14 



THE FOREST PRESERVES 



"Checaugau Portage" in 1673. They tell us only that Indians 

 did live here previous to that time. 



Where, how and how long? Historians fail us but there 

 is where Nature comes to the rescue. That is the beginning of 

 this most wonderful story open to all in Cook County willing to 

 have a rendezvous with Nature in these tracts of forest land 

 skirting the City of Chicago. 



In the Palos Hills tract 2,370 acres of virgin forest bor- 

 dering the Drainage Canal that was the Checaugau (Wild Onion) 

 River in Indian days there is the only evidence we have as to 

 what were perhaps the original inhabitants of our countryside. 

 They were mound Indians. 



Mounds stand there today, our only link to the life that 

 existed on the ground we occupy, back in the days when men 

 seeking to establish the globular formation of the earth stumbled 

 onto America. They tell at least how and where the aborigines 

 lived. 



In that same picturesque tract which abounds in historical 

 lore to be recited for you in succeeding chapters of this publica- 

 tion, we are able to lead ourselves down with the years and cen- 

 turies to the present day. 



HILLSIDE WOODLANDS (PALATINE). 



