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Legacy of Eagle Creekers lives in new book

</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[In 1999 Jeff Biggers of Macomb returned to the site of his grandparents' former home at Eagle Creek with his mother and uncle and was astounded by what he saw.

He knew strip mining was happening in the area -- as it had all his life -- but felt a profound sense of discomfort seeing the family farm was obliterated.

"I stood with my mother and Uncle Richard at the rim of a lunar expanse of ruts and rocks and broken earth," begins his book "Reckoning at Eagle Creek: The Secret Legacy of Coal in the Heartland."

The book, released Tuesday, is his attempt to come to grips with the loss and to honor his family's heritage.

"It didn't really hit me until it hit the family in 1999. I stood there with my family members and mother stunned by what had happened. It's one thing to hear about strip mining and another thing to see a 200 foot amphitheater of death," Biggers said in a telephone interview Monday.

"There had been a church there. There had been a prehistoric population. We all knew it as a rich valley.

"That's what was devastating, to see the impact it had on my family members. That forced me, someone who had traveled around the world, to have a reckoning. 'Hey, Jeff, what did we lose?' The last 200 years of history."

Biggers' book is a product of about a decade of research into the history of Eagle Creek as it related to the state, the nation, salt production, coal production, Indian wars, the idea of historicide and to the future of sustainability.

Biggers recounts tales from his own family -- especially his revered grandfather, Bob Followell, a coal miner with a "coal tattoo" on his face from a detonation that went wrong -- Eagle Creek residents and former residents and various other chroniclers of the area's rich history.

Eagle Creek's story begins in a period prior to recorded history, evidenced by the animal trails to the salt springs and pottery and stone tools that had been scattered throughout the Eagle Creek Valley.

Eagle Creek was important for its natural resources of which there were numerous: Cool springs, forest, game, salt and, of course, coal.

The earliest white settlers, the first to reach Illinois, were woodsmen who were neighbors with the Shawnee. They found in addition to the resources, Eagle Creek had another advantage. While the bottomland in Illinois was mostly swampland, people contracted malaria, cholera and other illnesses spread by mosquitoes.

"The settlers wanted to stay in the hills," Biggers said.

"It was cleaner, safer and close to the salt wells."

Families such as the Aydelotts, Stilleys and Colberts, all ancestors of Biggers, were living in the area in the early 1800s.

The U.S. Government, including President Thomas Jefferson, had his eyes on the Shawnee-controlled salt springs as early as 1802. The government found a way to gain control of the springs from the Shawnee by the 1830s with the Indian Relocation Act.

The salt mines eventually came into the control of John Hart Crenshaw who used slaves -- legally -- to mine the salt and built his mansion known as the Old Slave House.

"My Colbert family sold Crenshaw his land. They were his neighbors," Biggers said.

While Crenshaw operated the mines with slaves and embarked on a side venture of kidnapping escaped slaves and free blacks to sell them back into bondage, across his property line Eagle Creekers were working for the abolition of slavery. Among the most famous was Stephen Stilley who pastored Elizabethtown's Baptist Church in 1805 and homesteaded in Eagle Creek by 1819.

"They stood their ground that slavery was wrong. They understood it from their religious perspective. It was incredibly brave of them to do that," Biggers said.

Biggers Eagle Creek ancestors fought for the Union Army and several lost their lives in the Civil War.

Biggers says Eagle Creekers were regularly dismissed as backward, lawless and brutal. By marginalizing the culture, the coal interests of Chicago, St. Louis, Mo., Boston and New York were more easily able to justify mining and strip mining away the community, Biggers believes.

Moonshining was a big business in Eagle Creek during the 1920s under prohibition. The creeks and springs in the area were perfect for stills and Eagle Creek supplied much of the illicit liquor for the broader area.

The Ku Klux Klan descended upon Eagle Creek to intimidate the moonshiners and the Eagle Creekers earned their roughneck reputation when they met the Klansmen with gunfire. The story goes the Klan leader's pointed hat was knocked from his head and was displayed on the porch of one of the Eagle Creekers along with a wolf hide.

