This is the story of DuPage County written especially for young people as the county enters the decade in which its one hundred fiftieth anniversary will be observed.
This is a report on the important events that have shaped the DuPage County we know today and some of the remarkable people who have lived here. Some of these events and some of those people lived on the land that is now DuPage County a long time before the white settlers arrived.
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| Perry's Mastodon is on display twenty-four hours a day in its special Diecke Exhibit Hall at Wheaton College. Half of it has been restored to illustrate our concept of a mastodon. |
The Perry Mastodon at Wheaton College provides evidence that as recently as ten thousand years ago, our DuPage area was the home of these mighty creatures. The last ice sheet to cover DuPage, the mighty glacier that left us Lake Michigan and the other Great Lakes, was receding back north. Along the edge of the retreating ice, there developed dense pine forests. The mastodon herds lived largely on the tender shoots of these evergreen trees.
The bones of the Wheaton College mastodon, the most perfectly preserved and complete remains of a mastodon yet found on this continent, were discovered on the property of Judge and Mrs. Joseph Sam Perry in Glen Ellyn about three miles from the college campus. Beautifully restored, the mastodon can be seen by the public in the Deicke Exhibit Hall of the new Science Building. This animal may actually have foraged for evergreen shoots on what is now the college campus.
The Perry Mastodon probably did not see Indians although archaeologists believe that the first Indians were in the DuPage area not long after. Historians have concluded that the Chicago area was first visited by Indians about 7500 BC or nine thousand five hundred years ago. When the first white settlers came to DuPage, they were met by the Prairie Potawatomi Indians. These Indians who had been living in the area for at least a hundred years moved west after the Treaty of 1828. The treaty relocated all Indian tribes west of the Mississippi River.
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| Another reminder of the days that once existed in the DuPage County area is this buffalo herd at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, Batavia. |
The Algonquin Indians were the predominant tribe in Northern Illinois. However, it was the Potawatomi tribe that was most closely associated with our DuPage County area. Other tribes that were in the area from time to time included the Illinois, Kickapoo, Sauk, Fox, Miami, Winnebago, Ottawa and Chippewa (Ojibwa).
The name Potawatomi means People of the Place of Fire. This name was given the local tribes since it is believed by geologists that the fires set by the Indians created our open prairies and ideal farmland. Experts say the fires were set in the fall to bum off the small trees and tall grasses. This provided tender pastures for the animals in the spring.
Studies on the movement of Midwestern Indian tribes indicate that the Potawatomi Indians gradually moved west and south from the Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan area on the Canadian border in order to escape the warring Iroquois tribes constantly wanting to expand from the east. This movement gave the Potawatomi Indians a more peaceful image.
There were divided reports earlier on the aggressiveness of the Potawatomi. In 1866 Claude Allouez, a Jesuit priest, wrote in his journal describing the Potawatomi Indians as "the most docile and best disposed toward the French of any Indians they had encountered." However, not long after John Long, an Englishman whose dealings may have been different than those of the French Jesuits reported that the Potawatomi Indians were a "very wild and savage people who have an aversion to the English and generally give them (the English) as much trouble as possible."
From the Sault Ste. Marie region in the north, the Potawatomi Indians moved south to the Green Bay, Wisconsin area. Gradually these Indians moved on south along the Lake Michigan shore until they were settled in the Milwaukee and Chicago areas.
Fortunately, the white settlers in DuPage found the Potawatomi Indians not only peaceful but actually helpful when general Indian tensions developed. In fact, on occasions the Potawatomi Indians entertained the settlers and even served food familiar to the new white neighbors. The chief crops raised by the Potawatomi included corn, peas, beans, squash, melons and beechnuts.
The Potawatomi Indian women were the ones who did the work in the fields. The squaws also built the circular domed dwellings for which the tribe was noted. Indian men did the hunting and fishing. The Potawatomi-ii depended heavily upon fish and wild game to supplement their diets. Too, the furs and hides of the animals provided the Indians with clothing and moccasins.
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| This arrowhead exhibit is one of the several Indian relics which are on display on the fifteenth floor at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. A leader in the field of conservation and preservation in the area, the laboratory received the Indian collection from August Meyer of Batavia. |
The Indian tensions in DuPage came in the 1830s, and the Potawatomi Indians were not involved. These problems arose because the United States government was constantly, through treaties, buying Indian lands and relocating the Indian tribes west of the Mississippi River. Between 1829 and 1837 when the Potawatomi Indians left for Missouri, there were thirty-eight separate treaties that involved all the land between Cleveland, Ohio, and the Mississippi River. Many of these difficulties are attributed to the fact that the treaties were made with the Indian chiefs who did not have good communications, and not always the support, of the members of the tribe. This brought on the Blackhawk War in 1832.
