Agriculture and marriage have always been the great necessities to found permanent civilization. To establish a settlement in the great west, at that time, a blacksmith shop and a mill were the next two great necessities, and around those the early settlers broke up the wild prairie and on the upturned sod sowed buckwheat, turnips and sod-corn, which within three months produced their first food from the soil for themselves and their stock. To “break” the tough prairie sod required a sharp plowshare and colter, which had to be resharpened frequently. Without the blacksmith the prairie could hardly be cultivated. The big ox-teams of the neighbors, with which they had moved into the country, pulled the plow. Next, with the crop produced, the grist mill to grind the grain was a great necessity. The Indians and some of the early settlers with hammers and stones pulverized corn and wheat enough to supply their absolute wants from day to day, but the whites, who had been accustomed to corn-meal and wheat-flour bread, were not satisfied with the mashed product. Therefore, Davis, who supplied both of those great necessities, was a prominent man in the Davis Settlement. The mill-site was where the Sauk trail from Black Hawk’s Village at the mouth of the Rock River crossed Big Indian Creek and continued thence east to Canada, where the whole tribe of Sacs went every year to get their annuities from the English Government.[12] Just above the ford the creek meandered through a flat-bottomed gulch that was about two hundred feet wide with precipitous banks about fifteen feet high. At this point the stream flowed southeasterly and was fringed along its course with woods that grew dense, and here and there expanded into groves, but at other places there were openings where the prairie fires annually destroyed the undergrowth and left standing only the monarchs of the forest. The north bank of the gulch had an incline of about forty-five degrees to the level of the prairie. On that bank in a sparsely timbered opening from which the prairie stretched off to the cardinal points of the compass, William Davis located his home and erected his cabin. About that cabin there were trees that produced fruit, fuel and lumber, among whose branches were singing birds of great variety, including the Cardinal, the Dickcissel, the Carolina Wren, the Thrush and the Robin. By May the bank was covered with a carpet of thick, waving grass, diversified with ever-changing colored flowers, until the cruel frost of Fall destroyed them. It was an idyllic spot. No doubt Davis hoped that some day the Davis Settlement would become Davis City, and that his generations would revel in mansions that would replace the cottage on the bank of that new Jordan, where he, like King David, in his old age might kneel among his people to pray. [12] Blanchard’s History of Illinois, 122, and Historical Map. [Illustration: SHABONA PARK, SHOWING MILL POND AND STATE MONUMENT.]