Northwestern Indiana from 1800 to 1900A regional history written by Timothy H. Ball . . . .
Source Citation:
Ball, Timothy H. 1900.
Northwestern
Indiana from 1800 to 1900 or A View of Our Region Through the Nineteenth Century.
Chicago, Illinois: Donohue and Henneberry. 570 p.
NORTHWESTERN INDIANA FROM 1800 TO 1900
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CHAPTER I.
GENERAL OUTLINES.
The history,
proper, of this book commences with the year 1801.
It would be interesting to look back over even this small portion of our great
and growing country, along the three hundred years between
1800 and the time of Christopher Columbus, and
glance at the Indian occupancy of this region and at its connection with
Spanish, French, and English explorers and colonists.
Its position as to railroads is peculiar now; its position as to Indian
migrations, hunting expeditions and wars, and as to explorers, must have been
somewhat peculiar then. North of it extended the whole length of Lake Michigan,
a distance of about three hundred and forty miles; east of it were the immense
forests and the mountain ranges extending to the Atlantic coast, distant about
one thousand miles; west of it lay that great prairie region reaching to the
river which became known as the Mississippi, distant nearly two hundred miles;
and southward lay the great Wabash Valley, and then, beyond a stretch of forest,
the greater Ohio Valley, and, south of that, forests and rivers, and at length
that great southern slope, drained by what are now called the Black Warrior and
Tombigbee, and by the Alabama which receives the waters of the Coosa and
Tallapoosa, a slope which, passing the great pine belt, terminates at length at
the waters of the Bay and the great Mexican Gulf. By
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passing through forests and crossing rivers, Indians,
explorers, and traders could pass from
the shore of Lake Michigan to those Southern waters, a
distance of some eight hundred miles. How many Indian parties ever made that
journey before the days of Tecumseh there are no means of knowing; but probably
the unwritten history of these three centuries would show some connection
between our lake region and its Indians and that earlier explored region in the
early Spanish and French times. That, in the latter part of the Seventeenth
Century, La Salle and other French explorers passed over this lake region is
quite certain. At the close of the "Old French War," 1763, the two British
provinces of Illinois and West Florida met on the line of latitude 32.28; a line
passing from the
mouth of the Yazoo River eastward to the Chattahoochee, crossing the Alabama
just below the union of the Coosa and Tallapoosa, so that in the latter part of
the Eighteenth Century the claimants of the two contiguous provinces must have
had some connection established between the two. But at the Indian life in these
great forest regions, and the life of French and English traders and trappers as
they journeyed between our Great Lake and the Southern Indians, we are not to
look. Those three hundred years, from
1500 to 1800,
were years of strange life in American wilds, when the
red men and white men were meeting each other in commerce or in conflict,
sometimes making treaties and smoking the pipe of peace.
We commence with a later date.
When the hour of midnight came, on December 31st, of the year called
1800, the Eighteenth Century was completed; and in
the next moment of time, as 1801 dawned upon the world, the Nineteenth Century
began.
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The close of the one century of the Christian Era and the opening of the other
was not a peaceful time among the European nations. Napoleon Bonaparte had been
declared First Consul, December 5, 1799; on June 14,
1800, he defeated the Austrians at Marengo; and the strife was going on
which led to his being proclaimed Emperor of the French, May 20, 1804. The waves
of European strife crossed the Atlantic and struck upon our shores, and war with
France seemed for a time inevitable.
John Adams was the American President. Washington died December 14, 1799; in
1800 the national capital was removed
from Philadelphia to Washington City, and Thomas
Jefferson was elected to be the next President of the United States. And on
October 1, 1800, by the treaty of St. Ildefonso,
Louisiana was ceded or re-ceded by Spain to the so-called French Republic, which
placed that large territory including the present Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri,
Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas, Montana, Indian Territory, and parts of
Minnesota, Colorado, and Wyoming, in shape to be purchased by the United States
April 30, 1803, "for fifteen millions of dollars."
In 1800 took place another event of interest to
the dwellers in this State of Indiana, the
formation, as a new political division of the young and growing Union, of
Indiana Territory.
