Among the votes polled for our friend Dodson on
that occasion was that of Macaulay, one of the family of the famous
historian of England's greatest days and proudest times.
The Captain has been a natural and inveterate pioneer, and few
citizens of the State have figured more prominently or proudly in
its early annals. In 1834, forty-three years ago, Mr. Dodson came to
dispute with the aboriginal Pottawatomies the possession of the Fox
River valley. White faces were rare in those days, and scarcely a
squatter's cabin rose among the Indian lodges. The Captain built
the first saw-mill on the river, and he and Col. Lyon were the hardy
spirits about whom the early settlers clustered for encouragement and
advice.
In 1837 he was employed by the government to superintend the removal
of the Indians to Council Bluffs and Kansas, and their successful
emigration, as well as their uniform good will toward the whites prior
to their removal, were largely due to his sagacity and influence among
them.
When Capt. Sutter first found the yellow gold gleaming in the dirt of
his mill-race, and all the world joined in a mad rush to the mines,
the venturesome spirit of Capt. Dodson led him to press forward with
the first, and he was a "forty-niner," that pride of the old
Californians. In that surging crowd of wild adventurers from the ends
of the earth, the Captain was, as he has been among the early pioneers
of Illinois, a directing and controlling spirit.
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