In force Feb.[February] 7, 1835.
AN ACT for the relief of Warren County.
1Appropriation made thereto.
Sec.[Section] 1. Be it enacted by the people of the State of Illinois, represented in the General Assembly, That the Auditor of public accounts be, and he is hereby authorized and required to
draw his warrant on the Treasury in favor of the county commissioners of Warren county, for the use of said county, for the sum of one hundred and eighty-nine dollars and forty cents, as an indemnity
for expenses incur-
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red in the capture and imprisonment of four Indian prisoners of the Sac and Fox nations, who were arrested and surrendered to the custody of the Sheriff of said county, on the demand of the President of the United States, at the request of the Legislature, for the supposed murder of William Martin on Henderson river,2 during the late Indian disturbances on our north western frontier, to be paid out of any money in the Treasury not otherwise
appropriated.3This act to take effect from and after its passage.
Approved, Feb. 7, 1835.
1On January 24, 1835, John D. Hughes from the Committee on Public Accounts and Expenditures, to which the House of Representatives referred a petition of Peter Butler, introduced HB 154 in the House . The House passed the bill on January 27. On February 3 the Senate
passed the bill. On February 7, the Council of Revision approved the bill and the act became law.
Illinois House Journal. 1835. 9th G. A., 1st sess., 340, 374, 385, 403, 498; Illinois Senate Journal. 1835. 9th G. A., 1st sess., 351, 377, 405, 453, 455, 460; Illinois House Journal. 1835. 9th G. A., 2nd sess., 386, 410.
2Reference to Henderson Creek, which headed in Knox County and flowed through Mercer, Warren and Henderson counties.
Edward Callary, Place Names of Illinois
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009), 157.
3William Martin’s murder in August 1832 became a cause célèbre in Warren County, and after the end of hostilities demands rose to find and prosecute the murderers.
A grand jury found a bill against unnamed Indians for the murder, which it forwarded
to Governor John Reynolds, asking him to forward the same to President Andrew Jackson requesting that he, through the Indian agent of the Fox and Sac nations, secure and deliver the perpetrators for trial. The Indian agent convinced
the Indians to deliver one of the murderers, who subsequently escaped. In March
1833, the Indians turned over four additional suspects, whom the Indian agent delivered
to Sheriff Butler. The names of the prisoners were: Jonah, Kakemo, Waupeshokon, and Ssapemo. At a
hearing in June, the grand jury found that the suspects were not the murderers and
released them. The actual perpetrators escaped custody and fled west.
The Past and Present of Warren County, Illinois (Chicago, IL: H. F. Kett, 1877), 113-16.
Printed Document, 2 page(s), Laws of the State of Illinois, Passed by the Ninth General Assembly, at their First Session (Vandalia, IL:
J. Y. Sawyer, 1835), 76-77, GA Session: 9-1