Part 2

The mounds are additional evidence to this effect. These were opened many years ago and have since been plowed over often. Each contained, it is said, from five to ten human skeletons. The bodies had been placed in a stone-walled sepulcher that was covered with flags of stone a few inches thick, over which a circular mound of earth was thrown. The fact that each of these mounds contained a number of skeletons, apparently placed there at one time, leads many to the conclusion that a battle, or battles, must have been fought in or near the Cave and that all, or some, of the dead were buried together. Scientists advance a plausible explanation of this: “We know not if these burials indicate famine, pestilence, war, or unholy sacrifice. We can only conjecture that they were not graves of persons who had died a natural death.” Because of the Cave’s temple-like form and its proximity to these old mounds, it appears more probable that they were erected in connection with the ceremony of “unholy sacrifice” than for any of the three other suggested causes.

The Harris description of the Cave, written about 1803, refers to it as “the habitation of the Great Spirit.” Some thirty years later, Edmund Flagg, in _The Far West_, written after his visit to “Rock-Inn-Cave,” says: “Like all other curiosities of Nature, this cavern was, by the Indian tribes, deemed the residence of a Manito, or spirit, evil or propitious, concerning whom many a wild legend yet lives among their simple-hearted posterity. They never pass the dwelling place of the divinity without discharging their guns (an ordinary mark of respect) or making some other offering propitiatory of his favor.”

From official records we learn that the section of the country in which Cave-in-Rock is embraced was sold, in 1803, to the United States by the Kaskaskia tribe. In 1818, when the sale was confirmed by the same Indians and the three other tribes then constituting the Illinois confederacy, it became unchallenged government property. Thus, when the Masons, the Harpes, and other early outlaws held forth there, it was still in the Indians’ territory.

From a geological standpoint, the Cave is evidently nothing more than a prosaic hole in a limestone bluff. In neither the main cave nor the crevices above are there any stalactites or stalagmites, but an incrustation resembling such a formation occurs here and there on the walls. In 1818, Henry R. Schoolcraft, in his _Personal Memoirs_, says: “The cave itself is a striking object for its large and yawning mouth, but to the geologist presents nothing novel.” Collot, in 1796, expressed the opinion that “it is an excavation made in the rocks by the continual beating of the flood.” In a _Report_ published in 1866, A. H. Worthen, director of the Geological Survey of Illinois, states that “the limestone (St. Louis limestone) is quite cherty and the Cave has probably been formed by the action of water percolating through crevices of the rock and by the eroding influences of the atmosphere.” Neither of these explanations is satisfactory. No other has been found. Cave-in-Rock has the appearance of a section of a large cave that was formed by an underground stream in some remote geological age, and later disconnected, by upheavals, from the other parts of the subterranean passage. Some of the other parts may still exist. Sulphur Springs Cave, four miles southwest of Equality, may be one. Bigsby Cave, eight miles north of Cave-in-Rock, may be another. Hardin County is besprinkled with many sinkholes, the outlets of which are unknown. The “Big Sink,” four miles north of the Cave, covers about one hundred acres. Cave-in-Rock may have been an outlet for some of these sinkholes until upheavals made such drainage impossible.

In early days the virgin forests retarded, to a great extent, the water of the heavy rains, and as a result floods were less frequent and less severe. It is probable that when Cave-in-Rock and the country about were covered with trees the place was damper than now, for the water then slowly seeped down from the tree-covered surface. Nevertheless, it was sufficiently dry to serve as a good shelter not only for outlaws, who frequently occupied it, but also for men and women going down the river in flatboats.

Today it is comparatively dry, except during the spring and shortly after a heavy rain. Practically all the water running through the Cave now comes from a narrow crevice in the rear, which drains a small sinkhole in the surface. Through this opening, as already stated, much soil has been deposited in the back part of the Cave during the past fifty years. Nature has made practically no changes in the Cave itself since its discovery by white men, but the landscape has been affected by the removal of the large trees that once shaded its mouth. A decrepit sycamore, an ash or two, a few small maple trees, some scrub cedars, and some Virginia creeper constitute the only vegetation now growing around the opening.

The travelers who visited Cave-in-Rock in flatboat days gave the place more time and thought than did those who appeared after the introduction of steamboats. The New Orleans, or Orleans, which was the first steam-propelled boat to make a trip from Pittsburgh to New Orleans, passed it in 1811. Not until fully five years thereafter was the practicability of navigating the Ohio by steamboats satisfactorily demonstrated. Local tradition has it that the James Monroe, coming down in 1816, was the first steamboat to land at the Cave. Thomas Nuttall, who appeared on the scene two years later, was, as already stated, one of the last distinguished men who floated down the river in a flatboat and commented on the place. Leisure was an inseparable feature of flatboat travel. With the coming of steamboats the lingering of travelers along the river became a thing of the past. After 1820 comparatively few boats of any kind stopped at the Cave. Boats became more numerous, but whether propelled by steam or oars, they traveled not only faster but through a country rapidly increasing in population, and passengers and crew stopping in this section found better shelter elsewhere. But Cave-in-Rock was ever pointed out as a place that “in days gone by” had been the den of flatboat robbers. Counterfeiters and other outlaws, however, operated in the neighborhood until as late as 1832.

