Johnson County, Indiana - V D. D. Banta, 1888 (part 1 of 2)

V D. D. Banta

Indian History - Pre-historic Races - Early Indian Occupants - The Miamis, Their Habits and Characteristics - Indian Relics - The Dela wares - Their Residence in Indiana - Remnants From Other Tribes - Last of the Red Men.

HE history of the Indian occupation of a county situated as Johnson County is, prior to its colonization by the white man, must necessarily be meager and unsatisfactory. Occupying the level lands lying between the White and Blue rivers - lands covered by a rank and gloomy forest, and predominated by marshes and sluggish streams, it is no cause for wonder if neither that vanished race we call the Mound Builders, nor that vanishing one we call the Indians, found much encouragement to establish, within the region, permanent homes. While the surrounding counties are said to abound in the remains of the handiwork of the people who built the mounds, in all of Johnson County only the feeblest evidence of their occupation remains. On Sugar Creek, two miles above its confluence with Blue River, two mounds are to be seen which have never been examined by digging, but which appear to have had an artificial origin. In White River Township, on the farm of Levi Guseclore are two low mounds which have yielded ashes, which seems to settle the question of their artificial origin. The land between the rivers was, unquestionably, in the remote past, under the dominion of, and parts of it no doubt, actually occupied as places of residence by, the Mound Builders. But the prints of their occupation are far more numerous in Shelby County on the east, and Morgan on the west. The river hills in these counties afforded them both dry home sites, and dry fields for tilling maize. Trails leading from river to river connected the east and west communities, and the territory since framed into Johnson County, was thus, no doubt, as well known to them as if they had made their homes on its every knoll. Besides, the Mound Builders were hunters as well as agriculturists, and the forests of the unoccupied country, we may well suppose, teemed with game.

During the past two years I have made such collection of Johnson County "Indian Relics," as time and opportunity permitted, and of the stone implements in my possession, or that I have seen, that were found in the county, quite a number are identical in pattern with implements that have been found in mounds. None of the implements referred to, were taken from mounds, but all are what is known as "Surface Finds," and were, of course, once lost by owners. It does not follow, however, that the losing owners were Mound Builders. Some stone implements taken from mounds, and which the Mound Builders had in common use, notably, the flints and axes, it is well known the Indians manufactured, and for aught we know, they made about every thing out of stone that the Mound Builders themselves made. Furthermore, it may readily be seen that the stone implements found in Johnson County, while not manufactured by the Indians, may have come into their possession by finding elsewhere, and been lost again. It is a curious fact that many of the best specimens, and those most nearly allied to the mound-implement forms, have been found in places where there never could have been habitations, snch as marsh lands. The losers must have been traveling at the time their loss occurred; and while this fact exists, another is equally prominent. On the knolls and high banks near the " Deer Licks," the places where we would expect the Indian encampments to have been, and where they were, judging from the great abundance of implements found, many implements are picked up belonging to the Mound Builders' patterns. No doubt, the Mound Builder hunters encamped at, and watched, the deer licks, and they may have lost the implements in question. And so, too, may the Indian. The only conclusive evidence after all, that the- county was ever occupied by the people called the Mound Builders, must be found in the mounds themselves.

Of the Indian occupancy we know more, and yet how little of that! When the Ohio Valley first became known to Europeans, the Miami Indians were found occupying all the country from the Wabash to the Muskingum, and from the Ohio well up toward the lakes. They had no traditions of former migrations, but declared they had occupied the country from time immemorial. " The Miamis," says Bancroft^ " were the most powerful confederacy in the West." When the country was first discovered their seat of empire was on the Wabash, but for the sake of trading with the English " they moved their chief towns eastward." Their town of Piequa contained about 400 families, and was one of the strongest in that part of the continent." Of their occupancy we know little more than in a territory large enough for an empire they had few centers ot permanent settlement, and their entire population must have been considerably less than the population of Johnson County at the present time. Bancroft says : " On the discovery of America, the number of scattered tenants of the territory which now forms the States of Ohio and Michigan, of Indiana and Illinois and Kentucky, could hardly have exceeded 18,000."* In 1760, according to Parkman, the same sparseness of population continued. " So thin and scattered was the native population, that even in those parts which were thought well peopled, one might sometimes journey for days together through the twilight forests and meet no human form. Broad tracts were left in solitude. All Kentucky was a vacant waste, a mere skirmishing ground for the hostile parties of the north and south. A great part of Upper Canada, of Michigan and of Illinois, besides often portions of the west, were tenanted by wild beasts alone. To form a close estimate of the number of erratic bands who roamed this wilderness would be impossible; but it may be affirmed, that between the Mississippi on the west and the ocean on the east, between the Ohio on the south and Lake Superior on the north, the whole Indian population at the close of the French War, did not greatly exceed 10,000 fighting men. Depending on the chase as the Miamis did for a livelihood, it is a most reasonable supposition that the wild animals found on their river, Wau-pe Kom-i (White River) and its tributaries, contributed to their support. From time immemorial their trails led from the Wabash across the Ohio into the Kentucky canebreaks, one of which passed through this county. Bands of Miami hunters could not fail to pursue the game inhabiting the White River country, and that meant the migration of families and the establishment of camps, and probably of villages, which were occupied during the hunting season. When the red man went to war he left his family behind, but when he went on an extended hunting excursion he took his family and all his personal belongings with him. His abiding place depended in the main, on the means of securing livelihood close at hand. Whenever, for any cause, the game migrated, he followed it. That every high and dry creek bank, and every dry knoll near living water in the county, has been occupied as a camping site, if not a village site, in the remote past, we have indubitable proof in the skeletons and other Indian remains found in the gravel pits and other excavations made. One of these places is in the northern part of White River Township. A line of broken ridges extends through parts of Sections 33, 34 and 35, in Congressional Township 14. Springs were within convenient distance, and excellent deer licks were found in the vicinity by the pioneer settlers. All the conditions were favorable to the occupancy of the knolls and ridges by an aboriginal population, and the remains found prove they took advantage of it. In the excavations made for gravel, human skeletons, stone implements, earthern pots, deer horns and bones, and in one place a buffalo's head and feet have been found, and that in such numbers as to lead to the conclusion that the occupancy was long continued.

