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Myths and Legends of Our Own Land — Volume 07 : Along the Rocky Range by Charles M. (Charles Montgomery) Skinner
page 12 of 41 (29%)
neighboring rock, and from it gushed a fountain of delicious water. The
bodies were found, and the partisans of both the hunters began on that
day a long and destructive warfare, in which other tribes became involved
until mountaineers were arrayed against plainsmen through all that
region.




BESIEGED BY STARVATION

A hundred years before the white men set up their trading-posts on the
Arkansas and Platte, a band of mountain hunters made a descent on what
they took to be a small company of plainsmen, but who proved to be the
enemy in force, and who, in turn, drove the Utes--for the aggressors were
of that tribe--into the hills. Most of them took refuge on a castellated
rock on the south side of Bowlder Canon, where they held their own for
several days, rolling down huge rocks whenever an attempt was made to
storm the height; wherefore, seeing that the mountain was too secure a
stronghold to be taken in that way, the besiegers camped about it, and,
by cutting off the access of the beleaguered party to game and to water,
starved every one of them to death.

This, too, is the story of Starved Rock, on Illinois River, near Ottawa,
Illinois. It is a sandstone bluff, one hundred and fifty feet high, with
a slope on one side only. Its summit is an acre in extent, and at the
order of La Salle his Indian lieutenant, Tonti, fortified the place and
mounted a small cannon on it. He died there afterward. After the killing
of Pontiac at Cahokia, some of his people--the Ottawas--charged the crime
against their enemies, the Illinois. The latter, being few in number,
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