The earliest record of a professional artist making a sketch of the Cave dates back to May, 1819, when Major Stephen H. Long came down the Ohio on the steamer Western Engineer, on his way to his Rocky Mountains exploring expedition. In his notes on “Cave-Inn-Rock or House of Nature” he gives a description of the Cave, and says that Samuel Seymour, the official artist of the expedition, “sketched two views of the entrance.” Edwin James’s account of this expedition contains many of Seymour’s pictures, but none of places east of the Mississippi. Efforts made in Washington to locate his original sketches were without success.

Edmund Flagg, a traveler, journalist, and poet, who lived the greater part of his life in Louisville and St. Louis, spent a short time at the Cave in 1836, while on a steamboat trip gathering material for his book, _The Far West_. He gives some of the history of the outlaws of “Cave-Inn-Rock” and then describes the Cave and the Island. He says the place furnishes “a scene of natural beauty worthy an Inman’s pencil” and that “if I mistake not an engraving of the spot has been published: a ferocious-looking personage, pistol in hand, crouched at the entrance, eagerly watching a descending boat.”

Maximilian, Prince of Wied-Neuwied, writes May 19, 1833: “We embarked on the Paragon steamboat at Shawneetown ... and after passing Cave-in-Rock Island, a long wooded island, we glided past Cave-in-Rock, a cavern which has been drawn by Lesueur.” Lesueur’s drawing was made about 1825. It is an interior view looking out over the river and conveys a good idea of the Cave’s size and form. However, the opening to the small upper cavity and the leaning pole for climbing into it are placed a little too far to the left.«1»

Maximilian was accompanied by his artist, Charles Bodmer, who, during the course of his travels in North America, made eighty-one pictures, all of which were published in 1843 in the _Maximilian Atlas_. Most of these drawings pertain to the life of the Indians of the Upper Missouri, and stand today as the first and best record of the costumes of these tribes. Among the subjects presented is his Cave-in-Rock picture, one of the two early views of the Cave now available. Bodmer probably drew it from memory. It shows a landscape interesting in itself, but it is an absolutely misleading presentation of the actual scene. From no point or angle does the view appear as drawn by him, or even suggest such a scene. By the ordinary working of nature no such changes could have been brought about in many centuries. The mouth of the Cave is near the lower end of a long bluff of almost uniform height and opposite the lower end of Cave-in-Rock Island. A camera picture of the lower end of this bluff, made in 1917, appears among the illustrations in this book. Bodmer’s view places the opening in a short bluff that is more or less cone-shaped and opposite or above the head of an island. When high water reaches the mouth of the Cave, as is shown by Bodmer, then Cave-in-Rock Island is submerged many feet and its banks cannot possibly be seen. This picture occurs in a number of books, but without any comments on its gross inaccuracy. Some reproducers have taken the liberty of adding a setting sun in the background.

In 1916, J. Bernhard Alberts, of Louisville, made an impressionistic painting of the mouth of the Cave. His painting is true to the scene as it was at the time of his visit. He also drew a pencil sketch showing a general view of the interior with the inner edge of the mouth in the immediate foreground, the artist’s point of view being from just outside the mouth.

Piracy and Rough Life on the River

It is not clear when Cave-in-Rock first became the headquarters of the criminals who flourished on the Ohio, and preyed upon primitive commerce and travel between Pittsburgh and the Lower Mississippi. Shortly after the Revolution was under way, renegades from eastern communities, corrupt stragglers from the American army, and villains who had had their brutal training in western wilds, began to seek in the Ohio valley refuge from the more orderly and well settled communities. Samuel Mason, who had been an officer in the Continental army, converted the cavern into an inn as early as 1797. While he occupied the Cave, and a few years thereafter, it was known as “Cave-Inn-Rock.” It was ideally located. Every passing boat must reveal itself to those in the Cave who had a long, clear view up and down the river. A lookout could detect boats long before boatmen could perceive the Cave. The bold beauty of the bluff made it pleasant for the boats to run in near the sharply shelving shore, and many travelers were thus simply and easily delivered into the hands of the banditti. As an inn, where drink and rest could be had, it decoyed them; as a scene for shrouded crime it was perfect.

