Mother Goose Gardens (Amusement Park), La Salle, IL (1957-1968)

Once the area's premier amusement park, Mother Goose Gardens opened in 1957 on nearly 50 acres near the south edge of Starved Rock State Park (Route 71 & the entrance to Starved Rock State Park). The name "Mother Goose Gardens" was copyrighted in 1957 by the Starved Rock Realty Company.

Each story from Mother Goose was represented by large characters that you could touch and climb on, captured in time, including a 30-foot reproduction of Mother Goose. There was a small pond that surrounded Mother Goose and ducks roamed the enclosed area surrounded by a white picket fence.

The amusement park had a big milk can at the entrance. Attractions included kiddie carnival rides like hand-peddled cars, a miniture train, tractor ride, the little dipper roller coaster, a Ferris wheel with canvas seats, a circular boat ride a petting zoo with Santa's reindeer, games of chance, a giant teepee pony rides. All the animals were owned by Jean Lyons, of La Salle and she operated the pony rides. The park had a souvenier stand.

Legend has it the origins of Mother Goose Gardens came after local investors visited a Wisconsin Dells attraction, Storybook Gardens. It was popular for years with local families as well as Starved Rock visitors.

However, it was never a financial success. Mother Goose Gardens was closed in 1968. The owners sold the amusement park acreage to the state in 1968.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Illiniwek Indians made a bid for power in the late 1600s Mid-west America, based on bison and slavery.

Most historical accounts describe the Illiniwek Indians, of the late 1600s as a weak and beleaguered people, shattered by war.

{{The Illiniwek Indian tribe was a Confederacy of tribes [aka: Illinois (pronounced as plural: Illinois') and Illini]; consisted of the Kaskaskia, Cahokia, Peoria, Tamaroa, Moingwena, Michigamea, Chepoussa, Chinkoa, Coiracoentanon, Espeminkia, Maroa, and Tapouara tribes.}}

Their Grand Village of the Kaskaskia (aka: The Village of La Vantum), near present-day Starved Rock State Park, 80 miles southwest of Chicago, was depicted as little more than a refugee center, propped up by the French Fort St. Louis du Rocher.

The reality, however, is quite different, argues University of Illinois history professor Robert Morrissey, in an “editor’s choice” article in the December issue of the Journal of American History.

The Grand Village and surrounding settlements were then likely the largest population center north of Mexico City, and the Illinois were making “perhaps the most remarkable bid for power in 17th century native North America,” according to Morrissey, who also has written a book on colonial Illinois during this period.

The Illinois Indians were exploiting a unique ecological and social borderland at the center of the continent – between tallgrass prairie to the west and woodlands to the east, and between distinctly different peoples of the Great Plains and the Great Lakes, he said.

There they could hunt plentiful bison at the eastern edge of their range. And there they also could raid Indian villages to the west for slaves, to trade to Indians to the east, where slaves were sought mostly as “replacement kin” for those lost to war and European disease.

“In that particular moment, and in that particular space, these people rose to quite considerable power, and yet they’re not part of the narrative of early American history, and the place is totally off the map,” Morrissey said.

Much of the reason can be traced back to accounts by the French who established an outpost and mission near the Grand Village in the 1670s, he said. “I don’t think they understood what they were looking at when they arrived in the Illinois country.”

The Illinois and other Algonquian-speakers in the Great Lakes region had suffered what seemed to be devastating attacks by the eastern Iroquois, as part of what were called the Beaver Wars, Morrissey said. “I think this caused the French to miss the ways that the Algonquians, and especially the Illinois, were themselves acting aggressively and were themselves acting out of their own motivations.”

The French also exaggerated their own importance in those accounts, Morrissey said. “The French were not the biggest thing happening in the Illinois people’s lives at this moment, and when we read those sources, it sometimes seems like the French think they are.” They also had reason to exaggerate Illinois weakness and their own importance in search of greater support from the French government and the Catholic Church.

Taking a more-critical look at French accounts, and supplementing that with archeological and environmental sources, Morrissey is seeking to tell native history in a broader context.

In his story of the Grand Village, for instance, he notes that the Illinois, a loose confederation of at least 13 subgroups or kinship groups – among them the Cahokia, Kaskaskia and Peoria – were recent arrivals themselves. Their ancestors, or “proto-Illinois,” had lived south of Lake Erie and in the Ohio River Valley, and moved west in the 1500s and early 1600s.

Their move may have been prompted by climate changes resulting from the “Little Ice Age,” which shortened growing seasons in the Ohio Valley and moved the bison range east into Illinois.

They had settled in villages along and west of the Mississippi River before moving into the upper Illinois River Valley. What they saw or found there, according to Morrissey, were the advantages of a literal and metaphorical “ecotone,” a term used by biologists to describe a border zone between adjacent communities of vegetation. Some species thrive in such zones, moving between and exploiting multiple habitats.

The Illinois thrived in that ecotone for about two decades, Morrissey said. They found opportunities and power in bison hunting, trading and then slave trading.

The Grand Village was ultimately short-lived, in part due to the inherent violence and other corrosive effects of the slave trade, Morrissey said. One aspect of that was that many more women than men were taken as slaves since they were more valuable as replacement kin, and Illinois men then took some of those female slaves as additional wives.

This degraded the status of Illinois women and caused rifts and often abuse within these polygamous families, Morrissey said. Many Illinois wives sought refuge in the Catholic mission and Christianity.