The Klan -- that terrorized other rural communities and warred with Harrisburg gangster Charlie Birger -- never returned to Eagle Creek.

Biggers said while the book intends to expose the secret history of coal, he also seeks to expose another aspect of rural Southern Illinois life.

"I also try to show the beautiful secret legacy of the woodmen who I really idolize," Biggers said.

"This really is a beautiful legacy of people who truly want to defend their land and culture. I don't see a separation from the hills and the hill folks."

The Eagle Creekers were able to scare away the Klan with their guns and resolve, but could not keep the strip mines from destroying their community.

"I think there have been Eagle Creekers who have tried to stop strip mining in legal ways, but there was stripping as early as the 1930s. Unfortunately, it was seen as employment when they needed employment. It was not something considered a threat in that sense," Biggers said.

"I don't think they could have ever imagined what happened.

"I don't think they realized the level of destruction that was going to come."

The strip mining stopped in the 1980s and began again in the 1990s. Some of Biggers' relatives in the area refused to sell to the coal companies, but after the blasting destroyed their wells, pelted their houses with stone and, in one case, destroyed the roof of a trailer when a chunk of rock ripped through it, most made deals with the mines, Biggers said.

"It's hard to realize Eagle Creek was one of the most vibrant communities down there. It's hard. These huge companies were coming in from Chicago and buying mineral rights. There was not a lot to do if their great-grandfathers had sold to Chicago," Biggers said.

"And the grandfathers, in their day, had no idea what was underneath. They had no idea years later they would come in and strip mine you."

The experience of researching his heritage over the past several years has been a grueling one. As a shovel digs through the seams of coal, Biggers describes the research as "going through the seams of my heritage to see what I lost at Eagle Creek. A woodsman heritage I never knew about. Unfortunately for me, it took a real tragedy to wake up to that."

Along the way Biggers drew on stories of his guides to the region. Biggers sought out Gary DeNeal, publisher of Springhouse magazine, to introduce him to historians and those with Eagle Creek connections.

Biggers spent time with poet and teacher Barney Bush, trying to reclaim his homeland of the Vinyard Settlement near Karbers Ridge for the Shawnee.

Historian and preacher Ron Nelson took Biggers to the graves of some of the Abolitionist Baptist leaders. Stephen Stilley's grave remains at Stilley Cemetery on the eastern edge of the Eagle Mountains, preserved on a perch overlooking the strip mining.

Harlan Booten remains at Eagle Creek now having to truck in water since his well is undrinkable.

Tenney Tarlton at Eagle Creek has worked out a trade with the coal company for a piece of land as near his own family's as is safe.

Hovie Stunson filled Biggers in on the history of coal in Southern Illinois and impressed on him the power of mine union affiliation.

The late Ben J. Brinkley, son of a coal miner, discussed the miner mentality and the importance of unions with Biggers.

John O'Dell informed Biggers about tourism and history on the Shawnee National Forest.

"I'm proud of our region's legacy of storytellers and iconoclasts. I wanted to show that to me these people are true heroes of Southern Illinois. They are sort of what make Illinois matter. My book is sort of an effort to recognize them," Biggers said.

"And not just Southern Illinois, but really America. A lot of what happened to use is just a microcosm of what is happening across the nation."

Biggers is active in groups in Appalachia fighting to stop the strip mining practice of mountaintop removal.

"It's a cautionary tale for the rest of the country. We need to find a way to develop the country where we don't destroy certain parts of our land and certain parts of our people," Biggers said.

Biggers is adamant though his book takes a harsh look at the practices of coal mining, he has nothing but respect for the miners and improvements in labor that resulted from their bravery and sacrifice. He also realizes coal mining cannot stop at this point in time.

"We cannot simply stop coal mining today. I want to the begin the process of having just a transition in the coal fields to revamp our region in a sustainable economy. I just think we're on the cusp of a massive change in history," Biggers said.

n DeNeal receives e-mail at bdeneal@yourclearwave.com.