By Sandy Vasko

I do mean that in a literal way. Northern Illinois was a wilderness long after Illinois became a state in 1818.

The I & M Canal was forging its way through virgin prairie, first-growth forests and hostile natives. Hard to imagine what it was really like isn’t it? We do have a few snippets written down years later that gives us just a glimpse.

Our county seat, Joliet, along with Ottawa, were platted very early on. A remembrance of the first land sale in Joliet was printed in the Joliet Signal, July 4^th, 1857: “We remember the 19^th of June, 1834, as though it was but a week ago. On the morning of that day, Gurdon S. Hubbard and James B. Campbell, started with a large company of buyers, to go in wagons, from here (Chicago) to where is now the flourishing city of Joliet. They had laid out a town on paper called ‘Juliet,’ and they held on the 20^th of June, the first sale of lots by auction. They sold rapidly, and at good round prices. Everybody was inspired with hope, and they all saw nothing but sunshine ahead.

“The route to the new town was not where it now is, nor the means of travel the same. The low, flat prairie west and south of Chicago was mostly covered with water, and it required several hours to drag the coaches or wagons through the deep sloughs to ‘Barry’s Point,’ where a sand ridge relieved the weary traveler who rejoiced in standing on dry ground once more.

“The next point of notoriety was ‘Laughton’s,’ at the crossing of the Des Plaines prairie (near where Riverside is now), and then a ridge of high land, which reached to the old stand of ‘Vials,’ on Flag Creek, where the Chicago bad boys used to go to hold elections. From there the road was rolling land to ‘Doctor Brownson’s,’ thence, on the high bluffs, to the infant Juliet. How changed the route; how differs the mode of traveling; how wonderful the contrast between Juliet then, and Joliet now.”

The following year, Mr. Hopkins Rowell wrote about the land sales in 1835: “Many moneyed speculators were present, threatening to bid against the claims of settlers. Hundreds of the latter, with sleeves rolled up and faces frowning defiance dark as a thunder-cloud, surrounded the officers’ stand on all sides, ready to visit summary vengeance upon any presumptuous speculators. All of these were intimidated save one. A powerful, gigantic Scotchman, about seven feet high, dared to bid against a settler, when in an instant lightning struck him in at least twenty places, and he gladly escaped with his life.

“At that time there were about three thousand Pottawatomie Indians in two encampments. One upon the Des Planes River, and the other upon the Kankakee, a few miles above their junction awaiting removal by the Government to Western reservations. After the land sales, I had some business requiring a horse-back journey to the Mazon River. My route lay through the wild

and trackless region between these two encampments.

“Before this I had seen many Indians, but 3,000 wilder, more uncouth and repulsive human beings can hardly be imagined. Their weird, unkempt hair, and nudity, save a frontal patch tied on, more diminutive than the fig-leaf aprons of Adam and Eve, formed a scene never to be forgotten.

“It is not surprising that I got lost on route to the Mazon, in the midst of such a wilderness of Indians and trackless prairie combined. Neither is it strange that I was somewhat nervous at occasionally meeting detached squads of these villainous fellows during my embarrassed efforts to regain my course, especially when I knew they had occasionally gobbled up solitary white men. Finally, I resolved to steer for the forks of the rivers and get a white settler there to pilot me on my way. Having a pocket compass, I was enabled to take my bearings and ‘strike a bee-line.’ “Two or three miles’ travel on this course, brought me in contact with three Indians; two of them passed me civilly enough, but the third being fuller of bad whisky, which they had obtained at ‘the forks,’ sprang like a tiger to seize my bridle-reins, brandishing a huge knife in the air and shouting like a hoarse demon, ‘Money! money!’

“Being on the alert, I instantly spurred my spirited steed Blackhawk, and ‘by the skin of my teeth,’ cleared him at a single bound, and then (wheeling) facing him, with my effective peace-maker leveled at his head, exclaimed, ‘Take this money, you devil!’ He slunk away like a sneaking prairie wolf, but every hair of my head seemed stiff as a Russian bristle.”

The place where all that took place is now in the Conservation Area downstream from Wilmington.

Yes, Will County was once a very, very wild place.

Sandy Vasko is Director of the Will County Histor­ical Museum & Research Center and President of the Will County Historical Society.