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 II.
THE INDIANS.
The North American Indians, a singular and an interesting
portion of mankind, whose origin on this continent is unknown, have been divided
by different writers into eleven or more large families, these families being
subdivided into tribes. The terms Nation and Clan are also used by writers to
denote divisions among the Indians, some writers making tribe co-extensive in
meaning with nation, others including in an Indian nation several tribes. Some
make clan a subdivision of a tribe; others make clan more extensive than tribe.
The meaning of these different terms must be learned from
their use.
That in 1800 Indians alone had any proper claim to
this region is evident, and they roamed over it at their own will, whether they
were, as Venable calls them in 1763, Kickapoos, or, as the pioneers here found
them in 1830, Pottawatomies.
In King's Handbook of the United States, it is said that La Salle, "Indiana's
first European visitor," concentrated "all the Indians of the Ohio Valley around
his fort on the Illinois River, for mutual defense against the terrible
Iroquois, and in so doing he depopulated Indiana."
That the Indians at that time left the south shores of Lake Michigan is not
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certain. It is further stated in King's Handbook that "After the French founded
Detroit the local tribes wandered back into
Indiana and settled there."*
William Henry Smith, in his History of Indiana
(1897), says that the native Indians of Indiana
were driven out by the Iroquois before 1684, and that they returned
from Fort St. Louis on the Illinois about 1712.
That the Pottawatomies were here in 1800 is
abundantly sure, and while they or other tribes were proper owners of the
region, they had learned that the French had claimed some control over them, and
they had been in some contact with French civilization, and so were not the
perfectly untutored Indians of the wilds. Yet was theirs largely the true Indian
life. The smoke that went up into the sky from
this region went from their wigwams or
from fires that they had kindled; the human voices
that were heard beside the rivers and the lakes or in the woodlands and on the
prairies, were the voices of their women and children or of their hunters and
their warriors; the pathways, the trails, the pony tracks, led to their villages
or camping grounds, or dancing floors, and sometimes to their burial places; the
boats paddled upon the waters were their canoes; the few places of the upturned
sod were the gardens for their vegetables and the patches for their maize. They
were not, to much extent, tillers of the soil, although raising some corn,
__________
*Detroit was founded In 1701, passed to the English in 1760, fully in 1763; and
came under the control of the United States in 1783.
Detroit was again in the hands of the British from
August 16, 1812 till October, 1813.
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more than is generally supposed, and a few garden vegetables; but they were the
hunters, the fishers, and the trappers, where fully indeed abounded game and
fish and fur. It would not seem probable that they had any need to suffer, in
summer or in winter, for want of food.
For the first third of this century and for how many "moons" or years or
centuries before, who knows? these Indians, generation after generation, were
the principal occupants here. Tribe may have succeeded tribe, yet Indians were
they all. But these Indians, our immediate predecessors, the Pottawatomies, upon
whose resources for food we have been looking, did not continue, through these
three and thirty years of the century, in the peaceful pursuits of life. Let us
look upon them as they too take part in some of the conflicts that were waged.
That noted Shawnee chief, Tecumseh, until his death, in October, 1813, at the
battle of the Moravian towns, was very active in endeavoring to unite the Indian
tribes into one great confederacy, and encouraged the hostilities which led to
the battle of Tippecanoe, November 7, 1811, but whether any of our Pottawatomies
took part in that engagement cannot here be stated. It is said that Saggonee,
who was so much attached to maple sugar, was at Tippecanoe. But the war spirit
was evidently among them. The French, who laid claim to such a large part of
this once wild Western world, had given to a spot on Lake Michigan, in longitude
west from Greenwich 87'37, the name in their
language which became Chicago in ours; and there they had built a fort and
established a trading post. The United States Government established there Fort
Dearborn in 1803 or 1804 a few
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soldiers forming the garrison. War was declared between
the United States and Great Britain, June 18, 1812, and many of the Indian
tribes were ready to aid the British. Seeing probable danger, it was arranged by
some one, who certainly did not consider wisely the value of a slight barricade
or stockade against Indian forces, for this Fort Dearborn garrison to pass, if
possible, through the Pottawatomie tribe, across our region, and reach Fort
Wayne.
They left their fortifications August 15, 1812, with some friendly Miamis, but
had proceeded only a short distance from the fort
when they were attacked by the Pottawatomies and nearly all killed. This action
is called the Fort Dearborn massacre. What further part the Pottawatomies took
in the events, the campaigns of 1813 and 1814, it is not needful here to
inquire. In 1816 Fort Dearborn was re-established, troops being kept there most
of the time until after January, 1837; and the Pottawatomies settled down again
to their former mode of life.
