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There is evidence on record that there was an older Shawneetown located at the very point where this "salt-kettle" pottery and these stone graves were found. The deed presented was dated July 20, 1773, and recorded at Kaskaskia, September 2, 1773. In this mention is made of the "ancient Shawnee town" on Saline Creek, the exact locality of the stone graves and suit-kettle pottery.
Shawneetown, Illinois, was once the pride and pet of Egypt. It was larger than Chicago, and doubtless it would have become the capital of the State had it been called Shawnee City. But the name was against it, and dry rot set in.
Born in North Carolina in 1791, his early years were spent in Kentucky. In the last-named State he studied law and was admitted to the Bar. He removed to Illinois in 1815 and located in Shawneetown upon the Ohio River for the practice of his profession. The county of Gallatin, his future home, was then one of the most populous in the Illinois Territory.
As night closed in upon us, owls dismally hooted in the mainland woods, buzzards betook themselves to inland roosts, herons winged their stately flight to I know not where, and over on the Kentucky shore could faintly be heard the barking of dogs at the little "cracker" farmsteads hid deep in the lowland forest. Shawneetown Farm-houses on stilts Cave-in-Rock An island night.
The trade, in time, decreased with the decadence of river traffic; and Shawneetown has since had but slow growth it now being a dreary little place of three thousand inhabitants, with unmistakable evidences of having long since seen its best days.
The man was only twenty-three, but semi-pioneer life makes men early, and Robert Ingersoll stood first in war and first in peace among the legal lights of Shawneetown. His size made amends for his cherubic face, and the insignificant nose was more than balanced by the forceful jaw.
I shudder at the blackness of the crime. It occurred only yesterday, and we are at this moment near the spot where the horrid deed was committed. Two other murders have lately been committed near this place. A stranger was found hung on a tree and a traveler was murdered near Shawneetown by the same men whose names have been mentioned.
"Some row up, but we row down, All the way to Shawneetown. Pull away, pull away," was a favorite chorus. Natchez, Tennessee, held a like unsavory reputation among the Mississippi River boatmen, for there was the great market in which were exchanged northern products for the cotton, yams, and sugar of the rich lands of the South.
She was so neat a maid That her stockings and her shoes She toted in her lily-white hands, For to keep them from the dews." Just below the mouth of the Wabash on the Ohio was the site of Shawneetown, which marked the line of division between the Ohio and the Mississippi trade.
On the night of April 1st, the water in the streets was twelve feet deep. After another twenty-four hours, all that was left of Shawneetown were the few substantial brick and stone buildings behind the main levee, and they were considered unsafe.
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