Manual High School - Mirror Yearbook (Peoria, IL)

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PEORIA ILLINOIS 1937

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1- Eight ---Q Peoria, in the heart of Illinois, second city of a great state, achieved her position not only by virtue of her location in the rich agricultural section, which she serves but also through her own industrial and civic enterprise as Well

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Peoria PEORIA, the second city of the state of Illinois, whose slogan is, Where land, air, and water transpor- tation meet, is situated near the cen- ter of the state on the Illinois River and is easily accesssible from every part of the country. The name Peoria is said to have been derived from 'an Indian tribe called Peorias, a member of the con- federation of five tribes, which occu- pied this territory in its earliest re- corded history. S e v e r a l different spellings of the word are found, one is, piwarea, meaning he comes car- rying a pack on his back. Peoria is the oldest settlement in Illinois and in the Mississippi Valley, west of the Allegheny Mountains. Two hundred sixty-three years ago, June 10, 1673, Jacques Marquette, a Jesuit priest accompanied by Louis Joliet, a French explorer, landed on the shores of the Illinois River and they are believed to be the first white men to ever set foot on the site of Peoria. They probably kept very meager records of their sojourning, and such reports as were made, have been lost so that the world has scant knowledge of their discoveries. How- ever, the hotel Pere Marquette at the corner of Madison and Monroe streets stands as a memento to Father Mar- quette and his exploits. Though he was but thirty-eight years of age, death overtook him May 18, 1875, on the bank of Lake Michigan, and he was buried at the mouth of the Mar- quette River. For seven years after the departure of Marquette and Joliet, the Indians continued to hunt and fish unmolested by further visits of the white man. Then, Sieur de La Salle, another French explorer, with Henry de Tonti and a small group of followers, landed on the shores of Lake Pitmitoui, now known as Lake Peoria. For protection he was forced to build a fort, which he located across the river from the present site of the city. The Indians were troublesome and resented the invasion of the white men. The explorers were so harassed by the Indians that they were soon compelled to abandon this fort which they called Creve Coeur. In French this means broken heart, and was indicative of their regret at being un- able to hold a territory so rich in natural resources. La Salle was murdered March 19, 1687, in the woods near the Trinity River in the state of Texas. CLAIMS OF OWNERSHIP Territorial changes and claims of ownership of this vast territory in the new world aroused enmity and ill will particularly with the Indians, whose claims persisted until after the Black Hawk War in 1832. The Spanish claimed all of the western hemisphere by virtue of Co- lumbus's discovery in 1492. England based her claim to it upon Cabot's discoveries in 1498. Spain further pressed her claims by Virtue of De Soto's explorations of the Mississippi Valley in 15 1 1. The first French claim of ownership was based on the Chas- tes-de-Monts Charter of 1603 and later through the Canadian and In- dian Treaty of 1671, which followed the exploration of La Salle and Joliet. England d e c l a r e d ownership through the Virginia Patents in 1606- 1609, and colonization of New Eng- land followed. Her undisputed owner- ship came in 1763 through the treaty with Paris, which ceded all French possessions east of the Mississippi to her. General George Rogers Clark wrested the Illinois country from Eng- land in 1778, and Virginia directed her destinies until this entire territory was ceded to the United States in 1784. Thereafter governmental af- fairs affecting her welfare were con- ducted first as part of the Indiana Territory and later as the Illinois Ter- ritory. Illinois became a state in 1818 with Peorialand within its boundaries. Peoria County was formed in 1825, and comprised a large part of the northern one-fourth of the state, in- cluding what is now the city of Chi- cago. Six years later it was reduced