The brisk fur trade, with the two trading posts of Chicago and Detroit,
stimulated their trapper life, as from the days of
the first French explorers they had learned that the white man sets quite a
large value upon fur, and the influence of the French missionaries, some of them
not only zealous, but self-denying, noble men, still remained among them. Their
burials were not conducted altogether with pagan rites, they knew the symbol of
the cross and they erected crosses beside some of their graves.
But while some of the French influences for good remained among them until the
white settlers met them, evil influences were also among them, coming
from the American traders. These men furnished
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them with whisky, taught them to drink it, and nothing good could be the result.
It has been found that Indians, in contact with unprincipled whites, always lose
some of their native virtues. The French, far better than the English or
Americans, adapted themselves to the Indian nature, had larger control over
them, and seem to have tried more faithfully to do them good.
Yet in the first third of the Nineteenth Century, some Protestant American
missionaries tried very faithfully to instruct, civilize, and evangelize these
Pottawatomies.
In the year 1817 the Rev. Isaac McCoy, a Baptist, a native of
Indiana, commenced a mission work among the Miamis
and Kickapoos, but met with very little success. In 1822 he established himself
at a locality on the St. Joseph River, about one hundred miles north and west
from Fort Wayne, at what was called the "center of
the Pottawatomie tribe," in what is now Southwestern Michigan, and named his
mission station Carey, evidently in remembrance of Dr. Carey, one of the noted
Baptist missionaries that went from England to
India. He had as an assistant, Johnston Lykins, whom he had baptized, who was
appointed as missionary September 2, 1822, and who "removed
from Carey Station to the Shawanoes, July 7,
1831"* At Carey a school for the Indians was opened which in less than two years
numbered about seventy pupils, and in the recorded history of this station it is
stated that "the people advanced in agriculture and the mechanic arts, and a
considerable number were baptized." This report further states: "The first
Pottawatomie hymn was sung at Carey November 14, 1824,
__________
*Missionary Jubilee, page 257.
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by Mr. McCoy and the native assistant, Noaquette; the latter said, 'I wish we
could make it a little longer.' This year there was a school of sixty Indian
pupils. The Mission cultivated sixty acres of land."
In a little work called "Anthony Rollo, the Converted Indian," is found this
paragraph, the record belonging to this same year of 1824.
"In June, three lads, sons of one of the missionaries,* who had been at school
in the state of Ohio, made a visit to their parents at Carey. As they passed
Fort Wayne, one hundred miles from Carey, and the
whole distance a wilderness without inhabitants, they met with poor, friendless
Anthony. They set him on one of their horses,** they walking, and carried him to
Carey, at which place they arrived on the 29th of June." This Anthony was but
half Indian. His mother was a daughter of Topinchee, who had been a principal
chief among the Pottawatomies, and his father was a French trader. He was a
cripple in his lower limbs, walking with difficulty. At Carey he learned to
read, became a diligent reader of the Scriptures, and an earnest, Protestant
Christian. He died at Carey Missionary Station, March 8, 1828, twenty-two years
of age. The reflection of the devoted missionaries at that time was "how few of
the Pottawatomie tribe had reached the abodes of the blessed!" And they prayed,
"O gracious God, permit us to hope that many others of this tribe will be
allowed to unite in the everlasting song, 'Thou art worthy, for thou wast slain,
and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood, out of every kindred, and tongue, and
people, and nation.'"
__________
*Rev. J. McCoy.
**The boys had only two horses.
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How much either Roman Catholic or Protestant teaching did for the Indians it is
difficult, it is in fact impossible, for us to know. It is not likely very much
Christian principle was implanted. We all know that remarkable chapter about
"charity," or "love," as the revised version reads; and we know also, both Roman
Catholic and Protestant teachers alike, how needful this love is, love that
worketh no ill to one's neighbor, love that is the fulfilling of the law, to fit
the soul for the society of holy ones. And that the Indians who came in contact
with the missionaries manifested the possession of much of this love is
doubtful. And that no church rites will place this love within the soul we all
have the opportunity of seeing. Yet is to be hoped that some of the Indians,
learning as they did that a Saviour lived, that he died and arose
from the dead, did through that knowledge and
through the rich grace of God, who is no respecter of persons, reach the
possession of this needful love. And all such we may confidently look for in
Paradise. That from all the great divisions of the
human family, from the white and black and red and
yellow and brown, there will be individuals gathered to form the multitude that
no man can number, no loving believer in the Christian teachings has a right to
doubt.
But however much or little real or lasting good was accomplished by these well
meant and zealous mission efforts, some mention of which should justly be made
on these pages of our Indian history, this Carey Mission was not in existence a
sufficient length of time to extend its influence over our borders, for "by a
treaty provision with the United States the station was substantially
relinquished in 1831."
