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HISTORY OF KANE COUNTY.
milk-weed; bouncing Bet; fire-weed; columbine; wake robin; painted cup; cardinal flower; honey-suckle; liverwort; phlox (many varieties); geranium; blue-eyed grass; blue flag; spider wort; Indian tobacco; white and blue gentian; fringed gentian; skunk cabbage; Jack in the pulpit; wild hyacinth; pussy willows; buttercups; wild roses; leeks;' rosin weed; ground cherry; strawberry; cat tail; red root, and many varieties of ferns.
CHAPTER III.
WILD ANIMALS, BIRDS AND REPTILES.
INDIAN TRADITION OF A COLD WINTER-ILLINOIS
THE EARLY HABITAT OF THE BISON AND THE
ELK- INDIAN LEGEND ABOUT BUFFALO ROUND
UPS AT BUFFALO ROCK-MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE OF THE LARGER ANIMALS FROM
ILLINOIS SOIL-PRINCIPAL REPTILES-BIRD LIFE
IN ILLINOIS.
The Indians told the early settlers a tradition related by their fathers of a very long and very cold winter, many years ago, when the snow covered the tops of the young trees and remained very late in the spring. As the story goes, the cold was so bitter and so steady that many Indians and all the game perished, being starved and frozen; that very late in the spring there was a sudden change to summer-like weather, accompanied by a warm, heavy rain; that it rained for many days, melting the snow so fast that the land was deluged with water, when many more of the Indians were drowned; also that the savage beasts which had lived through the cold upon the carcasses of the starved and frozen animals, were all drowned in the flood. They showed marks and scars, high upon the trees, which they declared had been made by the drift and ice upon the rushing torrents.
This tradition was, doubtless, highly exaggerated; yet there is great probability of a modicum of truth in the substance of the tale; for unquestionably this was once the habitat of the bison and elk. Pere Marquette and other of the early explorers mentioned them in their reports of the country, and the early settlers found indubitable proofs of their former presence in the decaying skulls, horns and bones of these animals which remained; and also in the numerous paths and "wallows" which were said to have been made by the buffalo. Each of these evidences indicated that the living animals had vanished many years before. The Indians also told of the time when their fathers would encircle, on three sides, great numbers of buffalo and quietly stalk and drive them toward the high bluff of the Illinois River, a little below Ottawa-still known as "Buffalo Rock"-and, at the proper time, by suddenly rushing, leaping and shouting at the herd, throw it into a wild stampede, and plunge it in a mad frenzy over the precipice upon the rocks below, thus killing hundreds of them at a single drive. The entire absence of these animals in a land peculiarly adapted to their production, and furnishing, in bounteous profusion, the food necessary for their support, indicates their extermination in some sudden and unusual manner. And the meager number of Indians themselves gives strong color of probability to the substance of the tradition.
The tradition tends also to explain the absence of the larger beasts of prey. Occasionally a bear, a panther or a timber wolf was seen, but these were only individual instances, and so rare as to give no trouble to the pioneers. Prairie wolves were very numerous, but they should not be confounded with the coyotes of the western plains. They were much larger and bolder than the latter. In size they were midway between the timber wolf and coyote. Many a good dog would hesitate to give battle to a full-grown one, and a pair were more than a match for any dog. They fought with quick rapid snaps, and their powerful jaws made their sharp teeth cut like knives. They were sneaking and cowardly enough; yet they were crafty and persistent, and, when hungry and emboldened by numbers, or when cornered and desperate, they were formidable fighters.
The common red deer were very abundant, and were often seen in herds of ten or a dozen. From 1840 to 1850 many men made the winters profitable by hunting them for sale upon the market. Rabbits swarmed in the timber and openings, and raccoons and fox-squirrels were abundant. Foxes were not numerous; neither
