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Indian Stone Forts In Illinois |
| Hogg
Bluff
Hogg Bluff is a "stone
fort " in Johnson County, Illinois. This is in the Shawnee National
Forest. Two parts of the "stone fort" were excavated at Hogg
Bluff. The wall was nine feet across. There were only a few rocks left
to show it's height. The stone wall would be really tall but it would
be impossible to find out it's real height.There was a midden area,
a place were they threw their trash. Things that they found at Hog Bluff
were a metate, two of the round ground stone mullers, lots of pot sherds,
a few knife blades, arrowheads, some flint chips, and daub. Daub is
fire-hardened clay used for plastering structure walls. A metate is
a large stone, containing a smooth dish-shaped depression used for grinding
food. The midden area was a area of black soil. The area had lots of
bone pieces, flint chips, and broken pottery pieces with only a few
projectile points. They found seeds and they think that the Indians
were eating there. They think that the Indians lived there for at least
a half of a year. Indian Kitchen is in Pope
County. Archeologist have found pottery and pieces of flint. The bluff
is 150 feet wide and 700 feet long. Indian Kitchen is one of the least
known sites where there is still a portion of the original stone wall
intact. The stone wall enclosed about two and a half acres of land. Drapers Bluff is a 300 foot
bluff on the east side of Lick Creek Valley in Johnson and Union counties.
The south point of the bluff turns about 1000 feet into Johnson County
making a ridge about 400 feet wide. In the center of the ridge are the
signs of a stone wall the width of the ridge. Early settlers say the
wall was about 6 feet high and 6 feet wide, and it enclosed 10 acres
of land. Cornish Bluff is located
in Johnson County, a few miles from Reynoldsburg, Illinois. Cornish
Bluff Fort differs from other forts because of its semicircular shape.
At the west end of the bluff, the wall outline goes toward the east
for thirty rods, then turns at a 45 degree angle toward the southeast
for another thirty rods. The land had been in cultivation (the process
of tilling or growing) for many years. The view from the bluff top is
magnificent. Trigg Stone Fort was discovered on a high hill in Johnson County. It has been practically destroyed like other forts over the years. A reporter named L.O. Trigg reported that early farmers tried to make early settlers remove the stones, and they had success. The early settlers used the stones for foundations and other things. There is a so called "smoke tower" near Trigg. The Indians might have used this "smoke tower" for signals. This might be nothing but a pile of stones that might have been made by early white settlers.
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