bility. While inferior in quality and scope to the crow-foot land, it is of great fertility, and in favorable seasons and with proper cultivation will produce from fifty to seventy-five bushels of corn, forty to sixty bushels of oats, twenty-five to thirty-five bushels of wheat and two to three tons of grass per acre; with the average season and the various grades of tillage in vogue among our farmers, good, fair to middling and bad, the general averages will reach about half the above estimates. The bottom prairies have a very rich and inexhaustible soil. Lying mostly Lying mostly on the Mississippi River, by reason of its occasional overflow, which has occurred about every ten years, and of insufficient drainage, most of these lands are yet uncultivated. The difference in the soils of prairie and timbered lands of the same formation in this county has been nearly obliterated in the process of cultivation, and in a few years the limits of the prairies cannot be told by the characteristics of its soil. The timbered lands in this county comprise the kinds known as hackberry lands, elm lands, hickory lands, white oak lands and post oak lands. The first two are contiguous and interspersed and contain very superior soil, growing in great luxuriance corn, wheat, oats, barley, tobacco and all kind of fruit. The hickory lands are next in grade, with a soil more clayey and not so deep, subsoil more impervious and the underlying marls containing less sand and lime and more clay. It responds generously to good culture, and is easily rendered durable. It is adapted to corn, wheat and other cereals, tobacco and the grasses; blue grass, will grow on it spontaneously and luxuriantly. This kind in this county has an area about equal to that of hackberry and elm lands combined. White oak

lands occupy a relatively large area in this county. The surface soil is not so rich as that of the hickory lands, but the subsoil is quite as good, and the underlying marls not so clayey and impervious. It produces good corn, fair timothy, very fine sorghum and the best wheat and tobacco in America. It is well adapted to all kinds of fruits, especially peaches and grapes. Post oak lands comprise a smaller area in this county. The soil is similar to that of white oak lands, with rather less lime and sand. Its productions are also similar. Another variety of soil is the magnesian limestone, occupying the slopes, hillsides and nar

row valleys of the northeastern parts of the county. It is rich in lime, magnesia and humus, producing corn, the cereals and all kinds of fruits.

MOUNDS.

Ages ago, so far in the dim, shadowy past that neither they nor their history can be traced, those mysterious beings called Mound Builders were here and occupied the country for a season, leaving behind them their sepulchral mounds, their fragments of pottery, their stone axes, and their flint arrow points and lance heads. It is out of place to discuss here the mooted question whether or not the Mound Builders were a distinct race; it is enough to say that their mounds and their relics are here.

At Old Monroe, just north of the railroad bridge across the Cuivre on the level surface of the valley, stood three circular mounds in the form of a triangle, each being from five to six rods in diameter, and from eight to ten feet in height at their centers. One of them was wholly removed in excavating the railroad bed, and the others partially removed. In one of those only partially removed a human skull, a knife and a bracelet or pair of bracelets were found. The latter were made of silver. The two mounds partially removed by the railroad company are astride of the west line of the right of way, and recently the public authorities have hauled away and deposited on the highways all that part of these mounds extending outside of the line of the railroad right of way, leaving a perpendicular wall of earth from the general level to the top of the mounds. From this it plainly appears that the mounds were constructed by some human agency, the earth all being of the same kind, and apparently composed mostly of surface soil from the surrounding country. The centers of these two mounds and the north and south escarpments are still standing. About sixty rods west thereof, on an elevated ridge, stands a larger and higher mound, to the northward of which are a number of smaller mounds at regular intervals along the top of the same ridge. None of these have been explored. These Old Monroe mounds have an appearance clearly distinguishable from that of natural formations. Other mounds supposed to be the work of the Mound Builders are found on the lands of Mr. Lindsey in Township 49

north, Range 2 east. A row of four mounds stands north and south on lands of Alfred Johnson, being the southeast quarter of the northwest quarter of Section 27, Township 51 north, Range 2 west. The largest mound stands at the north end of the row, and from that to the other end they grow less in regular proportion. They are located about 100 yards from a bluff containing the same kind of rock of which they are partially composed. On the field where the mounds are located no rock is exposed, consequently it is presumed that the rock used in their construction was carried from the bluff.

