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.

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.

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.

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 its 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.

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.

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 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."

Along the way Biggers drew on stories of his guides to the region. Biggers sought out Gary DeNeal, publisher of Springhouse magazine, poet and teacher Barney Bush, historian and preacher Ron Nelson, Eagle Creekers Harlan Booten and Tenney Tarlton, coal historian Hovie Stunson, union leader and teacher Ben J. Brinkley and tourism promoter John O'Dell.

"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.

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