putterings 143a < 144 > 145 index
all conspired to divest the wilderness of its romance
...coupled with the fact that low puutterings were now and then borne ...
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OCR misread of “mutterings” (owing to poor quality of “authorized facsimile... printed by microfilm-xerography”), at “Township Histories. Joliet Township,” in George H. Woodruff, W. H. Perrin and H. H. Hill, The History of Will County, Illinois (Chicago 1878) : 374
same page 374, better scan (Indiana University), from which the passage entire —
When the first white man came to Joliet Township in 1831, there were plenty of Indians in the present limits of Will County, and, though of the friendly Pottawatomies, yet the very fact that they were surrounded by savages, whose ferocity, when aroused, is scarcely equaled by wild beasts, coupled with the fact that low mutterings were now and then borne to them on the gale, of the threatening troubles with the Sacs, then on the verge of taking the war path, all conspired to divest the wilderness of its romance, and render their every-day life, to say the least, unpleasant. The Pottawatomies, though friendly as already stated, were looked upon with much suspicion at times, and required a good deal of watching to prevent their petty thieving, a penchant for which is a native characteristic of the red man. When the Black Hawk war was raging in 1832, the few settlers who remained upon their claims built a fort in the present city limits of Joliet, which they called “Fort Nonsense,” but as it is graphically described in the general history, we pass it with this slight allusion. Nearly half a century has passed since Black Hawk led his painted warriors over the prairies of Illinois, and the wilderness where a few hardy pioneers braving danger, planted a feeble settlement, has “flourished and blossomed like the rose.” The Indians have long since taken up their line of march toward the “land of the setting sun”; their council fires burn far away in the “untrodden West,” and the little settlement on the Des Planes River, which had its birth, as it were, in the midst of an Indian war, has grown into a prosperous community, with a prosperous city in its midst. The half dozen families that settled in Joliet Township in 1831, have increased in numbers, and, including city and township, aggregate several thousands.
In all new communities, one of the first things thought of is a mill.