Resources were also an issue. Nearby forests were thin, so village residents lacked firewood, and it’s possible they even reached limits on bison hunting, supporting a population of up to 20,000.

The story of the Illinois and the Grand Village holds importance because it shows native people acting on their own motivations in a bid for power, separate from European influence, Morrissey said. It also reveals the significant and often-neglected place of the Midwest in early American history, he said.

“Historians of early America often still tell their narratives in terms of Indian reaction to Europeans, as if Europeans were the most important thing happening in Indian worlds,” Morrissey said.

“My agenda here is to suggest that there are a lot of other factors playing into what native people were doing, and why they were doing it. Many of the logics of their actions have probably nothing to do with Europeans, or only partially to do with Europeans. To understand them, we need to recontextualize the story from an indigenous perspective.”

By Craig Chamberlain
Edited by Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

Chicagoan Keanon Kyles, a black opera singer, gets his big break after years as a night janitor.

Bass-baritone operatic singer Keanon Kyles performed in his studio at the Fine Arts Building at 410 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago. Kyles has worked as a janitor and voice coach to fund his dream. Never give up on your dreams, someone told Keanon Kyles along the way. It stuck, even in dark moments, like when he'd find tears dropping as he cleaned corporate offices on his night shift job as a janitor.

Kyles, 31, is an opera singer, a rare black male in a music genre many may see as staged musical dramas with high-pitched singing. A little time with the talented Kyles changes that thinking.

"It started when I was 7. My mother signed me and my sister up with the Chicago Children's Choir. We worked our way up to the top concert choir," Kyles said.

"We went on tours all around the world. That was my childhood. At age 13, I joined Gallery 37's Operatics Ensemble. It was the first time I was part of an opera production. I realized I had a strong interest and love for it," he said.

"High school was when I really came to believe I had a chance at being an opera singer. My teacher picked me to perform an aria for a state competition with two weeks to prepare," he said." I won us an honor superior. That's when I thought: 'This could be something.'"

After years of chasing that dream, at times feeling beaten, Kyles, raised in the Washington Heights community's Brainerd neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago, got his big break.

He earned the lead role in "Rigoletto," an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi in Scotland. The role of this hunchback court jester is one of the most powerfully dramatic character roles in opera.

"He was just a kid when he auditioned to be in the elite ensemble I conducted for Gallery 37. He had such a good voice," said Andrew Schultze, an eminent opera singer, conductor, stage director and teacher who has sung throughout the U.S. and Europe, from Carnegie Hall to Milan's La Scala Opera House.

Kyles' longtime mentor and voice coach, Schultze, again worked with him as a teacher at Columbia College, where Kyles obtained a music degree in 2010.

"It's been wonderful to see this kid who was always interested in music become focused on opera. He sings gospel. He sings jazz. He sings everything. But he just kept saying, 'I want to do opera,'" Schultze said.

"He has this talent. It's compelling him. It's propelling and impelling him," said Schultze, who will travel with his wife to see Kyles' performance. "He's such an unaffected person, a really nice guy. I told him, 'Keanon, Rigoletto is the one role I've always wanted to play. I've studied that role but never gotten to do it. Now, you see, you are singing it for me!'"

The third of four children of William and Vivian Kyles, a construction contractor and stay-at-home mom, Kyles left home after college to share a North Side apartment with roommates. To pay the bills while chasing his dream, he contacted a placement agency that had employed him during college. All they had was janitorial work.

"I was like, 'Ummm … I'll get back to you.' I needed a job but wasn't expecting to be cleaning nothing up," said Kyles, voice soft as butter, melodic even in conversation. "After talking to my mother, I had a talk with myself. I realized this was just a job. And that's when adulthood started."

He has worked as many as three jobs at a time to fund his opera journey, weathering frustration and occasional tears. But as his performance gigs increased, so did his exposure.

Doors began to open. In the summer of 2015, he was accepted into Europe's premiere young artist performance festival, Italy's Trentino Music Festival. In the summer of 2016, he secured the role of Colline in Clyde Opera Group's U.K. production of "La Boheme," one of the world's most popular operas. The performance garnered him Clyde Opera Group's Rigoletto role. This would put him on the map.

Bass-baritone operatic singer Keanon Kyles poses for a portrait near his studio at the Fine Arts Building, 410 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago.

"When I realized his interest was classical music, I was thrilled because most young African Americans who go into music are drawn to hip-hop," his mother said. "When he graduated from Columbia and did his recital, everyone was amazed because he sings in three languages. His stage presence brings music alive, even if you don't understand a word. He has that same presence in character and spirit, just a bright light."

Kyles just wants to share his gift.

"I sing R&B. I sing gospel. I sing all those things, but nothing stands out to me more than opera," Kyles said. "Since opera is a European-driven genre, I wanted to represent the blacks because we can sing. We can do that. We can sing in Italy. We can sing in France. People will put limits on you based on your skin color until you prove them wrong, and that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to prove everybody wrong and to prove to people that there were African Americans interested in opera. Put yourself in an arena that nobody would expect you to ever be."

"I want young people to know they don't have to wait for anybody to hand them something or tell them you deserve it," he said. "If you believe it, work at it. Being a star doesn't begin when you reach the spotlight. It starts the moment that the light bulb goes on. This is what you want to do."

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.