The proposition was accepted with hilarious approval, because there were many others who had claims to beauty. When all the ladies were seated around the hall and the old chief was informed by his friend, George E. Walker, of what they wished him to do, he accepted the task, and with a broad smile on his face and a merry twinkle in his eye, which meant fun, he started at the lower end of the hall, and by a sign made them understand that he wished them to rise _seriatim,_ as he came to each, and required them to walk up the length of the hall and back again and be seated before he examined the next. This he did to every lady in the hall, examining their dress, form and gait as critically as a horse jockey would a horse before purchase. None escaped the examination, old or young, from the girl in her teens to the aged matron, even including Okono, his four-hundred-pound squaw. When all had been examined in this way he approached his wife, slapped her on the shoulder, and remarked, "Much big, heap prettiest squaw." There was a loud shout of approval--not of his judgment of beauty, but of his good sense and knowledge of human nature. Had he selected one of the many really beautiful young ladies, by that selection he would have offended the rest, but by choosing his own squaw, he turned the whole affair into a huge joke. Matson informs us that a few years before his death, the aged chief gave all his family Christian names, in addition to their Indian names, assuming the name of Benjamin himself. Our tawny hero passed away at his residence on the Illinois River, July 17, 1859, aged eighty-four years, and was buried with much ceremony in Morris Cemetery. For many years no stone marked the grave. But at the twenty-ninth annual reunion of the Old Settlers of La Salle County, Illinois, held at Ottawa on August 19, 1897, with several thousand people present, Hon. Charles F. Gunther, of Chicago, offered a motion for the appointment of a committee of Old Settlers to devise ways and means for the erection of a suitable monument to the memory of Shabbona, to be placed where he was buried, which motion was unanimously carried. After the committee was appointed, it organized by electing P. A. Armstrong, president; C. F. Gunther, R. C. Jordan and G. M. Hollenbeck, vice-presidents; L. A. Williams, secretary, and E. Y. Griggs, treasurer. They now became incorporated under the statute as "The Shabbona Memorial Association." All this resulted in raising funds and erecting a monument, which was unveiled and dedicated October 23, 1903. The president of the association, Hon. Perry A. Armstrong, of Morris, in dedicating the monument, used corn, beans, pumpkins and tobacco, instead of corn, wine and oil, stating that "they were native products of North America, and used by the Indians. Corn and beans were their staff of life, pumpkins and squashes their relishes, and tobacco their solace. They used it in their pipes but never chewed it."