A change for the Indians, a great change for the
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forests and prairies and all the native dwellers here, was rapidly coming. White
migration was pushing westward into the great forests of the old Northwest
Territory. Settlements were made in the Ohio portion, and along the Ohio River,
and on the Wabash, and the line of advance was now toward the south shore of
Lake Michigan. Settlements had gone up from the
Ohio River over a part of Illinois, and had even reached Lake Michigan, for
Major Long reported at Chicago in 1827 three families living in log cabins. The
Indians, peaceful as they have become, are soon to leave their choice hunting
and trapping grounds, their favorite fishing spots and camping grounds and
dancing floors, and worst of all the burial places of their dead, to the white
man's occupancy and the white man's plowshare. Upon very little of that Indian
life for the first third of this century can we now look through the eyes of
those who saw and knew them; and yet that little is sufficient to enable us,
with no great stretch of imagination, to see their hunting parties, and to see
the hunters bringing in the deer and other game, and the squaws, or Indian women
and girls, dressing and cooking the deer, the rabbits and squirrels, the ducks
and geese, the grouse and partridges and quails; the wigwams with the fire in
the center and the smoke passing out through the opening at the top; and the
children playing round the camp. We can easily see them picking the wild fruit
and also see them at their domestic employments around the wigwams.
Beside the water courses, the Calumet and the Kankakee, the Tippecanoe, and the
Iroquois, and the Pinkamink, and on the banks of so many small and beautiful
lakes, while the men and boys trapped or
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fished, the women and children must have enjoyed the choice camping places amid
the beauty of the bright autumn time; and those rich flowers of the prairie left
from the golden
summer, how could they fail, loving bright colors, richly to have enjoyed? In
those smoky days, when the Great Prairie and the Big Marsh and hundreds of
smaller ones had been burning, when the sun, so red in the morning and in the
evening, and while visible, made no shadow even at midday, and the air was
still; and then in the evening when the full and red hunter's moon shone upon
them, how they must have dreamed of the beautiful hunting grounds of which their
pagan ancestors had told them and taught them to look for in the great future.
Perhaps to them, amid those beauties of the world around them, some ideas of the
power and the glory of the Great Spirit came. Perhaps some blind prayers went up
from their darkened
minds to his throne above. Perhaps some longings for a higher life came at times
upon them. A little good, and yet it seems to have been a very little good, have
white men done to the Indian race. They were here, those copper-colored,
uneducated, native children of America, but a few years ago, where are now our
towns and villages, our farms and orchards, our churches and schools, our
domestic animals and our homes. Some of their stone axes, their arrow and spear
heads, and many of their bones, are left in our soil; their dust is here to be
mingled with our dust; but they have passed forever away. They wrote no history,
they published no songs, they erected no monuments; even the earthworks are,
probably, not their work; and after they had passed into the distant West, this
fair, long stretch of land was almost as though they had never
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been. There were no bridges, no mills, no fences, no buildings, and not much
mark of human occupancy.
Something more of these Indians and of their peculiar life we may see when we
come to the mixed life of the pioneer and Indian from
1830 to 1840, when incidents may be found sufficient to make a long
chapter.
At present let us look at two of their noted chieftains.
SHAUBENEE. CHEE-CHEE-BING-WAY.
The following particulars in regard to this noted Indian chieftain are taken
from a Chicago publication of 1889. He was what is
called a "good Indian." His name is said to mean "built like a bear." He is said
to have been "nearly a perfect specimen of physical development." He was born in
1775, in Canada, a grandnephew of Pontiac, and was a contemporary of the
celebrated Indians, "Tecumseh, Black Hawk, Red Jacket, and Keokuk." Born an
Ottawa he was brought in 1800, by a hunting party,
to the Pottawatomie country and married a daughter of their principal chief
whose village was where is now Chicago in Illinois. When forty years of age he
was the war chief of the two tribes, the Ottawas and Pottawatomies. He joined
Tecumseh in getting up his confederation, and was next to him in command at the
battle of the Thames, and when Tecumseh fell on that battlefield Shaubenee
ordered a retreat. That was his first and last battle against the whites.
For his refusal longer to contend against the whites he was deposed as war
chief, but continued to be the principal peace chief. For some twenty years he
was "the practical head of the Ottawas, Pottawatomies, and
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Chippewas." When the Indians ceded their Illinois lands to the United States
they reserved 1,280 acres near Paw Paw Grove in Illinois, for Shaubenee, but of
this rapacious whites "by force and fraud deprived him."
At length, in 1859, some generous white people bought twenty acres of land and
built for him a house in Grundy County, Illinois, on the south bank of the
Illinois River, where he died July 17, 1859, being 84 years of age, "and was
buried with imposing ceremonies in the cemetery at Morris." While not residing
in Indiana yet as connected with our Pottawatomies
Shaubenee is surely entitled to a place in our Indian records.
