History of Lake, Porter, and LaPorte, 1927County history published by the Historians' Association . . . .
Source Citation:
Cannon, Thomas H., H. H. Loring, and Charles J. Robb. 1927.
History of
the Lake and Calumet Region of Indiana, Embracing the Counties of Lake,
Porter and LaPorte: An Historical Account of Its People and Its Progress
from the Earliest Times to the Present.
Volume I. Indianapolis, Indiana: Historians' Association. 840 p.
HISTORY OF THE LAKE AND CALUMET REGION OF INDIANA
CHAPTER II.
THE MOUND BUILDERS.
MYSTERY OF THEIR ORIGIN -- IMPLEMENTS AND UTENSILS -- DISCOVERIES IN
LOUISIANA AND GEORGIA -- INDIAN MOUNDS -- MOUNDS IN THE LAKE AND CALUMET
REGION -- THE YOUCHI COLLECTIONS OF STONE IMPLEMENTS.
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When the early white explorers and pioneers crossed the Alleghenies they discovered in the territory bordering the Ohio and Mississippi rivers and particularly in the present State of Ohio, concrete evidence of the existence at some remote period of a mysterious race of people who left behind them numerous elevations of earth of varying size and character, many of which showed a high order of engineering ability, and some of them rivaling in dimensions the greatest works of ancient times. To this mysterious race has been given the name of Mound Builders and the excavations of many mounds throw but little light on those who built them in fact only add to the mystery of their origin.
In recent years the story of past civilizations has not been difficult to determine and a fairly accurate conception of the daily lives of remote civilizations can be formed from marks, symbols, drawings, ideograph inscriptions, or hieroglyphic writings found on pottery, tablets, walls of caves or in the ruins of ancient structures, but this mysterious race left behind them no marks or drawings, ideograph inscriptions, hieroglyphic characters, or any satisfactory evidence whatever as to their origin or the period of their existence. The monumental remains left behind them scattered throughout the Ohio and Mississippi valleys did, however, carry abundant evidence of their superior culture and at a period many many centuries before the discovery of America by the whites.
Thousands of people must have been engaged in erecting the mounds, and the great expanse of territory in which they are found, in some cases thousands of miles apart, indicate the Mound Builders were a very numerous people. The implements of the stone age found in many mounds, were almost entirely the kind used in peaceful pursuits. Few war-like implements have been uncovered and most of the mounds show in their construction that they could not have been built for the purpose of offense or defense, although some exist which appear to have been designed for that reason. They lived in large communities and probably under despotic power, as only despotic power or great religious zeal would be likely to influence the continued labor or countless thousands necessary to complete some of the mounds.
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Many mounds show every evidence of having been designed as temples of worship or to be devoted to sacred purposes. Some mounds, notably in Wisconsin, show the outlines of the deer, fox, lynx, and eagle, and some writers think these effigy mounds were totems worshipped by the people as guardians of the village. A notable example of these effigy mounds is the “Great Serpent” mound in Ohio. It is located on a bluff which is in itself serpentine in form, overlooking Brush Creek, and is 1,348 feet in length. The mouth of the “Serpent” is open and directly in front of it is a low artificial mound while in the vicinity are several burial mounds. As the serpent appears to have been a favorite form of effigy, some writers think that serpent worship prevailed among the mound builders in some localities.
Nothing reliable has been found to indicate the mound builders had a special Deity and they may have worshipped the Sun as a visible creator of life, food, and security against want. From mounds in various sections there has been taken fragments of pottery, and hoes, spades, awls, knives, saws, spear and arrow points, of flint and quartz; axes, chisels, hammers, and pestles of drift granite; pipes, beads, and ornamental pendants of Green stone, Jasper and Cornelian; and plumb bobs made from the specular Missouri ores. The symmetry of form and perfection of finish of many of the implements found, show such advanced skill as to indicate a very high order of intelligence and civilization on the part of this mysterious race.
From whence they came or where they went, is a matter of conjecture. It is held by some authorities that they were the direct and not very far remote ancestors of the Indians and by other authorities that they were Indians, but of a very highly cultured type, and, in this respect signally distinct from the Indian first encountered by the white man in this country. Evidence to lend credence to the latter belief has been discovered through recent investigations of many mounds but so far it is not convincing.
Many students of ethnology maintain the mound builders were a distinct race from the Indians and antedated them by many centuries, and there is strong foundation for this belief. The mound builders were not known to the Indians of the Mississippi Valley and no traditions existed among the Indians in the days of the earliest white explorers which would throw any light upon them. The abundant evidence of their culture contrasted with the Indian first encountered in the interior of the United States by white men, seems another substantial proof of their distinction, unless it could be accepted that the Mound Builders deteriorated in culture and civilization to the condition of the Indian when first met by white explorers, and this belief of social and cultural decadence in the light of all the evidence at hand seems to many ethnologists difficult to entertain.