The Indian troubles in DuPage might have been much more serious during the Blackhawk War had it not been for the outright assistance given the white settlers by the Potawatomi Indians who warned the settlers in the Naperville area of the marauding Sauk Indians.
Chief Aptakisic who headed the Potawatomi in the DuPage area is said to have met at the Waubunse Indian village near Aurora to confer with emissaries of Chief Blackhawk. The Blackhawk men were trying to enlist the aid of the Potawatomi in the war against the settlers. The Potawatomi chief refused to join in the battle and even urged that the raids on the settlers be stopped.
Chief Aptakisic left the Waubunse conference and sent his men on ahead to warn the white settlers, including the Israel Blodgett family who had just built a new house near PawPaw. (Later they moved to Downers Grove Township.) The Blodgett family left their new home and started immediately to Fort Dearborn on the Chicago River.
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| Bailey Hobson, First White Settler |
Chief Aptakisic protected the family by following the Blodgetts until they were near the fort. Feeling they were safe from the marauders, he left them for the remainder of the trip. The following day, the family forded the river with their wagon and oxen team to reach Fort Dearborn on Lake Michigan. Blodgett then returned to help other men from Naper Settlement complete Fort Payne under the direction of Captain Morgan Payne and a detachment of militia which came from the Joliet area.
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| Joseph Naper |
When the fort was completed, the families who had sought safety at Fort Dearborn returned to their homes until the Blackhawk War ended in August, 1832. Among them were the Bailey Hobson family, John and Joseph Naper families and the Pierce Hawley family.
Fort Payne was constructed on the site of present day North Central College in Naperville. It was one hundred feet square and surrounded by pickets. There were blockhouses on two comers to observe movements on the surrounding prairie. A replica of Fort Payne is located now at Naper Settlement, a presentation of the community’s history as told through its historic buildings.
The largest gathering of Indians in DuPage after the
settlers arrived was at Glen Ellyn in the vicinity of Stacy’s Park. For sometime
after the Blackhawk War ended in the late summer of 1832, the Stacy’s Park location
was used as a staging area for Indians enroute to and from pow-wows held in the village of
Chicago. There were estimates of as many as two thousand Indians at the Glen Ellyn camp
grounds during this period. There were no difficulties with the whites.
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| Fort Payne was completed in the summer of 1832 to protect Naperville residents during the Blackhawk War. It was constructed by a detachment of soldiers from Joliet led by Captain Morgan Payne. The original fort was removed from the site of present-day North Central College. The reconstructed fort is a part of the major historical Naper Settlement in Naperville. |
Early DuPage families reported in letters and diaries that friendly Indians remained in the DuPage area for years after the 1835 deadline to move west of the Mississippi River. Some Indian families never moved. There were still a few Indians in DuPage County in 1900. Some of the oldest citizens today can tell stories of seeing friendly Indians in DuPage at the turn of the century.
Before the Potawatomi Indians accepted the treaty agreement and left for Missouri in 1837, there were a number of important Indian villages in the DuPage area. These included Chief Shabbona’s village at PawPaw Grove near Naperville, Chief Waubunse’s village at the mouth of the Fox River and Chief Black Partridge’s village near the junction of the Des Plaines and Kankakee Rivers.
There were several villages in present DuPage County including one on Salt Creek between Hinsdale and Elmhurst. Another was along the old Indian trail which is now St. Charles Road in the area between Lombard and Glen Ellyn. A third village was located in southeastern Milton Township along an Indian trail which paralleled Butterfield Road.
Another Indian village was located at Naperville, reached by a trail which today is the route of Ogden Avenue. There was an Indian camp at Warrenville and an Indian signal station at West Chicago. There was a major village near the Indian Hill Bell Telephone Laboratories and the East-West Tollway, Naperville and Warrenville Roads.
Another signal station and mound was located in northern Wayne Township. There was also a signal station in Addison Township. This lay between the Indian trails which followed the route of Lake Street (U. S. 20) and Army Trail Road from Chicago to the Winnebago settlement at Beloit, Wisconsin.
A number of major highways in the county today are
generally laid out along old Indian trails. These include Irving Park Road,
Warrenville-Belmont Road and the old Buffalo trail which ran from Glen Ellyn south to the
Sag settlement near Lemont in southern DuPage County.