It is the generally accepted belief among archeologists that the Mound Builders were here before the red or modern Indians, and built the mounds; that the red Indians never made flint arrow and lance points or pottery, and did not build mounds, but that they picked up and employed the arrow-points, and often buried their dead in the mounds which they found ready built when they came into the country. It is certain that two kinds of bones are often found in the mounds-one kind presumably those of the Mound Builders, buried hundreds of years ago, nearly decayed, the other, perhaps those of modern Indians buried more recently, and usually well preserved. Who were before the Mound Builders is not known, but after them came the red Indians, who, for years and perhaps centuries, danced and hunted over the surface of this county, fished in its streams, drank from its clear, sweet springs, and wooed their dusky sweethearts in its bosky dells. By-and-by came the white man, stealthily and timidly at first, and profuse in sweet words and fair promises to the original tenants, and after a while with more boldness, assumption and aggression.

CHAPTER II.

INDIAN AFFAIRS AND WAR OF 1812.

In connection with the early settlement of Lincoln County, Dr. Mudd, in his history in the county atlas, gives an extensive account of the conduct of the "wild men of the forest," from which the following has been largely obtained.

There were many settlements of the Sac and Fox Indians within the limits of the county at that time, and the district watered by the two Cuivres and Big and Peruque Creeks was one of the favorite hunting grounds of the two tribes, whose head quarters were in the Rock River country in Illinois. Black Hawk, or Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak, the name by which he was known among his people, one of the most celebrated braves that ever lived, frequented this county, first on the hunt, and afterward on the bloody trail of war. He was popular with the whites, and liked their company; he was particularly fond of attending the dancing parties of that day and took his place in the quadrille with infinite zest. He had a partiality for strong drink, and much of his leisure time was spent 'at the still-houses which were then considered the vanguard of civilization. He lived for some time with Adam Zumwalt, whose capacious larder, the generous and free hospitality of himself and wife, his four daughters, Elizabeth, Rachel, Mary, and Catharine, pretty, lively, and ever ready for the dance; his four sons, John, Andrew, Jonathan and Solomon, vigorous, full of life and spirit, and excelling as hunters, and last but not least, the two still-houses near by, all combined to render this a most agreeable home for Black Hawk, when resting from the excitement and fatigue of the chase. He was often very drunk; but in all his intercourse with the whites, drunk or sober, his bearing was gentle and dignified, characteristic of his kindness of disposition and greatness of intellect. Black Hawk was perhaps more friendly toward the white people than any other Indian, certainly more so than the most of them; but he was not a chief, and it was about twenty-five years afterward, when he had nearly reached his sixtieth year, and his eminent wisdom in

council recognized far and near, before he had much to do in shaping the policy of his tribe.*

The attitude of the Indians was exceedingly threatening and dangerous toward the first settlers of Lincoln County. From the first, they and the whites regarded each other with more or less suspicion. The Indians would sometimes drive off horses, kill stock and fire into the houses of the settlers. On one occasion they shot at two of Maj. Clark's children in the door, and one of the balls came within six inches of the mark, and at another time shot and killed a horse in his stable. Maj. Clark (more extended mention of whom appears in Chapter III) had long before learned to be cautious and wary in his dealings with the savages, the result of his frontier campaigns in Kentucky. While returning from Kentucky the second time, in 1800, bringing with him his black girl, and within a short distance from home, he camped one night with three Indians. Everything passed off quietly until next morning, when one of the Indians wanted to trade rifles with the Major, nolens volens. The Major let the Indian's gun fall, held on to his own with a strong grasp, and by a sudden twist loosened the hold of the would-be trader. Springing out of the reach of the Indian's knife, should he attempt to use one, he put himself in an attitude of defense, and cast a look of defiance at the red men, whose eyes fell before his keen glance. He then left without further ceremony than to keep a close watch on their movements as long as he was in sight of them. In speaking of this incident afterward, the Major said that he made up his mind that his bones should bleach on that camp ground before he gave up his gun. At his settlement in this county it was his invariable custom to place his gun and butcher-knife at the head of his bed every night, and to have the ax brought into the house. In the morning he would reconnoiter some distance from the house in every direction to see if any of the redskins were lurking in the bush. This vigilance was the more necessary on account of his isolated situation. Sometimes

*It is possible here that Dr. Mudd has unintentionally attributed in a measure to Black Hawk the character of Keokuk, chief of the Foxes, for it is well known that the latter was always, and especially during a period including the Black Hawk War, very friendly with the whites, while Black Hawk was hostile. Keokuk was also very fond of whisky and exceedingly fond of all manner of sporting. It is claimed by citizens of the extreme northeast part of this State, who personally knew Black Hawk before and after his war of 1812, that he was not a dissipated man. However, it may be true that the character assigned him by Dr. Mudd was correct at the time alluded to-that is before the War of 1812.