia, or, .as the French called it, LaVantum, across the river. This town of the Kaskaskia Indians was added to by arrivals of <other tribes, especially those of the Illinois nation. The original settlement was west of where the Utica bridge now crosses the river, but the additions spread to the east along the low bank of the stream. Including the Indians gathered about the foot of the rock. La Salle estimated the population at one time to be 20,000 persons, 4,000 of whom were warriors. Grain Abounded In Broad Fields, To supply this city, the largest community of Indians that has been recorded in the Illinois country, there were broad fields of grain, for the Illinois were a ffitming people and the rich flood plains of the Illinois needed little tilling. Tracts of Iqnd were granted to a score of Frenchmen. The river provided fish; in the swqmpc downstream were water fowl; the prairies were dotted with buffalo. The population lessened or increased from season to season. La Salle died, murdered in far oft Texas.. The mission was removed to the Mississippi river in 1700. Despite the exhortations of father Gravier, the inhabitants of Kaskaskia fled to this new sanctuary from the Iroquois. Hence the hew Kaskaskia on the Misissippi, which became the first capital of Illinois. The rock was left deserted except by the garrison and the traders. In 1702 the garrison was withdrawn and twenty years later Charlevoix, passing down the river, saw only the rotting palisades. Of the 20,000 Indians none remained. But the story runs that Tonty, white haired and feeble, was carried back to his rock to die among a few wondering red men and be buried in the swift water below. The old fort still served as a stronghold for the Peorias. -In 1722 these Indians were besieged on the rock by the Foxes and their allies, but the siege was raised. In 1769 at Cahokia came the murder of Pontiac, leader of the Pottawatomies and Ottawas, by a Kaskaskia Indian, and the revenge of the Pottawatomie nation. The Kaskasklas and the other Illinois tribes were massacred. A few Peorias were trapped on the rock and there, starving, defended the single approach. One dark night those remaining made a sortie and about a dozen—accounts differ as to the number—escaped down the river in stolen canoes, the last of their people. Nothing remains to recall them except bits of bone, pottery and flint that plowed up on the site of the ancient city, and the silent rock standing unchanged through the centuries and breasting the flow of the river.