La Salle and the discovery of the great West - North Central ...

1679] THE ILLINOIS TOWN. 169They passed the site of the future town of Ottawa,and saw on their right the high plateau of BuffaloRock, long a favorite dwelling-place of Indians. Aleague below, the river glided among islands borderedwith stately woods. Close on their left towered alofty cliff, 1 crested with trees that overhung therippling current;while before them spread the valleyof the Illinois, in broad low meadows, bordered on theright by the graceful hills at whose foot now lies thevillage of Utica. A population far more numerousthen tenanted the valley. Along the right bank ofthe river were clustered the lodgestown.of a great IndianHennepin counted four hundred and sixty ofthem. 2 In shape, they were somewhat like theand pelicans, abounded in this regioD. In 1840, a friend of mineshot a deer from the window of a farmhouse, near the present townof La Salle. Running wolves on horseback was his favorite amusementin this part of the country. The buffalo long ago disappeared ;but the early settlers found frequent remains of them. Mr. JamesClark, of Utica, 111., told me that he once found a large quantity oftheir bones and skulls in one place, as if a herd had perished in thesnowdrifts.1 " Starved Rock." It will hold, hereafter, a conspicuous placein the narrative.2La Louisiane, 137. Allouez (Relation, 1673-79) found threehundred and fifty-one lodges. This was in 1677. The populationof this town, which embraced five or six distinct tribes of the Illinois,was continually changing.In 1675, Marquette addressed herean auditory composed of five hundred chiefs and old men, and fifteenhundred young men, besides women and children. He estimatesthe number of fires at five or six hundred. ( Voyages du Pere Marquette,98: Lenox.) Membre', who was here in 1680, says that itthen contained seven or eight thousand souls. (Membre' in LeClerc, Premier lUtablissement de la Foy, ii. 173.) On the remarkablemanuscript map of Franquelin, 1684, it is set down at twelve hun«