Eagle Pond Duck Dinner

•November 13, 2024•

By Janet Roney

We’ve been following the route from Waterloo, Illinois to Lafayette, Indiana that is described by William Biggs in his Narrative of the Capture of William Biggs by the Kickapoo Indians in 1788, which is on the internet. It is the earliest account I have found of traveling through Moultrie County.  

Using his narrative, which says they traveled about 25 to 35 miles a day, they arrived on the shores of Eagle Pond north of the present Sullivan about three in the afternoon on the fourth day of his captivity. “They had some dried meat, tallow, and buffalo marrow rendered up together, lashed and hung upon a tree about 20 feet from the ground, which they had  left there in order to be sure to have something to eat on their return.” He’s talking about one of the walnut trees in Eagle Grove on the northwestern shore of the lake!

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