PIONEER HUNTERS OF THE KANKAKEE 

 profitable a business it was trapping the fur- 

 bearing animals, they embarked in that busi- 

 ness. First each of them made a butter-nut 

 dugout. Then they wenl to a blacksmith by the 

 name of Alyes who had settled in this region in 

 the early "30" and had opened a blacksmith 

 shop on his homestead, and who also kept a 

 cross-road store a few miles east of the Indian 

 Town, now Hebron, and engaged him to make 

 them three dozen steel rat-traps at one dollar 

 each, and four two-spring otter traps, or wolf 

 traps as they are sometimes called, at three dol- 

 lars each. These were the first steel traps made 

 and set in the Kankakee country. On the first 

 of October they launched their dugouts and 

 trapping outfit off Coal Fitt Island, a small island 

 in the north marsh where for many years Jones 

 and Smith had their charcoal pits. They pad- 

 dled their dugouts up the marsh along the tim- 

 ber line until they came to North Bend. In the 

 early days it was called Flag Fond but was 

 known to the old river men as North Bend from 



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