It was, as already mentioned, the closing year of the Eighteenth Century, a
century which among other changes had seen at its beginning Detroit founded and
Queen Anne's War begun, and, after the stormy events of the Revolution, which
saw before it closed Vermont, Kentucky, and Tennessee, admitted as States into
the new Union, when on May 7, of 1800, Indiana
Territory was organized.
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Soon after the close of the American Revolution, in July, 1787, the North-West
Territory had been established. The French had then in what became in 1802,
Ohio, no settlement, the first permanent European settlement in Ohio having been
made at Marietta in 1788, Dayton having been settled in 1796; but in that part
of the Territory which became Indiana the French
had trading posts, and Vincennes had already become "a flourishing town," these
trading posts dating from 1683 to 1763, while
Indiana formed a part of the French domain called
New France. At the Treaty of Paris, February 10, 1763, at the close of the
"French and Indian War," these French posts and settlements passed into the
nominal possession of the English, and when the War of the Revolution closed,
they were in this wild and then largely unknown region belonging to the
territory of the new United States.
In what became Indiana some early American
settlements were made, but the record concerning them is, that "from
1788 to 1814 the settlements were much engaged
in hostilities with the Indians."
The North-West Territory, which has been mentioned, of which
Indiana Territory was a part, included the area
west of Pennsylvania, north of the Ohio River, and east of the Mississippi. Some
colonial claims to the possession of parts of this territory were ceded to
Congress, by New York, in 1782, by Virginia, in 1784, by Massachusetts, in 1785,
by Connecticut, in 1786. In 1787 an ordinance was framed for its management and
government, passed September 13, which provided that land should not be taken up
by white settlers until it had been purchased from
Indians and offered for sale by the United States; that
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no property qualification should be required for voting or holding office; that
the territory, when settled sufficiently, should be divided into not less than
three nor more than five States; that these should always remain a part of the
United States; that their form of government should be republican; and that in
none of them should slavery exist. It will be seen that the first of these was
not fully observed in Northern Indiana,
and, to some extent, slavery did exist in Southern
Indiana till after 1840.
The credit of excluding slavery is due largely to Dr. Manasseh Cutler, of
Massachusetts, agent of the Ohio Company.
What our region was in 1800 when it was the home
of the Indians may be quite well determined from
the condition in which it was found by the first white settlers. The native red
men made little changes in its natural appearance, in its animal races, in its
vegetable productions. So we may safely assume that as the earliest settlers
found it so it was in 1800.
As a part of what was then the great and almost unknown West, it was a rather
low, in most parts level, quite well watered region, in parts well wooded, in
other parts open, undulating prairie and broad, level marshes, fifty-five miles
in breadth from east to west, and averaging about
sixty-five miles, from north to south, containing
a land area of 3,575 square miles.
The northeastern part was heavily timbered, comprising some genuine "thick
woods," the growth maple, beech, walnut; also ash, elm, bass-wood, and other
species. Along Lake Michigan, for a few miles out, grew pine and cedar. South of
this sandy belt, along the lake, and extending in a southwesterly direction into
the Grand Prairie of Illinois, a stretch of fertile prairie in six divisions
passed from the eastern
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to the western limit. Each of these was separated by
woodland or groves from
the others, and three of them became, as settlers went
upon them, noted for their wonderful native beauty. It is not probable that in
all the prairie region east of the Mississippi River the beauty could be
exceeded of what afterwards were called Rolling Prairie, Door Prairie, and Lake
Prairie.
It has been said that this region was well watered. As will be seen on the map
attached to this book a number of rivers crossed it, and there were as
tributaries to these many small streams which the map does not show. Along the
largest of these rivers, known as the Kankakee, flowing in a southwesterly
direction, was a broad strip of marsh land, originally covered with water. South
of this river was quite an extent of marshy land, also of broad sand ridges, two
considerable water courses, the Tippecanoe and the Iroquois, and prairie and
woodland between the river valleys.
The native fruits were abundant, if not of so many varieties as in some parts of
the land. The principal ones were, huckleberries, cranberries, crab-apples,
plums, some strawberries, wintergreen berries, sandhill cherries, and grapes.
