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HOMEFRONT: Kewanee is named for prairie chickens

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By Alma Gaul | Friday, May 09, 2008 | No comments posted

Our column two weeks ago about the spectacular mating dance of the greater prairie chicken brought to the fore a bit of Quad-City region history.

Turns out, a Winnebago word for prairie chicken is “ke-wan-ee,” and the Henry County, Ill., town of Kewanee was so named because the bird was incredibly numerous in that area, said Larry Lock, the president of the Kewanee Historical Society.

Prairie chickens and other game birds were so plentiful, in fact, that a man named H. Clay Merritt, who came to the area after the Civil War, made a fortune killing and shipping them to eastern markets, including Chicago and New York.

In his book titled “The Shadow of a Gun,” Merritt wrote that before the prairies were plowed and the sloughs drained, Henry County “held more game than any area of its size in the world.”

While that statement cannot be proved or disproved, a sentence from Merritt’s book gives an inkling of what conditions were like in the late 1800s: “If the myriads of wild fowl that possessed it (Henry County) could rise, like the cherubim in Ezekiel, the music of their wings would drown the thunders of Niagara.”

That’s some description!

In another passage, he writes: “… the whole bottom land north of Annawan was one hideous squawking of ducks and geese and cranes, which could be heard for miles in March and April,” during migration.

His book recounts how hunters brought mallard ducks from the Annawan swamps to the Merritt storehouses by the wagonload and how the ground would be covered for miles and miles with prairie chickens when winter approached.

Merritt’s main cold storage warehouse was a brick building on Kewanee’s West 3rd Street that was razed in 1956. There’s a tire store there now.

The historical society’s museum, a three-story, 5,000-square-foot building at 211 N. Chestnut St., contains a display featuring a taxidermied family of prairie chickens, a male, female and several chicks.

It’s sad that the exhibit is all that’s left of the birds in Henry County, but if we take it as a reminder to preserve elements of our natural world that still exist, then, literally, not all will be lost.

The museum is open 1:30-4 p.m. Thursdays and Saturdays. Lock and others would love to show you around.

Alma Gaul can be contacted at (563) 383-2324 or agaul@qctimes.com. Comment on this column at qctimes.com.