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One thing seems certain, their activities were confined to the Mississippi and Ohio valleys and did not reach the coast territory excepting at the Gulf of Mexico, which leads some writers of ancient American history to incline to the suggestion that their origin was either Mexico or Central America, and that they moved northward following the Mississippi Valley, gradually extending their settlements into the Ohio Valley and to the Great Lakes, to be finally destroyed by disease or war-like tribes, or to abandon their habitations for unknown reasons and return southward from whence they came. Others have inclined to the theory that all civilization on the American continent has come from the north and cite the numerous known immigrations into Mexico since even before the Christian era and the high order of culture possessed by some of these immigrant tribes and associate the Mound Builders with them. These writers believe that the Mound Builders originated in Ohio, and there under long time peaceful conditions developed a culture of their own and gradually extended their settlements over the Ohio Valley. Driven from their homes they went southward where their greatest settlements were developed in the lower Mississippi Valley and where exists the evidence of their highest culture, and from there they wandered into Mexico.
As the only evidence existing on which to base conclusions are the mounds, and the pottery, implements, utensils, etc., found in them, students of early American history will be interested in the investigations in 1925 of the mounds in the marsh lands of the Louisiana Coast by H. S. Collins, Jr., of the Smithsonian Institute and which has brought to light significant discoveries not only showing that a highly cultured people once inhabited that section but they must in all probability have been in direct contact with the Mayas and other cultured tribes in the south as the pottery and ornaments found were of the fashion characteristic of the Mayas.
Other important discoveries near Albany, Ga., once the heart of the Creek nation, shows that region to have been the home of a large and highly cultured population many centuries before the era of first white explorers. The first whites found the Creeks a peaceable tribe with culture far superior to other Indians in the Gulf region and they were the leaders of a Confederacy which included the Seminoles, Shawnees and all other tribes between the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Gulf and the Atlantic to near the Mississippi. The mounds or “barrows” recently opened at Blue Springs near Albany have poured forth a wondrous store of pottery, celts, axes, knives, arrow heads, scrapers, drills, tomahawks and many implements not yet classified.
While some of the finds were made of extraordinary clays and flints which abound in this region there were many implements of enduring material not native to the locality. Some of the celts, a prehistoric weapon resembling a chisel or small axe. were hewn from a red pipe stone not
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found within thousands of miles of Georgia. Grooved axes were uncovered made of stone which must have come from the territory north of the Ohio where it exists. There were innumerable arrow heads made of crystal quartzite which is unknown in Georgia. From these discoveries it is conjectured that from thousands of miles distant, material for certain implements were brought by missions from other tribes to this seat of Creek culture in Georgia and there made into implements for which the material was especially desirable and where the implements were finished with a skill and intelligence not known to many tribes.
Did the ancestors of the Creek, whom the first white man met, build these mounds? Some of the authorities who have studied these relics of the past are confident they did and that the Creek, whom the first whites met, while superior to other Indians in that region, had deteriorated in culture from his ancestors who, the evidence shows, attained a high order of intelligence and civilization. Other investigators question the soundness of this belief and adhere to the opinion of a separate and distinct cultured type of Indian who preceded the Creeks.
The discoveries made in 1926 in the excavation of one of the so-called Indian mounds in Sullivan County, Indiana, only adds to the mystery of the origin of the mound builders as the study of a skeleton uncovered led many to venture the opinion that it was not the skeleton of a North American Indian. In view of the interest now being taken in mound excavations, not only by government institutions but by private individuals and the states in the Mississippi and Ohio valleys as well, arid with a better knowledge of the Mayas and other races, which is certain through investigation now being conducted in Mexico and Central America, it may not be long before the history of the mound builders will be beyond the range of conjecture and become an open book.
THE MOUNDS.
The works of the mound builders consisted of sepulchral, temple and mounds of habitation and were made of earth. Sepulchral mounds were generally found to contain human remains and in them also have been found many round bottom pottery in whole or in fragments; plumb bobs, stone shuttles and other stone implements. These sepulchral mounds have generally a circular base and conical in shape and are held by some authorities to have been erected as monuments over the distinguished dead. The temple mounds are truncated cones or pyramidal and rest on a rectangular base. The flat area on the Summit was undoubtedly used for sacred purposes or important Council meetings.
