[91] Cap au Gris was a point of land on the Mississippi, in Calhoun County, Illinois, just above the mouth of the Illinois. J. M. Peck, in his Gazetteer of Illinois (1837), from which Flagg derives his account of this place, says that a settlement had been formed there about forty years earlier. The town of this name is now in Lincoln County, Missouri. There is no foundation for the belief that La Salle had erected a fort here.—Ed.
[92] Montgomery, on the right bank of Illinois River, in Pike County, was laid out by an Alton Company, for a new landing. Naples is a small village in Scott County. Havana, founded in 1827, is the seat of justice for Mason County. Pekin is in Tazewell County.—Ed.
[93] Peoria, now the second largest city in Illinois, is situated a hundred and sixty miles southwest of Chicago, on the west bank and near the outlet of Lake Peoria, an expansion of the Illinois River. Its site was visited in 1680 by La Salle. Early in the eighteenth century a French settlement was made a mile and a half farther up, and named Peoria for the local Indian tribe. French missionaries were in this neighborhood as early as 1673-74. In 1788 or 1789 the first house was built on the present site of Peoria and by the close of the century the inhabitants of the old town, because of its more healthful location, moved to the new village of Peoria, which at first was called La Ville de Maillet, in honor of a French Canadian who commanded a company of volunteers in the War of the Revolution. Later the name was changed to its present form. At the opening of the War of 1812-15, the French inhabitants were charged with having aroused the Indians against the Americans in Illinois. Governor Ninian Edwards ordered Thomas E. Craig, captain of a company of Illinois militia, to proceed up the Illinois River and build a fort at Peoria. Under the pretense that his men had been fired upon by the inhabitants, when the former were peaceably passing in their boats, Craig burned half the town of Peoria in November, 1812, and transferred the majority of the population to below Alton. In the following year, Fort Clark—named in honor of General George Rogers Clark—was erected by General Benjamin Howard on this site; but after the close of the war the fort was burned by the Indians. After the affair of 1812, Peoria was not occupied, save occasionally, until 1819, when it was rebuilt by the Americans. The American Fur Company established a post there in 1824. See C. Ballance, History of Peoria (Peoria, 1870).—Ed.
[94] Benjamin Howard (1760-1814) was elected to the state legislature of Kentucky (1800), to Congress (1807-10); appointed governor of Upper Louisiana Territory (1810), and in March, 1813, brigadier-general of the United States army in command of the 8th military department. He died at St. Louis, September, 1814.—Ed.
[95] Kickapoo Creek rises in Peoria County, flows southeasterly and enters Illinois River two miles below Peoria.—Ed.
[96] Robert Walter Weir (1803-89), after studying and painting in New York, Florence (1824-25), and Rome (1825-27), opened a studio in New York, and became an associate and later academician of the National Academy of Design. He was professor of drawing in the United States Military Academy at West Point from 1832 to 1874. Weir is best known for his historical paintings, prominent among which are "The Bourbons' Last March," "Landing of Hendric Hudson," "Indian Captives," and "Embarkation of the Pilgrims." He built and beautified the Church of Holy Innocents at Highland Falls, West Point. His two sons, John Ferguson and Julian Alden, became noted artists.—Ed.
[97] By order of the war department (May 19, 1834), Lieutenant-Colonel S. W. Kearny was sent with companies B, H, and I of the 1st United States dragoons to establish a fort near the mouth of Des Moines River. The present site of Montrose, Lee County, Iowa, at the head of the lower rapids of the Mississippi, was chosen. The barracks being completed by November, 1834, they were occupied until the spring of 1837, when the troops were transferred to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
As early as 1721 a French fort (La Baye) had been erected at Green Bay, on the left bank of Fox River, a half league from its mouth. After suffering many vicissitudes during the Fox wars it was later strengthened, and when occupied by English troops in 1761, was re-named Fort Edward Augustus. After the close of the War of 1812-15, the United States government determined to exercise a real authority over the forts on the upper Great Lakes, where, in spite of the provision of Jay's Treaty (1794), its power had been merely nominal. In 1815 John Bowyer, the first United States Indian agent for the Green Bay district, established a government trading post at Green Bay, and made an ineffectual attempt to control the fur trade of the region. The following year, Fort Howard, named in honor of General Benjamin Howard, was built on the site of the old French fort. With the exception of 1820-22, when the troops were transferred to Camp Smith, on the east shore, Fort Howard was continuously occupied until 1841, when its garrison was ordered to Florida and Mexico. Later, from 1849 to 1851, it was occupied by Colonel Francis Lee and Lieutenant-Colonel B. L. E. Bonneville, and then permanently abandoned as a garrison, although a volunteer company was stationed there for a short time during the War of Secession. Almost every trace of the old fort has been obliterated. Consult Wisconsin Historical Collections, xvi, xvii; also William L. Evans, "Military History of Green Bay," in Wisconsin Historical Society Proceedings, 1899, pp. 128-146.—Ed.
[98] Hennepin, on the east bank of the Illinois River, was laid out in 1831 and made the seat of justice for Putnam County.
Ottawa, the county seat of La Salle, was laid off by the canal commissioners (1830) at the junction of the Fox and Illinois rivers.—Ed.