Shall Illinois Preserve the Ruins of Old Fort Massac?

The St. Louis Republic., February 22, 1903, Magazine Section

Shall Illinois Preserve the Ruins of Old Fort Massac?

Suggestion has been made officially to the legislature and it is probably that $10,000 will be appropriated for the purpose - Civilization has quietly ebbed away from Picturesque stronghold of pioneer days until tree-grown entrenchments are all that remain - History of the Fortress is closely interwoven with that of the west.

Picture captions (images are too dark to see):

[image 1] J. T. Brown 74 years old the only citizen of Metropolis who remembers when the palisades were standing

[image 2] Site of the Old Fort Massac showing the intrenchments and trees which have grown up since the formerly important military station was abandonded

[image 3] Judge B. C. Brown Metropolis authority on the history of Fort Massac


[image 4] The one time ramparts as they appear from the river bank


[image 5] Looking down the Ohio from the Fort.  Paducah Packet Approaching


By a staff correspondent

Metropolis, Ill. Feb 20. - Shall Illinois preserve as a reminder of its storied days that are gone, the tree-grown intrenchments upon the banks of the Ohio which mark the site of historic Fort Massac?  The request has been officially made to the Legislature, and it is probable that $10,000 will be appropriated for the purpose.


The moldered ramparts of this frontier fortress are all that remain of three one-time western strongholds.  The onward rush of civilization has buried Fort Dearborn under the city of Chicago. The Mississippi has obliterated Kaskaskia, washed it out of existence.


And Massac - Massac was forgotten.  Its blockhouse rotted and fell to the ground;  its stockade disappeared, and its soldiers and their descendants dispersed.  Trees sprouted and grew within its circumference.  Its wells became filled with brush, its terraces uneven and ragged.  It became like the uneven summit of any other hummock along the Ohio's course, so that knowledge of the fort is necessary to recognize, in the quadrangle of rough and overgrown earth ridges, a spot historical and important to the winning of the West.


Civilization marched in upon and smothered Fort Dearborn, but quietly ebbed away from Fort Massac.  As a location for a town, the more level field a mile distant better suited modern existences.  So it was there that the small city of Metropolis gradually and imperceptibl, by some sixty years of effort, accumulated it's 3,500 population.


INTEREST REVIVED BY DAUGHTERS OF THE REVOLUTION


But from this forgotton site - forgotten until the Daughters of the Revolution inaugurated the present revival - is to be seen as beautiful a bit of a riverscape as the traverler could wish to behold.


To the south, along the Ohio, the view is unobstructed for a full eighteen miles, and to the north the eye can almost discern Paducah, twelve miles away.  The river is all shades of yellow and red, bright and glowing in the middle, where the current ripples shimmer back the sun's rays, and dark under the shadow of the forest-girt banks where quiet eddies reflect the trees.


The View called to mind many a tradition and story that are indissulably linked to the bight of country.  It seemed that Daniel Boone or Elmon Kenton, or some less-famous early-day adventurer, would issue from that Kentucky woods and essay to swim the mile-wide river, rifle and clothing secured to a white-oak log.  Or that Tecumseh, the Indian Chief, or another such red warrior chiefain, with his braves treading single-file through the leaf-paved forest, would push through the brake to the water side, draw forth a craftily concealed canoe, and proceed under the sheltering shadow of the shore upon some war expedition or buffalo hunt.


Then, again, the Chief might be "Chinggashnook," father of Uncas - the Latter "The Last of the Mohicans" - who, with "Hawkeye," the best pioneer of fiction, set their faces toward the unknown West, driven from their former haunts in the Adirondacks and Mohawk Valley by the encroachments of settlers.


These creations of Fenimore Cooper's novels start from the ground.  Chinggashkook, a towering frame, grim face, a lined map of adventure and exposure, of almost a century's experience among scenes wild and free;  Hawkeye, the typical frontiersman, to whom is known every secret of the forest and plain - both thoughts in the past, are pushing further into solitude, there to die surrounded by nature, undisturbed by the invaders who sought new lands, not for love of them, but for "what was in it."


The booming whistle of the river steamboat sounds.  It is the Dick Fowler the Cairo-Paducah packet, announcing herself before Metropolis, not before Old Fort Massac.  The imagery summoned up when standing upon these old terraces dissolves.  Then another whistles, octaves higher.  The Illinois Central, from St. Louis.  These signals scatter away these chimerical illusions, ghosts, if you willand transform the Fort Massac quadrangle into a queerly formed grasey eminence, a bit of river pasturage garrisoned by cows.