Scattered over Indiana are excellent and well preserved examples of the various mound structures and east of Vincennes are three notable pyramidal mounds thrown upon or against the side of a bluff, and in size,
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symmetry and grandeur of aspect, these mounds rival, if not excel, any of the pre-historic remains in our country. A pyramidal mound one mile south of Vincennes is placed on a slightly elevated terrace, surrounded by a cluster of smaller mounds. It is oblong — with extreme diameter from east to west at the base of three hundred feet, and is one hundred and fifty feet wide and forty-seven feet high. The level area on the summit is fifteen by fifty feet, and is crowded with intrusive burials of a later race.
While the Lake region of Indiana has not so many pre-historic remains as some other sections of Indiana, it is not a moot question of it being inhabitated by the Mound Builders as Lake, Porter and LaPorte counties have many mounds and some of them worthy of special mention. About one and one-half miles east of Boon Grove on the south side of Wolf Creek in Porter County, is a group of eight mounds visible on an area of thirty acres, the largest about one hundred feet in diameter, and twelve feet in height. In 1897 an investigation of this mound by Mr. Blatchley, State Geologist, uncovered a badly decomposed human skeleton, but no implements were found. In a mound near Cornell Creek, Hon. George C. Gregg found several skeletons and in a mound south of Hebron, some pottery was found.
One of the best known mounds is located near Woodvale. It is one hundred and ninety feet long and seventy-five feet in its greatest width, and is twenty-two feet high. In as much as the shape of this mound is like a flat iron and its composition sand, which is the same material as the nearby highlands, some doubts have been cast upon it being an artificial mound by some authorities who have studied it and who have expressed the belief it is a natural formation formed by an overflow of the Deep River, which cut it away from the high lands. About twelve miles from LaPorte on a small tributary of the Kankakee River, are a group of twenty mounds which Lewis’ History of Lake and Porter counties, states were explored by Dr. Higday, who found the skeleton of two adults and one child, and also one skull, two copper hatchets, a bear shaped pipe, two copper needles, and earthern vessels filled with mould, and pieces of tortoise shell, a few flint knives and pieces of galena and mica.
There are several mounds along the shore of Cedar Lake in Lake County, in which have been found several skeletons, pieces of lead, ore. and arrow points. South of Orchard Grove is the so-called Indian Battle Ground, showing an artificial ridge of earth, enclosing two sides of an area of about three acres. In the enclosed area were about two hundred shallow holes. It is believed by many that the ridge was erected as a work of defense, and the holes resemble rifle pits of modern warfare. Near by other mounds have been opened and parts of skeletons and a stone hatchet were found. All through the lake region many stone implements have been uncovered by the plow or by regular exploration work in
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mounds, many of which have been preserved in private collections or were given to various institutions.
A varied collection of stone implements is owned by the Valparaiso High Schools and the Youchi collection may be found at the Hammond Public Library. It is the most complete collection in Lake County and was the gift of Hon. A. M. Turner and other citizens of Hammond who purchased it from J. W. Youchi who spent years in collecting it.
NAVIGATION OF
HISTORY OF THE LAKE AND CALUMET REGION OF INDIANA
FOREWARD
AN APPRECIATION
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I - Geology and Topography
CHAPTER II - The Mound Builders
CHAPTER III - Days of Indian Occupancy
CHAPTER IV - Early Explorations
CHAPTER V - Border Warfare
CHAPTER VI - Lake and Calumet Region Becomes Part of United States
CHAPTER VII - After Wayne and Greenville - Tecumseh and the Prophet
CHAPTER VIII - Indian Peace
CHAPTER IX - Early Settlements and Pioneers - County Organization
CHAPTER X - Townships - Towns - Villages
CHAPTER XI - Pioneer Life
CHAPTER XII - The Lake Michigan Marshes
CHAPTER XIII - Agriculture and Livestock
CHAPTER XIV - Military Annals
CHAPTER XV - The Lake and Calumet Region in the World War
CHAPTER XVI - The Newspapers
CHAPTER XVII - The Medical Profession
CHAPTER XVIII - The Bench and Bar in the Lake and Calumet Region
CHAPTER XIX - Churches
CHAPTER XX - Schools
CHAPTER XXI - Libraries
CHAPTER XXII - Social Life
CHAPTER XXIII - The Dunes of Northwestern Indiana
CHAPTER XXIV - Banks and Banking
CHAPTER XXV - Transportation and Waterways
CHAPTER XXVI - Cities
CHAPTER XXVII - Industrial Development
CHAPTER XXVIII - Chambers of Commerce
Transcribed by Steven R. Shook, December 2022