CHAPTER 1

Who were they who blazed the trails through the vast stretch of trackless prairie to the spot that was to become El Paso, Woodford County, Illinois? Was it perchance, first of all, an Indian brave who, leaving well beaten paths in search of food one spring day, slithered his way through the gently swaying grass to surprise a bison wallowing in a slough? Perhaps it was he who lost the two axe heads which Edson Harvey found decades later on his lot one of block thirty. Perhaps this brave led the way for others of his tribe by his tales of the lush grasslands he had seen abounding in bison, seeking relief from the heat and the insects in the watering places and the drying lakes dotting the plains. Evidences of buffalo wallows still remain; two are on the P. H. Andrews farm northwest of Gridley where maps as late as 1873 show a Gridley Lake. It was later drained off by open ditches to reclaim the rich farmland known to this day as Poverty Flats.

Possibly this brave took along a young and restive son, who in his excitement at proving his skill as a hunter, lost a small but perfect arrowhead which a little pale-faced school girl was destined to find untold moons hence, when a garden was plowed for her father on lot four of block four, Ferbrache's addition.

Who were they, whence they came or went, only our imaginations can tell. All that remains to prove they were red-skinned trailblazers is a handful of such relics, unearthed from time to time in unrelated spots. But trailblazers they were, long before the French left their written record about this area.

First to do this was Pere Marquette, a Jesuit priest traveling with Louis Jolliet, fur trader and explorer and five other companions. They must have touched Woodford County shores as they came up the Illinois River in 1673 in canoes stocked with the white man's wares, to be traded sparingly for the valuable furs of the Indians. Jolliet (whose signature shows the two l's) had been surprised to find the Arkansas Indians had previously traded with unknown white men. There was no clue as to their identity, but they must have been Spaniards from Florida or the southwest. Marquette wrote the first description of our central Illinois area to his superior.¹ It is worth remembering:

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