Next to this noted Indian chief may be named a man of mixed blood -- Indian,
French, and English -- whose English name was Alexander Robinson and his Indian
name Chee-Chee-Bing-Way, translated Blinking Eyes, who died at his home on the
Des Plaines River near Chicago about 1872 (supposed to be 104 years of age), for
he is claimed to have been a head chief among the Pottawatomies. No battle deeds
of his have been found on record to be recounted here, but as early as 1809 he
is found engaged in taking corn around the south shore of Lake Michigan, having
become connected with the founder of Bailly Town in the fur trade and then being
in the service or employ of John Jacob Astor. This corn was raised by the
Pottawatomies and was taken to Chicago for sale and export "in bark woven sacks
on the backs of ponies." So that we may call this Indian chief the first known
buyer and exporter of corn at what is now that great mart of trade -- Chicago.
In August, 1812, it is said, he was on his way in a
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canoe, again to buy up corn in Chicago, or at Fort Dearborn, when some friendly
Miamis hailed him from
the shore, and warned him not to go to Chicago, as "it
would storm tomorrow." He left his canoe, therefore, at the mouth of the Big
Calumet (which is in Lake County), and had no part in the "August Massacre." He
lived the next winter in Indian style as a hunter on the Calumet. In 1829 he
took a wife from
the Calumet who was three-fourths Indian blood. His headquarters were at Chicago
and his journeys outward for the purpose of buying fur extended as far southward
as the Wabash River.
It is claimed that he, as a Pottawatomie chief, evidently a trader rather than a
warrior, called together an Indian council at Chicago in the time of the Black
Hawk War (1832), and it is said that when, in 1836, the great body of this tribe
met for the last time in Chicago, received their presents, and started for the
then wild West, this trader chief went with them. But like Shaubenee, who also
went out to see his people settled in their new home, he soon returned and
passed his last years on the Des Plaines River.
Mr. J. Hurlburt, a well-known citizen of Porter, and afterwards of Lake County,
stated several years ago, that he was in Chicago at the time of that gathering
of the "red children" in 1836, and that as many as ten thousand were supposed to
have been then assembled there, and that it was understood that five thousand
were Pottawatomies.
JOHN B. CHAUDONIA.
The name of another active and influential man may properly be placed on this
record.
General Lewis Cass says: "Chaudonia was a half-
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breed Pottawatomie. His uncle, Topenebee, was the chief of the tribe, and was an
old man of great influence." Like Anthony Rollo he was the son of a French man
and an Indian woman, but unlike him there seems no evidence that he received in
any true sense the religion of the whites among whom for some years he lived.
General Cass further says of him: "He served many years under my orders both in
peace and war, and in trying circumstances rendered great services to the United
States. Some of the events of his life were almost romantic, and at all times he
was firm and faithful."
General Cass says further: "From the commencement
of our difficulties with Great Britain, Chaudonia espoused our cause,
notwithstanding the exertions of the British agents to seduce him to their
interests."
"He was present at the massacre of the garrison of Chicago, where I have always
understood he saved the life of Captain Heald, the commanding officer, and the
lives of others also." After mentioning his influence as exerted in inducing the
chief, Topenebee, his mother's brother, and other Pottawatomie chiefs, to attend
the council of Greenville in 1834 held by General Harrison and himself, General
Cass adds: "From Greenville he accompanied me to
Detroit, * * * and rendered me the most essential service."
In 1832 Chaudonia was living for a time in La Porte County, on a piece of land,
section 28, township --, range --, "allotted to him by the treaty with the
Pottawatomie Indians, held on the Tippecanoe River, October 26, 1832."
He afterward became a resident near South Bend and there died in 1837. Congress
granted in 1847 a
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section of land to his widow and children "in
consideration of the services rendered" by him to the United States. His name
among the Indians, says Charles M. Heaton, was Shaderny, which seems to have
been sometimes written Shadney. Two of his grandsons were faithful soldiers on
the side of the Union in our great Civil War.
One of them was severely wounded. So there was shed in that fierce conflict, not
only the blood of Americans and of many European nationalities, but also
Pottawatomie blood from the State of
Indiana.
It is not a part of the design of this historic sketch to give the present
condition of the Pottawatomies in their Western homes, but this record may well
be made: that their late head chief, Shoughnessee, died at his home in Jackson
County, Kansas, of quick consumption, April 7, 1900, and was buried with full
Indian rites in his own door-yard. He was considered, as a leader, quite
conservative. His successor is called a more progressive man.
It is on record somewhere that an old Indian once said, "Give me back my forests
and my bow, and my children shall no more die of a cough."
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