MASSAC COUNTY NAMED AFTER OLD FORT


Such idle, conjured, sentimental images put to flight, you go back to Metropolis where, notwithstanding the fact that everybody is at least striving to be up to date, you will have much thrust upon you concerning Fort Massac.  Massac County takes its name from the fort and necessarily this offered a cue for searching Inquiry as to the stronghold's history.  By the conjunction of this and that man's personal recollection, and the testimony of Government documents, this history has been piled up, fact upon fact, detail upon detail.  The good people of Metropolis soon hand you so much itemised information that the romantic is squelched under the burden and the load seems dry as dust.


Judge Ben O. Jones of Metropolis is most learned of his townsmen on the subject.  Redd Green of Cairo, owner of the property, naturally is interested in the theme.  J. T. Browne of Metropolis now in his seventy-fourth year, is the only one who can speak as one whose eyes have seen.  He remembers when the stockade was standing, and he tells that his mother, the daughter of Captain Wilcox - a United States Army officer, then in command was married within its walls.  Two histories of the fort have been written, and recently Mrs M. T. Brown of Bloomington, State secretary of the D. A. R., collected the information into a paper, which was read before the State Historical Society.


A little time after the first dull thud, the consequence of my tumble from a dream castle into a thorny bed of mere data, this mass begins to shape itself, take life and the phantasmagoria of the past reappear, marching in and out of the gates of Fort Massac.


Spanish soldier, Jesuit priest, French soldier, chevalier, coureur de bola, Indian chief and then, last but not the least, the American, our trappers and hunters, the pioneers, and, after them, the soldiers of the Revolution, they who bought freedom with their blood.


Famous names are not lacking - General George Rogers Clark, "Mad" Anthony Wayne, General James Wilkinson, Aaron Burr and Blennerhassett.


DE SOTO IS IN THE SHADOWY PROCESSION


Even old De Soto is in the shadowy procession.  Tradition has it that his men first recognised the military advantages of the site, and that, having ascended the Ohio from the Mississippi "some thirteen leagues," they built a rude structure, as a temporary protection against Indians.  But if they came, they found nothing of what they sought - gold - and, after a short period of resting and hunting the buffalo, their adventurous spirit led them far afield in other wanderings.


First comes the Spaniard;  then the Frenchman, the latter more of a colonizer and aiming at establishing another link to the line of forts, beginning with Fort Niagara and including Fort Du Quesne, which were to restrict the English colonies to their holdings along the coast.  It is in 1702 or 1703 that it becomes a post, and it is founded by a Monsieur Juchereau de St. Damie, whose train included some thirty-four Canadians and a priest - Father Mermet, who was the first "Black Gown" - thus the Indians termed priests - to preach Christianity upon the Lower Ohio.


By 1781 the fort is fully established and is a trading point of importance.  Ten thousand buffalo hides are stored within it's walls awaiting transportation.  Two-score coureur de bols, free spirits learned in the mysteries of the wilderness, are lounging within it's walls.  Two-score French soldiers are there, and their commandant, a cavalier lacking not for blue blood, an heir of name but no estates, who in the King's name fared into the Western expanse.


It is winter, a cold, hard winter, and the Ohio is frozen over.  From the Kentucky shore appear on the ice ten or a dozen shaggy bodies - bears sporting upon the ice.  For once the coureur de bols are not suspicious.  They and some of the soldiers leave the fort to stalk the game, and their companions descend to the shore to watch.


Then a full hundred of savages, who had waited in the rear, sheltered behind trees and brush, rush to the attack.  But one man escaped.  He conceals himself in a hear-by cave and watches the Indians burn the rough fortification and destroy or carry away the 10,000 buffalo hides.


GREEDY ENGLISH ENCROACH UPON THE FRENCH


The english, filled with a thirst of conquest - the Anglo-Saxon spirit - encroaches upon the French west of the Alleghenies.  They build a trading post not far from Fort Du Quesne, which is burned by the French in 1752. Then follows the war of 1756.  The school-book-heralded defeat of Braddock gives temporary luster to the French arms, but elsewhere the French are beaten.


The French Western flotilla retreats down the Ohio until they reach our old fort.  The name at this date is Fort Assumption.  It has been rebuilt on a small scale after the massacre.  But now it is enlarged into a respectable fortress, with cannon and blockhouse.  It is given a stronger stockade and bastions.  The French are to rally here and hold to their claim of all the territory in the Mississippi Valley.  A christening is held and Fort Assumption, because of the slaughter of 1731, becomes Fort Massacre, or Fort Massac.

