HISTORY OF KANE COUNTY.
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possessed the country along the Illinois River from the Kankakee and Des Plaines to the Mississippi, and southerly past the center of the State. "Pere Membre" states that, in 1680, their chief village, which he called "La Vantum," contained some seven thousand souls, and was situated about a mile southerly from Starved Rock (Fort St. Louis), near the site of the present village of Utica. Doubtless they were the most manly and humane of any of the western tribes, with a stronger inclination toward progress and civilization. Their complete annihilation, under the repeated assaults of the Iroquois, the Foxes and the Pottawatomies, is among the most pathetic tragedies of Indian tradition or history.
But Kane County, situated some distance up the valley of the Fox, was a little removed from this great water highway, and there is no tradition of any encounter of the aborigines within its peaceful borders. Indolent, improvident, gluttonous and cruel, they had roamed over these fertile lands during countless generations. As a race, they developed no intellectual or moral force, evolved no national or governmental system worthy of perpetuation, indicated no inventive genius whatever, and seemed utterly incapable of progress toward better conditions. No enduring monument did they rear, no structure of beauty or utility did they erect, and there is no trace of literature or art in all their traditions or history. They left absolutely nothing to mark their long, long occupancy, save the narrow trail which the elements and vegetation almost obliterated in a single year, and the low mounds above their dead warriors that cultivation quickly smoothed into utter oblivion. Old settlers at Elgin well remember the group of such mounds thickly covering some fifteen or twenty acres between Highland Avenue and Wing Street, on the southeast quarter of Section 10. Three of them, protected by the orchard fence and sod near the Washington Wing homestead, are still plainly visible on the north side of Wing Street. A map of the State, published in 1837, indicates them by stars as "old Indian mounds" situated just west of Fox River, although the old map shows no settlement of any kind between Chicago and Galena, except Bloomingdale at Meacham's Grove.
The fine cities along the Fox River, and from thence westward, were then but names, or a few settlers' cabins. Now and again among the Indians, individuals appeared who rose far above their low environment; yet their rarity but flashes into more vivid distinctness the brutal characteristics of the race. They passed as the wild beasts and birds have perished, and, while there is pathos and pity that it should be so, nevertheless it is well.
CHAPTER II.
TOPOGRAPHY AND FLORA.
UNWILLING MIGRATION OF THE POTTAWATOMIES WEST OF THE MISSISSIPPI-THE FOX RIVER
VALLEY-NATURAL BEAUTY OF ITS SCENERY AND
FERTILITY OF ITS SOIL-RICH TIMBER LANDS
AND MINIATURE LAKES-INDIGENOUS FRUITS, FLOWERS AND PLANTS.
The Pottawatomies very reluctantly turned their unwilling footsteps westward, for they had some appreciation of the beauty and bounty of the land they were leaving forever. In this middle valley of the Fox there were no bad lands. It was all easy to traverse, delightful to the eye, and wonderfully productive of the food suited to savage life. The seasons were temperate with few heavy snow falls in winter, and the climate healthy and invigorating. The woodland and prairies abounded in game, and the streams were teeming with excellent food-fishes. There were no tangled forests, no large impenetrable swamps nor vast prairies, but a continued succession of gentle, sloping hills and smiling valleys, covered with rich verdure and beautiful forest glades. The flower-bedecked prairies were bordered by fair woodlands and dotted with shady groves.
Through that portion of the valley now included within the boundaries of Kane County, the Fox River held its course from the north nearly due south. Its waters were clear and pure, fed by innumerable creeks and springs, and it was not connected with any large sloughs or swamps. Its bed was clean gravel with a few short stretches of limestone rock; its channel of quite uniform depth, with a quick, steady flow or current, while its banks, both
