Early Environmental Conditions (continued)

In 1682, La Salle travels the Illinois River, and while at the mouth of the river, his lieutenant, Henri de Tonti writes:

We...were compelled to throw a line into the water for catfish; one we caught was of enormous size, furnishing enough meat for a supper for twenty-two men. (Cruikshank 1998).

Thomas Hutchins, a British military engineer traveling in Illinois in the 1760s, notes that the area between the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers is “flush” with bison and deer and “rich, almost beyond parallel”(Hays 1980). In 1769, Hutchins further comments on the agricultural potential of the region:

The Illinois country is in general of a superior soil to any other part of North America that I have seen. It produces fine Oak, Hickory, Cedar, Mulberry trees, etc., some Dying roots and medicinal plants; - Hops, and excellent wild grapes, and in the year 1769, one-hundred and tend hogsheads of well tasted and strong Wine, were made by the French Settlers, from these Grapes...Indigo may likewise be successfully cultivated...Wheat, Peas, and Indian Corn thrive well, as does every sort of Grain and Pulse, that is produced in any of the old Colonies. (Hays 1980)

In 1773, Patrick Kennedy travels up the Illinois River and provides a perspective of both the Illinois and Mississippi rivers and suggests that the latter has some degree of
bank erosion:

...the land is well timbered and covered with high weeds. There are fine meadows at a little distance from the river, the banks of which do not crumble away as those of the Mississippi do. (Cruikshank 1998).

Kennedy also notes the quality of the water:

The banks of the river are high, the water clear, and at the bottom of the river are white Marl and Sand. (Cruikshank 1998), and;

...we found the water very shallow...The grass which grows in the interval or meadow ground between the Illinois and the Rocks is finer than any we have seen and is thicker and higher and more clear from weeds than any of the meadows about Kaskaskias of Fort Chartres... (Cruikshank 1998).

In 1787, Thomas Jefferson writes:

The Illinois is a fine river, clear, gentle, and without rapids; insomuch that it is navigable for batteaux (small, flat-bottomed boats) to its source (Mills 1966).

As settlers begin to arrive, they, too, document their views of the Illinois River. Traveling up the Illinois in 1821, Henry Schoolcraft finds somewhat different water quality conditions:

We soon found the water tepid and unpalatable and oftentimes filled with decomposed vegetation. (Cruikshank 1998).

In 1838, Captain Howard Stansbury describes the Illinois River valley as:

one to five miles wide, deeply overflowed in every freshet filled with bayous, ponds, and swamps, and infested with wild beasts... (Mills 1966).

In 1844, De Witt Brown, a Peoria town surveyor (1844), reports that the water in Peoria Lake is

clear, the bottom gravelly, and it abounds with various kinds of fish.

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Mr. Brown also reports that in late November 1843, Mr. John Baldwin caught 204 barrels of the following fish species, using a net 200 yards long:

buffalo, pike or pickerel, red horse, bass (white, black, rock, and striped), salmon, black salmon, yellow perch, hickory shad, lake herring, catfish, sun fish, shovel fish, carp, and sturgeon, some of the latter measuring from four to five feet in length, and some of the buffalo weighing from 35 to 40 lbs.