Huckleberries and cranberries grew in great abundance. Hundreds of bushels, even
thousands of bushels, of huckleberries and cranberries must have been eaten by
the Indians and wild fowls or have gone to waste each year. The quantity of
these two varieties of wild fruit growing on these sand ridges and marshes, is
almost incredible to one unacquainted with the real facts. So late as 1896, when
much of the native growth would naturally have been destroyed, there were
marketed, it is said, in what is now Pulaski County, four thousand bushels
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of huckleberries, two thousand in Starke County, by one shipper in a good
season; and many years ago, from
a single railroad station in Lake County, there were
shipped a thousand bushels, picked by women and children, in one season.
Cranberries grew very abundantly in many marshes when the first settlers came.
Hundreds and hundreds of bushels were gathered by them and sent off in wagon
loads to the nearest markets. The Indian children, it is certain, could have had
no lack of wild fruit in the summer and fall, from
July 1st till frost came. As late as 1837 the two
varieties of wild plums, the red and the yellow, were excellent in quality --
the red very abundant; and of crab-apples, although they were sour, yet large
and nice, there then was no lack. There were nuts, too, in great abundance in
the autumn time -- hazel nuts, hickory nuts, walnuts, white and black, and beech
nuts. In the northeastern part, where the hard or rock maple trees were so large
and of so dense a growth, "thick woods," the Indians in the spring time could
make which they did make, maple sugar, to sweeten their crab-apples and
cranberries.*
Whether as early as 1800 the honey bees had
arrived to furnish the Indians with honey is not certain. They are said to go a
little in advance of the white man, the heralds of his coming footsteps. Here,
as early as
__________
*Among the Indians in the northeastern part of La Porte County was a petty chief
called Sagganee.
"When the Indians were removed, Sagganee went to Southern Kansas with them, but
soon returned, saying that he could not live there -- there was no sugar tree.
He had been in the habit of making maple sugar."
Like the whites, he had become attached to the "forest nectar." He continued to
live and died in Indiana. He would not live where
there was no sugar tree.
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1835 the early settlers found them in trees then well stored with honey. Solon
Robinson, Crown Point's earliest settler, mentions "a dozen honey trees to be
cut and taken care of" during his first winter, the winter of 1834 and 1835.
The Hornor party, camping in 1835, cut a bee tree, from
the contents of which they filled a three gallon jar with strained honey,
a wash tub and a wooden trough with honeycomb, and estimated all at at least
five hundred pounds.
It is quite probable that, while fond of sugar, the Indians had also learned the
taste of honey. Leaving fruits and sweets, which, without much labor on the part
of the Indians, nature furnished in this favored region, some of the native
animals may be noticed. Among those to be classed as game were black bears,
probably not numerous, deer in vary large numbers, rabbits also and squirrels,
the large fox, the smaller black, gray or cat, and red squirrels. For the
presence of buffalo or bison on the prairies north of the Kankakee River, the
evidence is very slight. One who was born at the Red Cedar Lake, in Lake County,
who is a very close observer and a very accurate observer of nature, and of the
traces of men and animals, accustomed to the wilds, who has trapped beaver and
found traces of Indian encampments in South Alabama, encampments that had been
tenantless for some seventy-five years, who shot many buffalo on the great
plains of Texas in 1877 and 1878, Herbert S. Ball,
has found on these Indiana prairies no traces of
the existence here of buffalo. The traces which they leave he knows well. But
there probably were some small, straggling herds here once. Yet, all the
historic evi-
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dence of such stragglers that has reached Crown Point is
the statement, in some of the narratives of La Salle's expedition down the
Kankakee River, that they captured a buffalo that was mired in the big marsh.
Elk were evidently here, because their horns have been found in Lake County.
Bones, supposed to be mammoth bones, have been found in Porter County; but of
Buffalo no bone, no horn, seems to have yet been seen.
Of feathered animals, there were wild turkeys in the heavy timber, prairie
chickens or pinnated grouse on the prairies by the thousands, partridges and
quails in the woods, and, in a part of the summer, in numbers which it would be
hard for the white boys of the present to credit, wild pigeons. To realize the
immense numbers of pigeons that were here in each August month, when some of us
who are now living were young hunters, one would need to see them almost
darkening the sky sometimes, and hear the sweep of their wings, and see them
rapidly gathering the acorns from the oak trees,
and again covering large areas in the stubble of the grain fields, constantly in
motion, as they picked up the scattered grains of wheat and of oats. Such sights
would make the boys of this day almost go wild with delight. The American wild
pigeon has gone, perhaps exterminated like the bison. They were here in the
Indian times without doubt. There were also in prodigious numbers various kinds
of water-fowls, wild geese, brants, swan, sand-hill cranes, ducks of many
species, mud-hens, and plover.
