of Menard and Mason Counties
By T.G. Onstott
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CHAPTER XLI Page 377 When the first settlement was made in what is known as Mason county the settlers found that the Indians had preceded them and had erected their wigwams in many places and were cultivating the lands in small patches, growing corn, beans, potatoes, squashes and many other kinds of vegetables. Their settlements were mostly along the Illinois river, and on Quiver and Crane Creek. The squaws usually cultivated the gardens, and the Indians followed hunting and fishing. They raised a great many horses and that was the only kind of stock they raised. In the fall of the year they would gather large quantities of hickory nuts and pecans which were very abundant in that early day. These they would sell to the merchants of the towns, or sometimes take them to St. Louis in their canoes to sell. The Indians were inclined to be friendly when kindly treated, unless they were intoxicated. Then sometimes they would be ugly and would claim that the country still belonged to them, and that their ancestors first settled the country, and that their head men had never sold it, and that the Indians, whom the white people claimed they had bought the land from, were not the chiefs nor the head men of the nation, and had no right to sell it. And besides the great white chief, the president, had never paid the Indians for the land. When the Blackhawk war broke out in 1832 the Pattowatomie Indians that lived in that part of the country went up north to the Rock river country and many of them joined the Indians under Black Hawk and soon after that hostilities broke out in that part of the country. A company of twenty men that was out as scouts were surrounded by the Indians and all killed. Immediately after the Indians made a raid on a small settlement on Indian creek, near Rock river. Three families by the name of Davis, Hill and Pettigrew, were attacked in the day time and all massacred except two young ladies whom they took prisoners. The Indians afterwards related how the ladies squawked like geese. All the victims were scalped. One man's head was cut off and stuck on a pole beside the river. The women and children were tied up to the joists of the house by their feet, and the two young ladies that were taken prisoners were tied upon horses and taken in great haste a long way into the wilderness. Two of the young braves claimed them and intended to have them as their squaws or wives, but were afterwards released on the receipt of two thousand dollars. There were other circumstances that took place in those times that caused great excitement and alarmed the people of Mason county. One was called Stillman's defeat or Stillman's run. It was a fight Stillman had with the Indians in the Rock creek river country northwest of Peoria in which Stillman was defeated and lost thirteen of his men killed and a number wounded. Most of them were residents of Fulton county. Another circumstance took place, Waterfield's defeat, which occasioned a general stampede of the people living in the north part of Fulton county. They believing that an attack had been made by the Indians in the settlement west of Canton on which rumor hundreds of people left their homes and crossed the Illinois river at Havana. These circumstances caused the citizens of Havana and surrounding country much alarm. They believed that many of the Indians that had lived in that vicinity and had gone to the Rock river country had taken part in those massacres and as they knew all the country around Havana so well that they would go to Peoria and take possession of the ferry boats and what crafts they could find and come down the Illinois river and make an attack on the people and try to recover their old home where they had lived so many years and where their ancestors had been buried. The alarm was great and the people determined that they would build a couple of forts or block houses as they were called. These block houses were built of logs. One was built on the bluff near the ferry landing, northwest of the Havana hotel. This block house was 25x30 feet in size and two stories high and was built so that the upper story projected over the lower story two feet. Port holes were made in both stories for the use of their muskets and rifles. The only floor was in the upper story, and the entrance to the same was by a ladder which was drawn in by night. The other block house was built south of the hotel on a high knoll. This was twenty feet square, two stories high, the upper story was covered with plank sufficiently heavy to bear up the weight of a cannon and commanded a range of a mile or so. Up and down the river a great many people that had fled from counties west of the river would stop at Havana and go into these block houses during the night and there is no doubt that a great many people would have left the country if those block houses had not been built. The block house north of the hotel was still standing in 1846 when I first came to Havana. The people now living in Havana have but little idea of the privation that the early settler endured and the suspense and excitement they had to undergo while in constant fear of the Indians. Yet most of the Indians were disposed to keep their treaties with the whites and most of the trouble occurred from the overbearing conduct of the "pale faces."
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