OCR Text |
Show 280 Early Western Travels [ Vol. 26 the Platte country, compared with which the prairies east of the Mississippi are mere meadows in miniature. The latter region was, doubtless, once a favourite resort of the animal, and the banks of the " beautiful river " were long his grazing- grounds; but the onward march of civilization has driven him, with the Indian, nearer the setting sun. Upon the plains they now inhabit they rove in herds of thousands; they regularly migrate with change of season, and, in crossing rivers, many are squeezed to death. Dead bodies are sometimes found floating upon the Missouri far down its course. With the village and county of St. Charles are connected most of the events attending the early settlement of the region west of the Mississippi; and during the late war with Great Britain, the atrocities of the savage tribes were chiefly perpetrated here. Early in that conflict the Sacs and Foxes, Miamis, Pottawattamies, Iowas, and Kkkapoo Indians commenced a most savage warfare upon the advanced settlements, and the deeds of daring which distinguished the gallant " rangers" during the two years in which, unaided by government, they sustained, single-handed, the conflict against a crafty foe, are almost unequalled in the history of warfare. 174 St. Charles county and the adjoining county of Booneslick were the principal scene of a conflict in which boldness and barbarity, courage and cruelty, contended long for the mastery. The latter county to which I have alluded [ 23] received its name from the celebrated Daniel Boone. 17* After being deprived, by 1N For sketches of the Potawotami, Miami, and Kickapoo, see Croghan's Journals, in our volume i, pp. 115, 122, 159, notes 84, 87, xxi; for the Sauk and, Fox, see J. Long's Voyages, in our volume ii, p. 185, note 85; for the Iowa, Brackenridge's Journal, in our volume vi, p. 51, note 13.- ED. in Flagg makes an error in speaking of Boone's lick County, since there was none known by that name. He evidently had in mind Warren County, organized in 1833 from the western part of St. Charles County. Boone County created in |