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SKETCH MAP OF PART OF ILLINOIS

Showing Routes of George Rogers Clark

The second route circled the Massac County lakes to the westward, cutting in between them and the canyons of the Cache River, near what is familiarly known as Indian Point (section 33, township 13, range 3E, Massac County), or one mile south of the northwest corner of Massac County; thence, running north of northwest, it crossed the Little Cache (Dutchman’s Creek) one and one-half miles north of Forman. Thence the route is up the east side of the Cache and through Buffalo Gap, section 25, township 11, range 2E, Johnson County, to the prairie land beyond. The third route follows the second through Massac County.

It is important to note here that the Illinois of Clark’s day—as is partly true now—was composed of three kinds of land: swampy or “drowned” lands, prairie land, and timber land. Being practically a level country, the forests became as prominent landmarks as mountains and hills are in rugged districts. Routes of travel clung to the prairies; and camping-places, if water could be had in the neighborhood, were always chosen on the edge of a forest where wood could be obtained. Between wood and water, of course the latter was the greater necessity. The prairie district in Illinois does not extend below Williamson County, and famous Phelps Prairie in that county is the most southern in the state.[4] Both routes from Fort Massac made straight, therefore, for Phelps Prairie, in which the town of Bainbridge, Williamson County, now stands. Here the two routes joined again; or, rather, the Buffalo Gap route met, in Phelps Prairie, the Kaskaskia Trace, as the “Old Massac Road” had met it in Pope County. The former point of intersection was on the “Brooks place,” section 9, township 9, range 2E, Williamson County.[5] The Buffalo Gap route was known as the “middle trail;” the third route northwest from Fort Massac pursued this path to a point on the Cache above Indian Point; thence it swung westward, keeping far south of the prairie land, passed near Carbondale, Williamson County, and crossed the Big Muddy River at Murphysboro.[6] It was known as the “western trail.” Not touching the prairie land, it is plain that the route could be used only in the driest of midsummer weather.

The evidence that Clark’s guides took the middle trail is overwhelming; the western trail was too wet and did not touch any prairie—this utterly excludes that route from the list of possibilities. According to Clark’s Memoir, on the third day out the party reached a prairie where the chief guide became confused; Clark’s command to him was to discover and take them into the hunter’s road that led from the east into Kaskaskia. There can be no doubt that this “hunter’s road” which came from the east was the Kaskaskia-Shawneetown trace, which the Old Massac Road joined in Pope County, or that the middle trail was the one which the party had been following; the junction of the middle trail on the Brooks Place, above mentioned, is in Phelps Prairie and about a three days’ march from Fort Massac. The junction of the trail passing from Fort Massac eastward of the Massac County lakes with the Kaskaskia and Shawneetown trace is not more than a day’s march from Fort Massac and is not in a prairie. There can be no doubt, therefore, that Clark’s brave band stole northward on the middle trace, the Buffalo Gap route. Clark would not have commanded his guide, under pain of death, to find the Kaskaskia Trace if the party had been traversing that trace and had merely missed the way. Every implication is that the Kaskaskia Trace was the goal sought and not yet found.

The first day’s march of about eighteen miles was a hard one, passing over the winding trail which skirted the southern side of the marshes that flanked the sloughs and lakes of Massac County, but finally leading to the bluffs, near the Cache River, where, probably on Indian Point, the first night’s camp was pitched.[7]

The first taste of the swamps of Illinois was not discouraging, and on the day after, June 29, the march was resumed. The route today was on the top of the watershed between the Cache River on the left (west) and Dutchman’s Creek on the right. Buffalo Gap was passed today, a mile south of the present Goreville, Johnson County. Camp was pitched this night, after a twenty-mile march, probably at the spring two miles north of the present Pulley’s Mill. The route all day was along the buffalo trail or hunter’s road from which Buffalo Gap received its name.[8] This gap, like Moccasin Gap to the eastward, was a famous portal to the prairie country for the bison, Indian, and white man. Two old-time state roads were built through these two gaps.[9]

Pushing forward from the spring near Pulley’s Mill on the morning of June 30, the Virginians ere long came into the prairie lands lying in Williamson County. Phelps Prairie was reached first, the path entering the southern portion of the prairie. Here it was that “John Saunders, our principal guide, appeared confused, and we soon discovered that he was totally lost.” These Illinois prairies are almost treeless, save near the water courses; the grass in the old days grew rank and high and one could tell his course only, perhaps, by the stars, if the pathways were obscured. The paths in these prairies are overgrown in the summer time,[10] and it is probable that this is why Clark’s guide, attempting to find the Kaskaskia Trace, lost his bearings. The important landmarks in these prairies were the forests which often bounded them and in many instances extended into them. These extremities of the forests were and are still known as “points,” and many of them are yet landmarks in Illinois history. A spring beside a point in a prairie made an ideal camping-spot known to half a continent in the olden time. Clark’s campground in Phelps Prairie was, without doubt, at a spring just west of Bainbridge.

Northward from Phelps Prairie two routes ran to Kaskaskia: a wet and a dry route. The one which we may call the highland route led north through Herrin’s Prairie and swung around to the Mississippi by heading such streams as Pipestone, Rattlesnake, and Galium, crossing the Big Muddy