But the French were not to maintain sovereignty.  The treaty of 1763 was admission of defeat, and among the forts ceded to Great Britain is enumerated the following;  "Thirteen leagues from the Mississippi, on the left bank of the Ohio, is Fort Massac or Assumption, built in 1757 or 1758, a little below the mouth of the Cherokee (the Tennessee).  It is of consequence for the English to preserve it, as it secures the communication between the Illinois and Fort Pitt."

But the English do not think it of consequence to preserve it, which fact worked well for General George Rogers Clark, who was to come this way later.  An English officer, a Captain Gordon, was sent down the Ohio and accepted the surrender of the post, but made no effort to garrison it, or continue it as a frontier stronghold.

General Clark comes with his indomitable 151.  The War of the Revolution is more than half over, and he conceives plans to secure the Northwest to the Union.  He unfurls the Stars and Stripes upon Illinois ground for the first time at Fort Massac.  Thence to Kaskaskia, Cahokia and Vincennes, where he scores his three memorable victories.  The middle West is won.  Had the British manned Fort Massac, the tale probably had been different.

AT EVERY MILE A TREE IS BLAZED

From Massac to Kaskaskia is an old trail.  At every mile a tree is blazed, and this mark of the ax is the only token of the roadway.  But the 151 are accustomed to such traveling, and their way is made and their deeds accomplished.  They paved the future for the Louisiana Purchase.

Washington is President, and the thirteen States are free and under the banner of the free.  Intrigue stirs the capital - the French Minister, Genet, plans two expeditions to invade the Spanish dominion in Louisiana and Florida, and issues commissions to Americans who secretly recruit troops.  The one expedition must proceed down the Ohio.  Governor Shelby of Kentucky refuses to interfere; he is in sympathy.  General Washinton takes action, the fruition of which is the rehabilitation of Fort Massac.

General Wayne is ordered to send a detachment from Fort Washington (Cincinnati) to Fort Massac which shall intercept any unlicensed foray.  Major Thomas Doyle is selected for the task.  Later, General Wayne himself appears at the fort, and the foreign machinations are defeated.

Indian warfare follows, and a repetition of the original massacre is many a time threatened.  This is the day of Boone and Fenton, and the record of the long conflict between Indian and white claimant of the soil again is a page red with blood.  But the backbone of Indian strength is broken at the battle of Fallen Timbers in 1796.  The Illinois prairie is gone forever from the tawny race.  "Hawkeye" sought solitude out in the prairie, but the woodsmen and the plainsmen soon can find no home here; this is destined to be the State of Illinois, farm land worth $100 an acre

The genius of Aaron Burr is tottering to it's fall, and part of this tragedy centers at Fort Massac.  Thence is the famous Burr expedition to the Southwest and Mexico to have it's nucleus.  Here he will meet Blennerhassett and the scheme to seize the throne of the Montesumes will be evolved.  General Wilkinson and the Kentuckians, up to Governor Shelby himself, are parties to the plan.  Burr arrives in 1805.  He departs, only to be arrested at Fort Stoddard, subsequently to face trial for treason.

STRENGTHENED AND GARRISONED IN 1812

The War of 1812 sees the fort strengthened and garrisoned, but it played a minor part.  Its day by this time was practically gone, its purposes served.  Its stockade wis allowed to disintegrate, its blockhouse has no tenants.  In 1841 it springs for the moment into prominence.  A board of army officers recommens it as the most suitable site for a Western armory.  but the Government is dilatory in acting, and the armory eventually goes to Rock Island.

The Civil War breaks out, and the old fort almost as deserted as it is to-day.  No sound of conflict reaches its sequestered ominence.  Yet on the open plot of ground immediately back of the intrenchments Union soldiers are drilling.  These fighters for the preservation of the United States march, wheel, halt, form in fours, in twos, in single file, advance, retreat, kneel, aim and fire - all in mimicry, but in preparation for their small part in the great struggle.  And where they drilled Revolutionary soldiers had drilled, and before that, the Spaniard and the Frenchmen.

Now we are come to the day that the cows graze upon the drillground - the present.  Is there anything of Fort Massac historical interest omitted?  Yes, there is, "Old Fort Massac," reflected Frank Corlies of Metropolis.  "Yep, there's where we did our courtin' years agone.  It's a mile or so from town, and a pleasant stroll of an evening, so when we was young lads, out yonder we'd walk with our sweethearts."

So for many a citizen of Metropolis Fort Massac has a greater significance than mere history can give.  Since there at Fort Massac, in the moonlight, beside the Ohio's Yellow flood, young hearts were stirred to thoughts of love - which was well enough.

HASTINGS MacADAM

Please see:  Fort Massac State Park, Metropolis, IL dedicated Nov 5, 1908 by the DAR