The earliest travelers on the western rivers floated or propelled themselves with paddles and oars in small, clumsy craft. The Indian canoe or pirogue was heavy, but was managed with skill by those accustomed to its use. With the growing stream of settlers and the increasing number of settlements along the Ohio and Mississippi, there arose a necessity for larger craft that would bear heavier burdens. This brought the flatboat era covering the period from 1795 to 1820--that quarter of a century known as the Golden Age of Flatboating. During that era river piracy was at its height. The lighter boats, pirogues, skiffs, and batteaux were to the clumsy rafts and flatboats bearing heavy cargoes what submarines and torpedo boats have been to the heavier ships in later warfare. Inland piracy had its advantage in using the small craft on dark nights for sudden descents and escapes.

In the midst of this period the stately steamboat age began its development. It was inaugurated in 1811 when the first steam-propelled “water-walker” made its laborious and astonishing way from Pittsburgh to New Orleans. By 1820 steamboats had become a dependable factor in traffic, and were, to river travel, what the railroad train was later to become to the slow stagecoach and freight wagon. It was inevitable that under steamboat influence flatboats of all types--arks, broadhorns, Orleans boats, keel-boats, and flat-bottomed barges--would follow the primitive pirogues, skiffs, and batteaux into retirement, except for neighborhood use. River piracy waned with the conditions it preyed upon, but not until about 1830 did it cease utterly.

In society, as in nature, everything develops with opportunity and disappears according to necessity. In the primitive age of river craft many travelers were captured or killed by Indians bent on revenge or pillage. These marauders were sometimes led by white renegades. Later, pioneers floating down the Ohio or Mississippi on flatboats came in contact with comparatively few savages, but were exposed to a far more daring and dangerous enemy in the form of river pirates--white men, many of them descendants of supposedly civilized European families. These disappeared as the population increased. Then ensued the reign of the more diplomatic river pirates--the professional gamblers who, for a half century, used cards and other gaming devices as instruments with which to rob those who ventured into their society.

Such were the types of craft and men operating upon and infesting the rivers in the early days. The country through which these boats moved was not the country we see today. Changes in the shapes and channels of the rivers have been numerous, only the rock-defined reaches preserving their original contours. Appearances in detail have greatly changed. The wonderful unbroken forests are gone. Where they once stood are now fields and farms or cut-over forests; every few miles there is a town. The river channels once mysterious and uncertain are now carefully charted.

Early voyageurs going down the river had, of course, no guides and there were no known marks to indicate their approach to any of the features of the river as it wound through the wild, uninhabited country. The boatmen who came afterwards carrying maps rudely scratched, found them unsatisfactory because of inaccuracies or lack of detail. Not until a handbook was made available, after some years of careful compilation of river features, could the uninitiated navigate the large rivers with any degree of safety.«2»

The numerous charts in _The Navigator_ show the curves, islands, sandbars, eddies, and channels, and mark the location of towns and many other places of significance. The accompanying text contains instructions of value to the boatman, and historical data of interest. It is curious, however, that no section of either the Mississippi or Ohio is designated as one where outlaws were likely to be encountered--not even Cave-in-Rock nor the mouth of Cache River, which were long considered the most dangerous resorts on the Ohio. In every edition of _The Navigator_ about a page is devoted to a description of the Cave and instructions to boatmen passing it, but there is no reference to its grim history. Zadok Cramer was evidently a practical man, with no eye to the speculative. It was not until 1814 that he added a few lines bearing on the Cave’s “economic” history:

“This cavern sometimes serves as a temporary abode for those wanting shelter, in case of shipwreck, or other accident, which happen on the river near it. Families have been known to reside here tolerably comfortable from the northern blasts of winter. The mouth of this cave was formerly sheltered, and nearly hid by some trees growing in front of it, but the rude axe has leveled them to the earth and the cavern is exposed to the open view of the passenger. Emigrants from the states, twenty-seven years ago used to land here and wagon their goods across the Illinois country, it not being more than one hundred and twenty miles from this place to Kaskaskia on the Mississippi.”

The Cave, of course, had more than criminal uses. How on one occasion it served as a “temporary abode for those wanting shelter” is recorded in _The American Pioneer_, published in 1842. In this magazine Dr. Samuel P. Hildreth, under the title of “History of a Voyage from Marietta to New Orleans in 1805,” gives an interesting account of the schooner Nonpareil and her voyage south, based on data furnished him by members of her crew. The boat was built at Marietta and started down the river April 21, 1805. She was a sea-going vessel intended to run on the lakes near New Orleans. The captain doubtless steered his course by a copy of _The Navigator_. We quote from Hildreth’s account of what the crew found in 1805 at the well-known lair of outlaws:

“As the Nonpareil approached near the mouth of this dreaded cave, a little after twilight, they were startled at seeing the bright blaze of a fire at its entrance. Knowing of its former fame as the den of a band of robbers, they could not entirely suppress the suspicion it awoke in their minds of its being again occupied for the same purpose. Nevertheless, as they had previously determined not to pass this noted spot without making it a visit, they anchored the schooner a little distance from the shore and landed in the skiff. Being well armed with pistols they marched boldly up to the cavern where, instead of being greeted with the rough language and scowling visages of a band of robbers, they found the cave occupied by smiling females and sportive children. A part of the women were busily occupied with their spinning wheels, while others prepared the evening meal. Their suspicions were not, however, fully removed by all these appearances of domestic peace, still thinking that the men must be secreted in some hidden corner of the cave ready to fall on them unawares. On a little further conversation they found the present occupants of the dreaded cave consisted of four young emigrant families from Kentucky going to settle in Illinois. The females were yet in the bloom of life. Their husbands had bought or taken up lands a few miles back from the river, and after moving their families and household goods to this spot had returned to their former residences to bring out their cattle, in the meantime leaving their wives and children in the occupancy of the cave till their return.

“Having brought, with their spinning wheels and looms, an abundance of flax, the women spent the weary days of their husbands’ absence in the useful employment of spinning. A large fire in the mouth of the cave gave cheerfulness to the gloomy spot and enabled them, at night, to proceed with their labors, while its bright rays were reflected upon the looms, beds, and household utensils which lay piled up along the side of the cave. By day the sun afforded them light, the mouth of the cave being capacious and elevated, while the roof sheltered them from the rain. They were in daily expectation of the arrival of their husbands, when they would move out on to their farms in company.

“A little conversation soon dissipated all suspicions of harm from the minds of their visitors ... and, borrowing from them a torch, they explored the hidden recesses of the cave. At this time no vestige of its former occupants remained but a few scattered barrel staves, and the traces of their fires against the blackened sides of the rock. The walls, even at that early day, were thickly scored with the names of former visitors, to which they hastily added their own, and thousands have no doubt been added since. Bidding a warm farewell to this singular and solitary community, they entered their boat, greatly wondering at the courage and confidence of these lonely females. Their surprise, however, in a manner subsided when they reflected that they were the daughters of Kentucky and from the land of Daniel Boone.”

The Nonpareil experienced no trouble with river pirates, but was wrecked during a storm on the Mississippi and never reached her proposed destination. So, in one form or another, every flatboat and other early river craft suffered more or less trouble. History records many robberies and other misfortunes, but its pages also show that, notwithstanding the numerous trials and tribulations, early river life, rough as it was, was more of a romance than a tragedy. Going down the Ohio and Mississippi proved, in many instances, “easy sailing” compared to the flatboatman’s overland trip north over the Natchez Trace and other wilderness roads infested with highwaymen.

The usual plan of the river robbers was to station one or two of their men and women at some prominent place on shore to hail a passing boat. These decoys pleaded to be taken aboard, claiming they were alone in the wilderness and wished to go to some settlement further down the river, or that they desired to purchase certain necessities which they lacked. If the boat was thus enticed ashore, the crew saw their cargo unloaded, and plundered, or beheld their craft continue its course down the river in the hands of the enemy, themselves held as hostages or murdered.

Boat wreckers were another common source of great danger. Under one pretext or another they managed to get aboard the boat and scuttle it near a place where their confederates were prepared to make an attack. Or, like Colonel Fluger, they waited until they found a boat tied along the bank and then bored holes in the bottom or dug out the caulking. When the ill-fated boat began to sink, the fellow-wreckers rushed to the rescue and appropriated the goods for their own use, killing part or all the crew if necessary.

Then, as now, a number of dangerous channels existed in the Ohio and Mississippi. They were designated as such in _The Navigator_. Near the head of some of them lived reliable settlers who made it a business to pilot boats through for pay. Pirates frequently succeeded in passing themselves off as trustworthy local pilots. Boats turned over to such men for safe steering were usually grounded and immediately thereafter delivered into the hands of outlaws in waiting.

One of the dangerous channels, against which voyageurs were warned by _The Navigator_, ran from the head of Walker’s Bar (a bar beginning about two miles below Cave-in-Rock) down to Tower Rock, and from there extended to the foot of Hurricane Island, a total distance of about eight miles. The author of the river guide, after devoting considerable space to directions for navigating this channel and avoiding the Hurricane Bars, adds a suggestion: “Just below the Cave, on the right bank, there is a person who is sometimes employed to pilot boats through this serpentine channel, and it is better for a stranger to pay a dollar or two for this purpose, than run the risk of grounding on either one or the other of these bars in low water. When the water is high there is no occasion for a director.”