Indian Village No. 4
Kennicott Mounds

As we have already found the Indian population central to the north branch Chicago River at Forest Glen, we now find a still larger center of Indian life, surrounding the well known tumuli accredited to the ancient mound builders, by taking into account all the Indian villages north of the portage river and north and west of the Lyons Indian village No. 10.

These mounds are part of Indian village No. 4 which lies between two parallel branches I and G of the mound builders trail, running west from the mouth of portage river. Then again the DesPlaines River was navigable to this point for canoes and finally a portage from here to Chicago River was only eight miles. This was one of half a dozen Indian villages strung along the east bank of twenty miles of the serpentine DesPlaines, distributing its water to the rising and setting of the sun.

Indian village No. 4 was located on the east bank in a bend of the DesPlaines River forming the letter S and covering the whole southeast quarter Sec. 35 town Leyden. East of the river and the public road, 130 yards north of North Avenue extended, are the mounds, consisting of a close group of five separate mounds each with a diameter of from ten to twenty five feet, and three feet high. The group has a monumental aspect, upon a forty foot high river bank of yellow clay now covered with a second growth of timber. The view is uninterrupted over the river and several miles of prairie with the mound builders trail in the distance.

We will now show that the several places of our original inhabitants were located with referance to the portage river continued with the West Shore trail. Vis: from Lake View to Lyons and from Lake View to Glen View, the distance in each case being about 12 miles. From Lake View to Forest Glen is 6 miles and from Lyons to Kennicott Mounds is also 6 miles, the last two having canoe communication from below, but here the similarity ends, Kennicott Mounds having the most ancient sign of occupancy, a group of Indian mounds, six miles north of which, at Park Ridge there is another group of three mounds likewise supplied with a canoe path.

There was a group of two mounds half a mile south of the principle mound builders trail I, at Harlem. And one mound and several minor burials half a mile north of the same trail at Thatcher and Chicago Avenues. The Riverside-Lyons mounds were more of an Indian cemetery and not considered as of mound builders origin.

This leaves Indian village No. 4, as indicated above, the center of all the mound builders operations, adjacent and north of the portage river, which place was also supplied with lateral branches of the Green Bay Trail. The ground covered by this Indian village proper is a bench or shelf of the river bank semi-encircled by a spring brook and to-day known as the "Trapp farm," has been a veritable storehouse of weapons and implements of the Stone Age.

The variety and quality of stone, flint and chert used being merely a repetition of the other villages with the exception that at the Chicago river there was more chert from Lake Michigan and here more of a bluish-white chert from quarries in the interior. The chipping station of course can be located but the supply of pottery is not extraordinary. The meadows here would furnish grazing for Indian ponies even in a dry season.

Editor's note: 100 years later, Cazenovia is a part of Franklin Park, Turner Park is River Grove, and Orson is Elmwood Park. Town Leyden is Leyden Township.