During the first quarter of the present century, immigration to the Illinois country was retarded by frequent earthquakes; indeed, from 1811 to 1813 they were as severe as ever happened on this continent, and the few settlers then here were in constant dread from these disturbances. New Madrid, a flourishing town near the mouth of the Ohio, was utterly destroyed and partially swallowed up. But in 1825, the Erie Canal was completed, and steamboats had been introduced upon the Mississippi and its tributaries, and immigration received a new impulse and flowed in vigorously. This immigration excitement was called east of the Alleghenies, the "western fever;" and it carried many a good man off-west.

Another circumstance which prevented immigration into central Illinois during the same period was, that all that portion of it that lay south of the Kankakee, east of the Illinois, west of the Wabash and north of a line drawn from the mouth of the Illinois eastward to the Wabash, including the present Cass County, was owned and in possession of the Kickapoos, a powerful and warlike tribe of Indians, who conquered this territory about the middle of the last century from the Illinois Indians. The Kickapoos, while friendly with the French, looked with extreme jealousy upon the Americans, and discouraged their settlement in this territory. This wide scope of country, included the best and most fruitful portions of Illinois, and pioneers were anxious for the general government to purchase it of the Kickapoos, and open it to settlement. Several efforts were made by the government to treat with them for their lands, but being of a haughty spirit, no satisfaction could be obtained from them, until Gen. Harrison defeated them at the battle of Tippecanoe, which so diminished their vanity that they sought to treat, but Gen. Harrison refused. Shortly afterward they were again defeated by Col. Zachary Taylor, and in Octo

son.

ber, 1812, Col. Russell defeated them at Kickapoo Town, on the Illinois River, the present site of Beardstown, and again, in November Col. Hopkins destroyed one of their towns on Wildcat Creek. They then sued for peace, and their chief, Little Otter, met Gen. HarriThe treaties of Portage des Sioux (Sept. 2, 1815) and Fort Harrison (June 4, 1816), followed. These treaties being indefinite in their results, the Kickapoos still retaining their lands, many of them religiously believing and maintaining that they were granted them by the Great Spirit as their possession forever, and that he would be angry if they sold them; the following order was issued by the general government, addressed to Gov. Wm. Clark, Indian Superintendent at St. Louis, and to Gov. Ninian Edwards, Governor of the Territory of Illinois:

"DEPARTMENT OF WAR, Nov. 1, 1817. "GENTLEMEN:-I have the honor to enclose you a commission, for the purpose of treating with the Illinois, the Kickapoos, the Pottawatomies and other tribes of Indians within the Illinois territory. The object of this negotiation is to obtain a cession from the tribes who may have a claim to it, of all that tract of land which lies between the most northeastern point of boundary of the lands ceded by the Kaskaskias in August, 1803, the Sangamo and the Illinois rivers; and which tract of land completely divided the settled parts of the Illinois Territory from that part which lies between the Illinois and Mississippi rivers, and which has been lately surveyed for the purpose of satisfying the military land bounties, a circumstance which makes the acquisition of this tract of country peculiarly desirable.

"If either of the tribes who have a claim to the land is desirous of exchanging their claim for lands on the west of the Mississippi, you are authorized to make the exchange, and your extensive local knowledge of the coun

try will enable you to designate that part of it where it would be most desirable to locate the lands to be given as an equivalent. To other tribes who may not wish to remove, you will allow such an annuity, for a fixed period, as you may deem an adequate compensation for the relinquishment of their respective claims. To enable you to give the usual presents on such occasions, you are authorized to draw on this department for $6,000.

"The contractor will furnish, on the requisition of either of you, the rations that may be necessay for the supply of the Indians while attending the treaty. Your compensation will be at the rate of eight dollars per day for the time actually engaged in treating with the Indians; and that of the secretary, whom you are authorized to appoint, will be at the rate of five dollars a day.

"I have the honor to be, with great respect, "Your obedient servant,

"GEORGE GRAHAM, "Acting Secretary of War."

Under these instructions, such negotiations were had with the Kickapoo Indians, that on the 30th day of July, 1819, that tribe ceded to the United States all the above described tract of land. The final treaty was signed on

the part of the government by August Choteau and Benjamin Stevenson, and by twenty-three chiefs of the Kickapoos, who reluctantly placed their awkward but significant signmanuals thereto. Among other things, and together with many presents and much amunition, the United States agreed to pay them $2,000 a year for fifteen years, and assigned them a large tract on the Osage. From the date of the treaty they began to remove from the State, but very slowly and reluctantly, and in 1822 there were still four hundred Kickapoos remaining in Central Illinois, and up to 1821, quite a large number of them remained within the present limits of Cass County, and at their town on the present site of Beardstown. A few of them, who had connected with the French by marriage, remained in Beardstown and on the islands near by, many years afterward.

This purchase from the Kickapoos, opened the most beautiful portion of the State to settlers. That part of it now included in the counties of Cass, Morgan, Scott, Mason, Menard, Sangamon, Logan, Macon and some others, was known far and near, as the "Sangamo Country," and its fertile soil soon attracted great numbers of actual settlers, who made farms, laid out towns, built roads and bridges.

horses or oxen, its high end-boards and curving side-boards, ribbed and barred and riveted, glaring in red or blue paint, was not gotten up merely for show. It made no pretensions to beauty. It was thoroughly a substantial craft. What has become of the old "prairie ship," with the four horses before it, and the driver in his saddle on the near wheel-horse, twitching at a single rein?

