The following is from "History of Effingham County, Illinois," O.L Baskin & Co., Historical Publishers, Chicago, 1883: p.12:
"In the year 1814 or 1815, GRIFFIN TIPSWORD came to this part of Illinois and took up his abode with the Kickapoo Indians. These Indians then occupied what is now parts of Fayette, Shelby and Effingham Counties. South of the Kickapoos were the Winnebagoes and Delawares. At that time these Indians were peaceably disposed, and, it seems, were indifferent as to the coming of the lone, straggling white man.
We make no doubt that Tipsword was the first white man that was ever here. He was a strange compound of white man by birth and Indian by adoption. He was a self-exile from civilization in his native Virginia, and by choice a roving nomad, who sought the solitudes of pathless woods, the dreariness of the desert waste, in exchange for the trammels of civilized society. Of the latter, he could not endure its restraints, and he despised its comforts and pleasures. His soul yearned for freedom - freedom in its fullest sense, applied to all property, life and everything, here and hereafter. He hunted in the Indian chase, talked in their dialect, danced their dances, and to show how fully he was for them, with them and of them, he gave them his oldest son, who remained with them wholly for years, in order that he might be fully educated in their ways.
Moses Doty was a nephew of Tipsword, and from him and the grandsons of the old pioneer we learn that he left Virginia in the year 1812 and came to Southern Illinois, where he remained for two or three years, and then came, with his wife and two children, to this part of the state; that he first lived in the northwest corner of this county, and in Shelby, and lived and hunted and migrated as far northwest as Quincy, and then would return to this place. The Indians did much the same in following the game and searching for new and better hunting ground.
For years after he came here he saw no human face except the Indian. His people in Virginia had no word of him for sixteen years after he left them.
In many respects he was a remarkable man. He had gone West, cut loose from kith and kin; and he didn't burn the bridges behind him, because there were none to burn. He was a pioneer, adoctor, a missionary preacher, his own bishop, as well as his own committee on ways and means. He hunted, fished, cut bee-trees, and talked with the Indians in their way and fashion. He was as illiterate as they, and hetold them in Indian the story of Mount Calvary and the lake of fire and brimstone, and those who had no fears of an angry God had a healthy dread of his unerring rifle. Beneath God's first temples he pointed the way to heaven to these simple savages. In the trackless woods he met the bad Indian and slew him. He was not onlky a physician for the poor soul, but he was a "medicine man," who could exorcise witches, conjureghosts, remove "spells", make "silver tea" for cattle sick of the murrain or otherwise bewitched. He regulated the storms, stayed the angry lightning flashes, and could appease the deep-mouthed thunders as they rolled across the darkened heavens in terrifying peals. He had much to do in his Protean capacity of a hunter, a half savage, a doctor, a preacher, and a pioneer, with no visible means of support except his rifle, and that he lived out a long life (it is supposed oveer a hundred years) is evidence that he was singularly well adapted to surrounding circumstances.
His family name was Souards. He only called himself Tipsword after he came here. It was only in the latter years of his life that he told anyone that he had changed his name. When asked why he had done so, he would nod his head toward the south, where he had first lived mong the Indians, and reply that he did not want to run his "head into the halter". From this and other hints he gave out in his last years the inference may be drawn that, in his mind, it was much the same whether you saved a savage by preaching or by the rifle. He believed it was the Divine economy to save, and in one way or another he did a lively business.
It is not known what particular church he belonged to-perhaps he did not himself know, but the records leave no doubt it was that broad, liberal Catholic faith and practice that gathered up with as much alacrity the Indian with a bullet hole through as head as the saint with fingernails two or three feet long. He was a well-armed drummer in the golden slipper trade, a "rustler " for the golden stairs.
He could doctor the body quite as well as the souls. The prevalent diseases of his day, it seems, were witches, spooks, spells and charms. He was as superstitious as his neighbors and quite as illiterate, and yet he must have played many tricks upon his savage followers to retain his power over them, and impress and awe them with a dread of his occult power. His trade was not destroyed by the coming of the first whites and the migration from here of the Indians. He continued to practice medicine, preach and hunt. He kept sacred his witchballs to the day of his death. These were made of deer's and cow's hair, were large, and held together by a long string. They constituted his materia medica. Most people then believed implicitly in witches and charms; some do now. All diseases were the work of witches, and so it was with their cattle. Ghosts could be seen any dark night passing a grave or a graveyard....
Tipsword carried with him to the day of his death many of the customs and characteristics of the Indian. He was always reticent of speech, and a ringing hearty laugh - he had forgotten all about it. In approaching a neighbor's house, he would never be seen until standing in the door.
He lived a long time after the sparse settlements of whites had come and the Indian had gone. When the Indians first went away, it was not fleeing from the pale faces, but following the game. They would, for some years, annually return, and often Tipsword would go with them and not return for a year or more.
On one occasion, after the whites had settled in Shelby and Fayette counties, the Indians warned them to leave in three days or they would massacre all the country between Shelbyville, by way of Vandalia, to St. Louis. The warning came like a death knell to the poor defenseless whites --they were terror stricken. Three days was too short a time in which to get away, yet it was too long a time to wait in dread horror the cruel torture and death that they well knew that the red devils had in store for them. In the calmness that comes of despair, they talked over the situation. A few, but very few, gathered their little families and fled, but the majority could only make a feeble attempt to put themselves upon the best defense of their household gods that they could. They had hoped at first that Tipsword could intercede for them, but when appealed to he could give them no hope as he too, was in the list of warned. On the afternoon of the third and last day the Indians held a general pow-wow in the woods, and Tipsword attended it as a spectator. He had friends among the chiefs and braves, and he had no doubt talked as much as he dared to them, and told them the certain consequences that would follow a general massacre of the whites. The first speakers urged that they adjourn the meeting, paint themselves, and at early dark commence the bloody work, and allow no pale face to escape. These sentiments met the approving grunts of the braves. But late in the evening, better informed Indians talked. They told their people that, while it was true they had it in their power to murder the whites, but suppose they did, would not the word go to the people of the States, and would not an army, numbering as the leaves of the forest, come here and kill every Indian in the Territory. Such representations soon turned the attention of the Indians to questions of their own safety, and they determined to postpone the massacre. The settlers had been spared. How much they owed of this good fortune to Tipsword will never be known.
Griffin Tipsword died in the year 1845, and lies buried on the banks of Wolf Creek. He left surviving children - John, Isaac, and Thomas. No stone marks the spot where the old patriarch of this numerous family sleeps."
Sources:
"History of Effingham County, Illinois," O.L Baskin & Co., Historical Publishers, Chicago, 1883: p. 12
"The Griffin Tipsword Story: The First white settler in Effingham County, Illinois" 1975 published by Effingham County, Bicentennial
Commission.
Notes: While at the time of writing it is true that there was not a stone over Griffin's grave at the Tipsword Cemetary, there is presently one, with a small square hole for raising the flag. I have seen it myself. Woolf creek runs right by the Tipsword Cemetary in Mocassin Creek township.