History nowhere goes back to the beginning. Wherever people live others lived there before them, and others before that, so long ago that records fail and traditions are silent. Before the white race came to Illinois the Indians were in possession, fished in the rivers, chased the buffalo over the prairies, and had their bark villages and patches of corn in the edges of the groves.

     But before their time another race was here, whom from the works they left behind we have named the Mound builders. They were probably allied to the Aztecs of Central America and the Cliff dwellers of Arizona. They were not hunters but cultivators. They inhabited chiefly the bottom lands along the streams, and with incredible toil built great earthworks for safety, or for worship, or for interment. After the leveling of the centuries the larger portion of these are of course obliterated, but thousands remain. A few years ago in a radius of fifty miles from the mouth of the Illinois river there were five thousand of these mounds. They were so abundant on the city of St. Louis that it was called the Mound City. The name might as appropriately be given to hundreds of other river towns. Sixteen of our states have post offices named Mound or Mound City, and Illinois has both. On the Mississippi river bottom above East St. Louis is a famous group, one of them being the largest in the country. It is ninety feet high, covers six acres, and is two acres in extent at the top. It is called Monk's Mound from a colony of French monks to whom it was given by its owner for the site of a monastery. They remained there twenty years, supporting themselves by making splint-bottomed chairs, and then abandoned it. It was purchased by T. Ames Hill, a Massachusetts teacher, who in 1831 opened a school on the lofty summit. He died, and was buried there, and by 1837 the building was a relic visited by curiosity seekers. The traditions of the mound builders, and the graves of the Trappist Monks and of the New England teacher, rest there in peace. This mound group was perhaps the center of a district embracing most of Illinois and Missouri; one of the subordinate kingdoms of the Mound builders' empire. Other centers were in the vicinity of Cincinnati, of Prairie du Chien, in northeastern Arkansas, etc. Remains

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[p. 10]
of potteries, and of manufactories of tools and weapons of stone, are also found, telling us of multitudes of people, agricultural and commercial life, patient industry, barbaric splendor, rivers bearing canoes and, loaded barges, bordered by adobe villages and cultivated fields. Some of the mounds, we might have noticed, were having their defenses strengthened; from others the smoke of sacrifice ascended, while on others the earth was freshly heaped over the grave of some departed chieftain.

     After this race came the races that were here when the Europeans came. Judging from their languages there were half a dozen principal races and fifty smaller ones, subdivided into tribes according to locality or family descent. The eastern Indians were of the Iroquois stock; the western of the Algonquin; and west of the Mississippi river of the Sioux and Athapascan races. The Algonquin tribes in Illinois were chiefly the Pottawatomies in the northern part, the Illinois, Peorias and Kickapoos in the central part, and the Kaskaskias and Cahokias, or Tamaroas, in the southern part. The different languages all belong to a common stock, the chief peculiarity being the use of bunch words instead of true sentences. This is so unlike European languages that it stands against the theory that our Indians had a European origin. Thus as if in mockery of theories of social progress an agricultural and commercial people were superseded by a race of savages. And the world went on!

     The historical novel attempting to account for this national tragedy has not been written, but he who will read between the lines of the story told by the earthworks may have a hint of the moral justification. The largest of these works tell of a despotism strong enough to command unlimited labor, and cruel enough to use it without stint. It is a story without doubt of irresponsible power, of a heartless priesthood, of wrong and suffering and death, of the rights of man so outraged that when extinction came, whether by pestilence or war or both, it was the righteous judgment of God.

     The Indians in their turn merited a similar divine judgment. In their treatment of one another they were as cruel and implacable as the wild beasts that shared the forests with them. The torture of an enemy was their delight. The dreaded pestilence that devastated their ranks was no more heartless than they. Their land was filled with wrongs that cried for vengeance. This is no acquittal for the robbers whb robbed them, but it enables us to see a divine providence in the loss of

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[p. 11]
country whch overtook them. We are indignant at the manner of the ejectment of the Cherokees from Georgia. Yet they had treated others as themselves were treated. Rev. Lee Compere, a faithful missionary among them, relates that in his absence twenty of their slaves were mercilessly whipped for attending a religious meeting conducted by rhe missionary's wife. While the unfortunate tribe was exploited, and those who did it will answer for it, yet like Adonizedek of old they might have exclaimed, "As I have done so God hath requited me."

     Unlike the race that preceded them the Indians were not builders. They left behind no architectural works, bur they have left us a richer heritage in the poetic Indian names that cover the land. One half of our states, and a large part of our towns and rivers bear Indian names. They are far preferable to the names of imported saints that mark the footsteps of the Frenchman and the Spaniard.

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[Edward P. Brand, Illinois Baptists -- A History, 1930, pp. 9-11. Scanned and formatted by Jim Duvall.]

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Chapter 3
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