The rivers and the lakes, of which more mention will be made, were well stocked
with fish. With a few excellent varieties of these, such as pike, black bass,
rock bass, and sunfish, the lakes may be said to have been
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swarming, and especially one, afterwards called the
"Lake of the Red Cedars." The Indians had no long drag nets with which to draw
these from the
water, and when the white men drew their nets through these waters the multitude
of fish brought to the shore was a remarkable sight for any one to behold.
There was also for the Indians a large abundance of valuable fur-bearing
animals, beaver perhaps almost extinct -- the white settlers saw only their
works -- but otter, mink, raccoons, muskrats in prodigious numbers; and wolves,
the large timber, gray wolf, the smaller prairie wolf, some wild cats, and,
perhaps, occasionally a lynx. Elk were here once, as has been said, but whether
as late as 1800 has not been ascertained. No
attempt is here made to give the entire list of native animals, but only to name
those with which the Indians, as hunters and trappers, would have the most to
do.
From this outline sketch of this region, as it
must have been in 1800, it is evident that it was
a favorable location for uncivilized man.
We are now ready to look at the Indians themselves.
NAVIGATION OF
NORTHWESTERN INDIANA FROM 1800 TO 1900
FRONT MATTER AND DEDICATION
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER 1
- GENERAL OUTLINES
CHAPTER 2
- THE INDIANS
CHAPTER 3
- THE EARLY SETTLERS
CHAPTER 4
- WHAT THE EARLY SETTLERS FOUND
CHAPTER 5
- PIONEER LIFE
CHAPTER 6
- COUNTY ORGANIZATIONS
CHAPTER 7
- OUR LAKES AND STREAMS
CHAPTER 8
- LAKE MICHIGAN WATER SHED
CHAPTER 9
- TOWNSHIP AND STATISTICS
CHAPTER
10 - RAILROAD LIFE
CHAPTER
11 - POLITICAL HISTORY
CHAPTER
12 - THE WAR RECORD
CHAPTER
13 - RELIGIOUS HISTORY
CHAPTER
14 - RELIGIOUS HISTORY
CHAPTER
15 - RELIGIOUS HISTORY
CHAPTER
16 - SUNDAY SCHOOLS
CHAPTER
17 - TOWNS AND VILLAGES OF NEWTON AND JASPER
CHAPTER
18 - TOWNS AND VILLAGES OF WHITE, PULASKI AND STARKE
CHAPTER
19 - VILLAGES, TOWNS AND CITIES OF LAKE
CHAPTER
20 - VILLAGES AND TOWNS OF PORTER
CHAPTER
21 - VILLAGES, TOWNS AND CITIES OF LA PORTE
CHAPTER
22 - EARLY TRAVELS
CHAPTER
23 - PUBLIC SCHOOLS
CHAPTER
24 - PRIVATE AND PAROCHIAL SCHOOLS
CHAPTER
25 - LIBRARIES
CHAPTER
26 - OTHER INDUSTRIES
CHAPTER
27 - SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS
CHAPTER
28 - THE KANKAKEE REGION
CHAPTER
29 - DRAINING MARSHES
CHAPTER
30 - ANIMALS AND PLANTS
CHAPTER
31 - MISCELLANEOUS RECORDS
CHAPTER
32 - COURT HOUSES
CHAPTER
33 - ARCHAEOLOGICAL SPECIMENS
CHAPTER
34 - BIRTH PLACES OF PIONEERS
CHAPTER
35 - McCARTY
CHAPTER
36 - ATTEMPTS TO CHANGE
CHAPTER
37 - ALTITUDES
CHAPTER
38 - MISCELLANEOUS RECORDS
CHAPTER
39 - SOME STATISTICS
CHAPTER
40 - WEATHER RECORD
CONCLUSION
Transcribed by Steven R. Shook, April 2012