From the Ridge Historical Society
Part III on the natural history
– Carol Flynn, RHS Communications
This is a continuation of W.W. Barnard’s history paper, which was a reminiscence written in 1894 of 50 years before, based on the stories he heard from family members.
“Prairie fires were very frequent and much dreaded. In the afternoon of an autumn day of 1845 our family had their first experience with a prairie fire. The oldest son was sick in bed with the ague [malaria]. Grandmother with her four younger sons and 14 year old daughter went out to fight the flames, but Mary who was too small to help, remained at home, carrying water to her brother watching the fire. As she looked to the west and south she heard loud roaring and saw flames running 10 to12 feet high where they reached the tall weeds and extending as far as she could see. Eagerly she watched the family who were fighting the flames. They had nothing with which to plow and they could only set backfires and whip it with wet bags and brush. They fought heroically but were continually obliged to retreat. Nearer and nearer the house it came, but at last, when it came to the low grass only a few rods from the door the fighters conquered.”
In explanation, by late summer, the prairie grasses grew as tall as eight to ten feet high, and dried out as their growing cycle ended. This was the “dry season” which saw much less rain.
Fires started by various means, including lightning strikes and sometimes by the sun refracting off glass or metal left by wagons passing through. The Indians used controlled burning to aid in hunting. But many of the fires resulted from settlers’ carelessness or accidents, such as campfires and cooking fires that got out of control, ashes from a pipe, or sparks from a chimney. Once a fire started, it could spread very quickly.
Prairie fires benefit the ecosystem by burning off old growth and allowing renewal, however, they were very dangerous for the people settling in the area.
Barnard further tells us:
“It was the custom to plow around the houses and stacks [of hay] for protection against these fires. Sometimes two circles were plowed and the grass between them burned off, thus an effectual barrier was made. Dr. Egan, one of the early doctors of Chicago, asked one of the farmers the best way to protect his stacks from fire and was told to plow around the stacks and burn between. He followed the instructions by plowing several times around the stacks and then burning between them and the stacks, which resulted in his burning up his own hay.”
Perhaps there is a lesson here – maybe Dr. Egan should have stuck to doctoring and hired someone knowledgeable about the firebreak process to do the burning.
In the earliest years, wildlife was abundant. Deer was the largest prey and wolves the largest predators, although an occasional lynx or panther [cougar] or black bear was spotted that had wandered in from the more remote and wilder Palos area. Prairie chickens, pigeons, quail, rabbits, squirrels, raccoons, etc., kept tables well supplied with game.
Flocks of millions of passenger pigeons darkened the skies. This was once the most abundant bird in North America. Hunting, and deforestation which resulted in loss of habitat, led to the species becoming totally extinct by the early 1900s. A picture of a mounted passenger pigeon in the Field Museum of Natural History is attached.
To the south, the Calumet River, and Stony Creek at the tip of the Ridge, had plentiful fish. Beaver, otters, mink and muskrats were abundant in the many sloughs that covered the area but were soon trapped out. Every fall wild rice beds in the sloughs attracted thousands upon thousands of water fowl. The reeds and cattails were taller than men. Hunting in the sloughs was dangerous; it was easy to get lost and mired in the mud. Many years, hunters disappeared.
The “Morgan Boys,” as W.W. Barnard’s uncles always called Thomas Morgan’s sons, kept a pack of greyhounds, which their father had brought over from England on his private ship. They led hunting parties to bring down deer. Hunting parties also chased down the wolves. The women of the pioneer families rode on these hunts, and many of them were better horsemen and shooters than the men.
The settlers shared the prairie with the wolves. Barnard wrote, "At night the howl of the wolf filled the air, but this occasioned no alarms." The wolves generally left the humans alone, although there are some stories of hungry wolf packs killing lone humans, especially during winter. Livestock was another matter. Settlers killed off the wolves to protect their valuable cattle. A picture of timber wolves, also called gray wolves, is attached.
Today, a number of foxes are evident in the area. They probably would not have been here much back then, they would have avoided any area dominated by the much larger wolves. The same with coyotes. The eradication of the wolves in the mid-1800s allowed smaller predators to move into the area and take over the wolves’ natural niche.
Located south of Chicago is the Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie, a restoration of 20,000 acres of natural prairie and wetlands. A visit there shows us what the land around the Ridge looked like 150+ years ago when the first settlers moved in.
The next installment will answer some questions that have come in from these posts.