At these two towns of Chicaza and Chicacilla, there are no vestiges of fortifications or entrenchments of any description, in fact there are none to be found in any of the Chickasaw old towns (or “fields”) that can be identified. It is probable that the fortified towns described in the De Soto and the early French expeditions were merely wooden walls or palisades, for otherwise there would be traces of them still remaining, so that at least some of them could be recognized as such.
The above conclusions were incidentally arrived at in the course of some archaeological explorations made in January and February 1891, in the former country of the Chickasaws, and may be considered as a contribution to some future revision of the generally accepted route of De Soto and his little army east of the Mississippi.
T. H. Lewis.
FOOTNOTES
[11] Continuous wet weather and the resulting flooded state of the country prevented the writer from visiting the Agnew locality, which he had intended to examine like the others.
CHICAGO PIONEERS.
Hon. Isaac N. Arnold.
Isaac Newton Arnold was born at Hartwick, near Cooperstown, Otsego Co., New York, Nov. 30, 1813. His father George Washington Arnold was a physician of honorable standing, and the family in America dates back to the earliest settlement of New England, some of its members being associates of Roger Williams and other sterling men, who established in Rhode Island the first real Republic that ever gladdened the hearts of men with its assertion and protection of liberty and independent, sovereign manhood. The natural surroundings of his youth—the romantic scenery of Otsego County, with its beautiful lakes and extensive forests, so delightfully picturesque—were well calculated to develop a strong and noble manhood. Amidst this beauty of nature and comparative solitude, the man who was to make such a success of life drank in inspiration and learned to love the pure and the beautiful. Early thrown upon his own resources, self-made and self-reliant, he reached a position of greatness, through a career of usefulness, honor and integrity. His early education was obtained in the country schools and the village academy. From seventeen to twenty years of age he employed his time in teaching half the year and in attending school the other half, his revenue from teaching enabling him to support himself in his pursuit of an education. Ultimately he began to prepare himself for the profession in which he afterwards achieved such a notable success. Reading law in the offices of Richard Cooper and Judge Morehouse of Cooperstown, Mr. Arnold was admitted to the bar in 1835, and after practicing for a brief time as a partner of Judge Morehouse, he came to Chicago in 1836, and at once began that illustrious professional career which placed him among the foremost jurists not only of Illinois, but of the nation. It is scarcely possible to have a more graphic and faithful picture of a life than was drawn by Hon. E. B. Washburne in his eloquent eulogy of Mr. Arnold before the Chicago Historical Society. He said: “During all the active years of a long and well-spent life, Mr. Arnold has been a citizen of Chicago, contributing by his indefatigable industry, his unimpeachable integrity, his patriotism, his public spirit, his rare abilities, his great acquirements, his spotless moral character, his high social qualifications and instincts as a thorough gentleman to give lustre to the city of his residence and to the generation to which he belonged; a successful lawyer that stood in the front ranks of his profession; a cautious, far-seeing and wise legislator, distinguishing himself in the halls of legislation, national as well as state; a successful public speaker and a writer of great power and wide-spread popularity, he has left to the generations that succeed him the legacy of a noble example and a noble name.”
Mr. Arnold was enrolled at the bar of the Supreme Court in Illinois Dec. 9, 1841, and in that same year he became counsel in a case which established his ability as a lawyer and brought him prominently before the profession. It was a time of great business depression, and a recreant legislature had passed an act of repudiation of public debts and providing that unless the property of a judgment debtor should bring two-thirds of its appraised value, it should not be sold under execution. Mr. Arnold was a determined opponent, of such legislation, and being employed by a New York judgment creditor to enforce his claim against a debtor, he attacked the constitutionality of the act, carried the case to the Supreme Court of the United States, where the case came on in January, 1843. Mr. Arnold presented an irrefutable written argument and Chief Justice Taney in one of the ablest and most elaborate opinions ever delivered in the court, sustained the position of the counsel for the appellant. Mr. Arnold was a powerful advocate whether before court or jury. He was exceedingly pains-taking in the preparation of his cases—which is half the battle with the lawyer—and before a jury he had no superior. As one of his associates at the bar has put it: “He was a learned lawyer, a jurist in the same sense of the term, and for more than thirty years stood at the head of the Chicago bar.”