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Record W63230889

The Starved Rock Massacre of 1769: Fact or Fiction

2007· article· en· W63230889 on OpenAlexaboutno aff
Mark Walczynski

Bibliographic record

VenueJournal of the Illinois State Historical Society · 2007
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldSocial Sciences
TopicArchaeology and Natural History
Canadian institutionsnot available
Fundersnot available
KeywordsLegendState (computer science)HistoryLawSpanish Civil WarArchaeologyPolitical science
DOInot available

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

bluff known today as Starved Rock has a long history. Formed by rushing floodwaters during end of last ice age, Rock has hosted Native American visitors for ten thousand years. Later site was headquarters for French trade, diplomacy, and influence between 1683 and 1691. When modern Illinois was under British rule, Rock languished in insignificance and was relegated to an obscure site on old maps. During American Period, Daniel Hitt, La Salle County's first land surveyor, purchased Starved Rock from United States Government. In 1890 Hitt sold Rock to Chicago entrepreneur Ferdinand Walthers who then sold it to State of Illinois in 1911. Today Starved Rock is part of Starved Rock State Park, a place visited by over a million people every year. Starved Rock gets its name from an incident that allegedly occurred in 1769. According to legend, site was where remnants of vanquished Illinois Indians sought refuge from their enemies after an Illinois brave murdered Ottawa war-chief, Pontiac. summit was reportedly where Illinois were surrounded, and then slaughtered by Potawatomi and Ottawa Indians. Alleged eye-witnesses to massacre claimed that Illinois were killed at base of Rock. Later versions, however, state that Illinois victims were starved to death on summit. Although most accounts agree that massacre was revenge for Pontiac's murder, some maintain that incident began over disputed hunting grounds. After reading many books, pamphlets, and articles about event, many discrepancies become blatantly apparent. What really happened? Gurdon Hubbard, an early city father of Chicago, who ran operations for American Fur Company in Illinois during 1820s, said was no traditional event more certain, and more fully believed by Indians than this [the Starved Rock Massacre].1 In contrast, Illinois historians Clarence Alvord and Clarence Carter wrote, All documents bearing upon death of Pontiac that could be found are here printed, and it will be seen that there is no evidence of any such catastrophe.2 John Reynolds, Governor of Illinois during Black Hawk War, wrote The tradition of calling this rock Starved Rock is a pretty tale, which may or may not be true.3 Considering these diverse views, an investigation to determine what really happened is necessary. From available evidence we know that Starved Rock Legend was known by 1820s.4 If written documentation before this time exists, it has been elusive. This investigation has, however, traced story to two Indians who claimed to have actually witnessed extermination of Illinois Indians. These witnesses, Meachelle and Shick-Shack, were Potawatomi and Ottawa Indian chiefs respectively. two chiefs told their accounts to two early and influential Illinoisans, Judge John Dean Caton and Perry Armstrong. On 13 December 1870, Caton addressed Chicago Historical Society. topic of his presentation was Starved Rock Massacre; an incident that he believed was an actual historical event. Caton said that he learned of massacre in 1833, when he became a citizen of Chicago.5 An important year to Native Americans in Illinois was 1833. It was year of last major Potawatomi land cession to United States Government. Concluding treaty, Indians agreed to sell nearly all of their remaining land to United States and move west of Mississippi River. Assembled at Chicago for council were an estimated six thousand Potawatomi Indians and Caton, who said he formed acquaintance of many of their chiefs. acquaintance eventually became a cordial relationship. Caton related that Meachelle, the oldest Pottawatomi chief he met, imparted his earliest recollection of Potawatomi occupancy of country.6 chiefs memory, Caton said, extended back to that great event in Indian history, siege of Starved Rock and final extinction of Illinois tribe of Indians, which left his people sole possessors of land. …

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How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame distilled prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.003
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.000
Version: codex-gemma-dda1882f352aValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesScience and technology studies
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Not applicable · Consensus signal: Not applicable
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.164
Threshold uncertainty score1.000

Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0030.000
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.001
Bibliometrics0.0000.000
Science and technology studies0.0020.000
Scholarly communication0.0000.000
Open science0.0010.000
Research integrity0.0000.001
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0000.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.024
GPT teacher head0.282
Teacher spread0.259 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.

Study designNot applicable
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations2
Published2007
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

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Same venueJournal of the Illinois State Historical SocietySame topicArchaeology and Natural HistoryFrench-language works237,207