Indians
The following information is drawn from sources [9], [11], [12] and early settler recollections.
The early history of the area that became Lake County includes the mound builders, the Indians, the Jesuit missionaries, the fur traders, the explorers, and finally the early settlers. The mound builders were an agricultural people of whom little is known. Unfortunately much of the work of the mound builders has been plowed over by later settlers. The most extensive mounds are near Pistakee Lake, some mounds as much as a half mile in length. Another at Indian Hill, and one southwest of the Ravinia station was partially excavated and contained ashes which indicated a sepulcher where cremation was practiced. Another mound about ten feet in diameter and circular in form was located in Highland Park.
According to historian Dr. Halsey “The Chicago area was as important a point to the Indian as it has since been to the white man, partly on account of the portage leading to the Desplaines River, and as the lake was the great water highway, so also was its western shore an important highway for these Indian tribes when they traveled by foot. The ridge of land through Deerfield was the favorite Indian trail to Milwaukee.
The Indian arrows and spear heads found in this vicinity were made on the shore of Lake Michigan where chipping stations were still revealed in 1909 by the ‘rejects’ and chippings found in the original quarries, and more perfect forms have been found farther from the lake, where they were used.”
Different types of flint and various forms of construction were used, indicating different tribes, locality of their manufacture, and animals for which they were utilized.”
That Deerfield was a hunting ground is evidenced by the fact that arrow heads in such abundance were in the fields that an occasional one is even now plowed out of the gardens.
Of all the native peoples who occupied this region throughout the centuries, the Potawatomi are most remembered because they were the people the settlers and traders chiefly encountered and documented. About 1500 A.D. the Potawatomi had moved from Canada north of Lakes Huron and Superior, to find warmer climate in southeastern Michigan. By the mid 1700’s, the Potawatomi dominated a vast area, including Lake County, Illinois. Their lands stretched around Lake Michigan from Green Bay, Wisconsin, south to the Kankakee River in Illinois and east to Detroit, Michigan.
By 1830 the fur trade had long since diminished and the Indians had begun a long and painful process of selling off their lands in a series of treaties in order to maintain their communities. The Potawatomi, along with the Chippewa and Ottawa sold their last remaining Great Lakes land to the U.S. Government in the 1833 Treaty of Chicago. Five million acres were sold to the United States including the last tracts of native occupied Great Lakes’ land. The treaty stipulated that these tribes resettle west of the Mississippi River. However, fewer than half of the Potawatomi moved onto reservations in western Missouri and Kansas. Some went north into Canada, while others resettled in northern Michigan and Wisconsin.”
The Potawatomi and other tribes held possession of the land in Lake County until 1836. Before that time no whites were permitted to settle without consent of the Indians. A potawatomi village was located on the Fred Clavey farm on Clavey Road, and there were Indian settlements on both sides of the Skokie. Skokie is the Indian word for marsh. The extensive swamp lying two or three miles from Lake Michigan westward, and extending north and south from Highland to Chicago, is a source of the north branch of the Chicago River.
As Irwin Plagge writes in his recollections, “the early history of Lake County began when Indian tribes lived in the Southwest part of the County along the Des Plaines River. These Indians were known as the Potawatomi, and Miami tribes. Here were the ideal camping places for them, as the wild game and fish gave them their food and the heavy forests gave shelter and protection. These Indians held possession of the land in Lake County until 1836, when the Indians ceded their land to the United States.
The Indian Camp, Mettawa’s Village, was located at what is now known as Half Day, the oldest town in Lake County. Two Indian chiefs and other Indians were buried near this camp, but the exact locations have been forgotten.”
The Potawatomi Indians gave us many local names. The town originally called Little Fort was renamed Waukegan, an exact translation into the language of the Indians. Mettawa and Aptakisic were Indian settlements. Mettawa was the home of the Indian chief Aptakisic also known as ‘Hafda’. The first historian of Lake County, Elijah Haines writes that settlers near Mettawa wished to name their town after Hafda, but a misunderstanding caused the name to be recorded as Half Day.
George Rockenbach, who lived in the Deerfield area from the time he was four months old until he died at the age of 95 recalls “My earliest recollections were of Indians and log cabins. There is an old oak tree in Deerfield that means more to me than to most folks. As a boy I stood under it while an Indian brave asked me to watch him shoot a bird in the tree. He missed.”
Mary Salome Ott who came to the Deerfield area in 1832 when she was 5 years old recalls that the Indians used to come up to the house and ask for milk or bread and her mother gave it to them gladly. In the evening Mary would stand in the doorway or look out the window and in the distance she could see Indians dancing around their fires.
To commemorate the centennial of the admission of Illinois to statehood in 1918, seventh and eighth grade students throughout Lake County were asked to write histories of their townships. Two of these histories have survived; one for Vernon Township and one for Deerfield Township. They both contain chapters titled “Indians” which contain some very interesting narratives written by the students.
You can read these histories at the links below:
