Last weekend, I took a ride along the Illinois & Michigan Canal.  It has been 75 years since the I&M Canal was last used for commerce, but it still exists in various states of repair.  For most of its course, the old tow path, once the domain of barge-pulling mules and oxen, now hosts bicyclists and joggers.  I was one of the former, biking what I consider the most scenic and historic section of the 90 mile course.

The canal is not named for the states that bear its name.  It actually reflects the canal’s purpose of linking Lake Michigan to the Illinois River, a tributary of the Mississippi.   Construction began in 1836, just a few years after the last hostile Indians in Illinois were removed to reservations.  Work was completed in 1848.  Its eastern terminus is the Chicago River, and from there Lake Michigan.  The I&M Canal put Chicago at the center of a great water highway connecting the St. Lawrence Seaway, New York City (via the Erie Canal), and the entire Mississippi River Valley.  Were it not for this narrow, inauspicious waterway, Chicago may have grown to be no more important than Green Bay, Wisconsin, or Gary, Indiana.

I started my weekend adventure in the town of Lasalle, where the canal connects to the Illinois River.  In the nineteenth century, this is where the river became deep enough to support barge traffic.  East of Lasalle, it was too shallow, necessitating the canal.  The town is named after Rene-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle.  Nowadays, he is simply referred to as “LaSalle”.  He was one of the great French voyageurs, those intrepid explorers of the seventeenth century that included Marquette, Nicolet, Joliet, Hennepin, and others whose names grace towns and landmarks from the American Midwest all the way to Quebec.  LaSalle built forts and settlements from Indiana and Illinois, to the far away Gulf coast of Texas, where he was ultimately murdered in a conspiracy of scared, hungry subordinates.

Six miles east of Lasalle is the small town of Utica, Illinois.  Utica was once a very quaint village with a fairly robust tourist industry for a Midwest town of its size.  That changed four and a half years ago in less than one minute of terror.  A tornado with winds of 200 mph hit the town with little warning.  Seventeen frightened adults and children fled to the basement of a tavern that had stood on a downtown corner for 117 years.  It should have been the perfect refuge.  Its thick limestone walls and solid nineteenth century construction had withstood many terrible storms before this one.  But Utica had never experienced a storm like this.  They were huddled in the basement only a minute or two when the tornado slammed a car into the building.  The tavern’s floor collapsed from the impact, instantly killing eight people below, and seriously injuring nine others.  The youngest victim was 18; amazingly, all the children survived.  A ninth fatality occurred one month later when the village clerk gave birth prematurely to a stillborn infant, its prenatal death likely caused by the stress of the storm’s aftermath.  Utica is slowly recovering, but recovery is difficult when more than half of a small village with fewer than a thousand residents is wiped off of the map in an instant.

A mile upstream from Utica on the opposite bank of the river stands a 125 foot promontory called Starved Rock.  Today, it is part of a popular state park visited by thousands of vacationers each year.   Many come here to camp; others stay in a rustic lodge built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930’s to provide New Deal employment for young men desperately needing work.  The lodge sits on a bluff above the river, surrounded by 2600 acres of scenic woods and canyons. 

As implied by its name, Starved Rock was not always the bucolic recreation destination that it is today.  According to legend, in 1769 a band of Illiniwek took refuge atop the rock from a numerically superior group of Ottawa warriors and their Potawatomie allies.  The Ottawa were seeking revenge for the assassination of their famous leader, Chief Pontiac, by an Illiniwek brave during an intertribal council near present day St. Louis.  Starved Rock juts out into the river, and is virtually impenetrable from three sides.  Access from the remaining side is steep, narrow, and easily defended.  Rather than risk a full frontal assault up the rock, the Ottawa laid siege.  The Illiniwek were trapped.  The few who tried to escape were easily spotted and immediately killed.  Days passed, and eventually the Ottawa and Potawatomie heard nothing on the rock but the mournful cry of vultures, and the ravenous growl of other scavengers.  They cautiously ascended the narrow path and discovered scores of dead men, women, and children, who, like the Jewish heroes of Masada 1700 years earlier, preferred starvation and suicide to the butchery of their enemies below. 

Unfortunately, there are other instances of bloodshed in this scenic valley.  When LaSalle floated down the Illinois River in search of the Mississippi in 1679, he found a large settlement of 6000 – 8000 Illiniwek on the opposite bank from la roche, his name for Starved Rock.  The Illiniwek looked to the French as potential trading partners and military allies in their struggles against their enemies, especially the Iroquois, who were jealous of any encroachment on their monopoly of trade with European colonists.

LaSalle ordered a small group of Frenchmen to build a fort on la roche to protect the Illiniwek city from Iroquois attack while he went east to procure supplies.  When LaSalle and his men returned the following year, they found no sign of the fort.  Where once stood a vibrant Indian city, LaSalle saw a wasteland of burned lodges interspersed with charred wooden poles topped with human skulls, half eaten by the hawks and buzzards still circling overhead.  Nearby, wolves and coyotes fought over the naked remains pulled from desecrated graves at the city’s edge.

Today, this scene of carnage is occupied by stately, old, farm houses and fertile fields of corn and soybeans.  Collectors of Indian artifacts sometimes find arrowheads and other stone tools in freshly plowed land.  Otherwise, there is little evidence of the region’s rich and bloody history.  Few of the cyclists riding this path today know they are passing through the scene of horrid atrocities from hundreds of years ago.  Where buzzards once devoured Indian dead, I watched a great blue heron land on the canal bank, waiting for his next meal.  Instead of chasing away wolves and coyotes, I chuckled at chipmunks scurrying across the trail to hide from my approaching bike.  No Iroquois or Ottawa warriors crossed my path.  Adventure seeking voyageurs were not to be found.  I saw only the occasional farmer harvesting his crop, and other cyclists who, like me, came to this place to find peaceful weekend respite from the stress of modern life.  As I contemplate what those who preceded me experienced in this place, whether during a terrible storm four years ago, or during a far more dangerous time centuries ago, I realize my life is not really stressful at all.