The old "prairie ship," with its great white cover and flapping curtains, looking at a distance on the prairie like a ship on the ocean, was the great original of the emigrant wagon of the West. This craft was of vast capacity. It contained ample bedding for a large family, made up of all ages and sexes. It held cooking utensils, provisions, ammunition, tubs, buckets, besides the family. The wagon box or bed was fitted with flat iron staples, about eighteen inches apart, along its sides, and in those were placed ashen hoops which bended over from side to side of the wagon box, leaving a roomy space inside about five feet high and twenty feet more or less long, which when covered with canvas, looped over at the ends, made a comfortable room, high, dry and safe from storms. Upon the sides of the wagon box were cleats to secure the crowbar, axes, spades, mattocks, chisels and augurs; and underneath hung the kettles, tarbucket, water-bucket and baskets. An extra log-chain was coiled around the coupling pole under the wagon for use in emergencies, which frequently happened.

It was in these prairie schooners that most of the first settlers of Cass (then Morgan) County emigrated from the older States. These journeys were not altogether pleasure trips, although there were pleasant features connected with them, and they were usually terminated with every member of the family in robust health, sickness very rarely afflicting those who traveled in this way, yet they were sometimes attended with dangers, hardships and "hair

breadth 'scapes," which were profitably recounted by the participants in after life to the rising generation. There were but few roads and bridges at that time, and the prairies had to be crossed on Indian trails, the rivers forded where there were no ferries, and the creeks and brooks, where the banks were steep, were still more difficult to cross. In such case, sometimes a bridge was improvised, or a tree was felled across it, the limbs removed, the wagons taken all apart, and each separate piece and article of freight carried by hand across over the fallen tree, and set up and loaded on the other side, Sometimes a single "mover" would do all, this alone. But, for convenience, these "movers would sometimes travel in companies or caravans, and in that case assist each other, and thus make the journey much more pleasant, safe and expeditious. It was a common sight upon the Illinois prairies in those days to see such a caravan, the white canvas tops of the prairie schooners looking in the distance like a fleet at sea under sail. These emigrants generally drove along with them a few head of cattle, or led some brood mares, so that in the new country they were prepared to raise cattle and horses. Some also brought in a coop lashed to the wagon, a few fowls, for the purpose of raising chickens in the new home.

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Let us suppose several of these prairie schooners, in the early "twenties," have reached the northern part of Morgan County (now Cass), and, enraptured with the view, unhitch the teams and look around. The land was surveyed and offered for sale by the government for the first time in November, 1823, so that all those who settled here previous to that date were only "squatters" on the public lands, waiting for the time to come when they could pre-empt or buy. Our imaginary immigrants, having looked around find there is a navigable river, the Illinois, a

few miles distant, which will insure them a future market for their produce. They find good, rich prairie land for their farms, and plenty of timber for housing and fencing. They conclude this will do. Having selected the tract of land that suits them, they go to some distant town for a surveyor, who comes and gives them the numbers and metes and bounds. They then make a weary journey on horseback of a hundred miles to Edwardsville, where the government land office is located, to enter or buy the land. Having secured the land-the family having domiciled in the wagon in the meantime-the men-folks proceed to build a log cabin, in the structure of which not a nail, or bit of iron or glass is used. The outside walls are made of round or hewn logs, fitted together at the ends and chinked with chips and clay between them. The floor is made of split logs. The roof is covered with rived weather-boards, kept in their places by poles laid across them. The chimney is made with logs and sticks and clay. The doors are made with split boards, fastened together with wooden pins, swung on wooden hinges, and fastened only with a wooden latch. Bedsteads are improvised of poles, and benches of split logs on sapling legs.

Thus the "first families" of Cass County started in life, and most of the great farms within its borders had such a beginning.

The first land" entry" (i. e. purchase from the government,) was made by Thomas Beard and Enoch C. March, jointly, upon the northeast quarter of Section 15, in Township 18, Range 12, September 23, 1826. It was upon this fractional quarter section that Mr. Beard's cabin was built. It was placed upon the steep bank of the river, at the present foot of State street, near where he afterward built his brick hotel. In the following spring it was discovered that this cabin had been built over a den of snakes, and thousands of them,

of many kinds, came out upon the opening of warm weather.

The first licensed ferry across the Illinois river was established June 5, 1826, by Thomas Beard, and a license was granted him by the county commissioners of Schuyler county, upon his paying six dollars per annum into the treasury of that county. That ferry is in operation yet by the assigns of the Beard heirs, at Beardstown, where it was first located. There was at that time no road from Beardstown through Schuyler county, but blazes on the trees was made out as far as where Rushville now stands. Schuyler county had been organized, and the county seat had been located near where Pleasant View now is, and, strangely enough, that was named Beardstown, too. Why this was so named, so soon after Thomas Beard had named his town, is now past finding out. But the location was soon after removed to Rushville, or Rushton, as it was first called.

Thomas Beard's ferry-boat was managed by himself alone, the propelling power being a pole in his strong hands. It was so small that only one wagon and two horses could be crossed at one time, and then very little standing room was left for passengers.

On the 28th day of October, 1827, Beard and March entered the northwest quarter of section 15, township 18, Range 12, which extended their river front down below the great mound.

Thomas Beard individually entered the west half of the southwest quarter of section 15, township 18, Range 12, October 10, 1827; and John Knight entered the east half of the southwest 15, 18, 12, July 17, 1828. Thus there were three men entered the entire section upon which the original town of Beardstown was located, in the years 1826, 1827 and 1828.

The original town of Beardstown consisted of twenty-three blocks, fronting on the river,