intentions to found a community on the south bluff overlooking the confluence of the Rock and Pecatonica rivers, which he wanted to call Pecatonic. The following autumn when the Talcotts returned to the area with their families, Mack had relocated at the site of his proposed community. By June 1838, Jean Baptiste Beaubien, a veteran trader in Chicago, and John P. Bradstreet had become partners with Mack and began selling lots in Pecatonic. Mack made out very well in the 1837 treaty between the government and the Winnebago, and in 1839 he used some of the money he received to build a two-story frame house with a cellar. This house survives in what is now the Macktown Forest Preserve. The Talcotts lived north of the river where they dug a millrace and built a gristmill. They preferred to call the settlement Rockton, which eventually became the name of the village. What little that is known about Hononegah comes from reminiscences of early settlers of Pecatonic and later collected and published by Edson Carr. She was highly knowledgeable in herbal medicine and was often called upon by everyone when they became sick. She liked designing her own clothes and decorating them with beadwork. Occasionally she outdid the white women with her fashion creations, and there was one dress that was so memorable that a description of it has survived. The settlers saw her wearing a white woman's garb on only one occasion, and she was so uncomfortable that she was never seen wearing white women's clothes again. There are also traditions among some Rockton families that when their ancestors were small boys, they paddled the canoe while Hononegah speared fish. Modern scholarship has succeeded to uncover the truth about her background but has done little to reveal any more about her life and character. Death of Hononegah Hononegah died on September 8, 1847. In a letter to his sister Lovicy Cooper, dated October 6, 1847, Mack describes her final illness and expresses a deep and heartfelt tribute to her: "I have the melancholy duty to inform you that the death published in the paper I sent you was that of my wife. Her health had been failing for several months but was not so as to prevent her from taking the ordinary care of her family until she was attacked by what the doctor called a bilious fever but what I