Another place where the signs point to an ancient place of aboriginal habitation, is at the headwaters of Young's Creek. When the early settlers came to Johnson County, they found on that creek beginning on Section 31, and extending up through Section 30, in Township 13, an unusual number of deer licks, to which the deers resorted in large numbers during the summer season. In consequence of the sport to be had in that vicinity, it soon became a noted hunters' resort. Since the country has been cleared up, it transpires that the red hunters were in the habit of visiting this region of licks in pre-historic times. So numerous are the flints, stone axes and nondescript stone implements that have been picked up on the plowed fields in that vicinity, and that are yet to be found, that the conclusion cannot be avoided that there was a period when the Indians spent a considerable part of the }rear there. The knolls which were most used as places of habitation can he found from their relics, and it is even believed that on different knolls, a difference in the pattern of a majority of the flints found can be detected, which, if true, is a fact worthy of note, for it points to occupancy by different tribes, and consequently different periods.

Another place where the aboriginal hunters, with their families, made their abiding place, was on the banks of Young's Creek at Franklin. Over forty years ago while an excavation was being -made for the foundation of a county seminary, numerous skeletons were found which attracted a good deal of attention at the time by reason of their unusually large size. In so many places in Indiana and the adjoining states have skeletons of extraordinary size been found, as to point to the fact of an occupation at one time by a tribe of unusually large men. This does not imply a different race - only a difference in the conditions of growth of the same race. We are not without an example of a similar development within a limited area since the occupation of the country by the white people. Fifty years after the disastrous defeat of Gen. St.

Indian History. 28 1

Clair, the skeletons of the Kentucky soldiers killed in that battle were exhumed, and out of more than seventy taken from one grave, two only were of men who had been less than six feet in height. In the early days of the country's history a skeleton was exhumed at Edinburg, the lower jaw of which was of such extraordinary development that it would readily fit mask-like over the lower jaw of the largest man in the community.

The Franklin skeletons were the theme of the first poetical effusion ever written or printed in Johnson County. On the 13th of December, 1845, the first number of the Franklin Examiner was issued by John R. Kerr, " the blind printer," in which appeared the following verses written by himself :

Thy body for ages in silence hath slept, And moulder'd in darkness, unknown and unwept; For thy tribe and thy kindred have bowed to the ban, Which dooms to the dust all glory of man.

A race though more feeble, more ruthless have come, Who reck not to scoff as they break up thy tomb; They scatter thy bones with the sands on the street, To be trodden like dirt by the vilest of feet.

Thy relics, tho' mangled and scatter'd we see, Yet plead for man's dignity, leaving him free; His lore from the wide book of nature to draw, Untrammeled by labor, by letters or law.

They carry us back to the records of Time, When nature in majesty wild and sublime, Bade all things of life to perfection expand, And giant with mastodon strove for command.

Hut destruction did come like a merciless wave, Sweeping widely the land of the mighty and brave; And the tumuli standing in silence, are all That record their existence, their might, or their fall.

Many other places might be pointed out, tending to prove that the country was occupied for centuries before the white men took possession. The vast number of flints and other stone implements that have been sown broadcast over the whole face of the country tends to prove this. The flint, the axe, the celt, all required labor and skill to fashion. With fair usage all would last a lifetime, and unless buried with the owner, would at his death descend to someone else, and without accident, last him a lifetime. Practically, the Indian's stone implement was imperishable, and the ones found represent the ones lost. We may well imagine that whenever a hunter shot an arrow tipped with a flint he did not shut his sharp eyes against the place of its descent. A large per cent, he would lose, but he lost no more than he could help. Much less would he be apt to lose his other implements. To him they were expensive; he had few of them to look after, and it is a reasonable supposition that a red man seldom lost an axe, a scraper, a gorget or other like implement. And yet what a harvest of these things have been picked up one time or other in Johnson county! And what a long period of occupancy by men of the stone age, do the great number of implements which have been lost in as circumscribed a territory as Johnson County, indicate !

Between 1736 and 1748, according to Schoolcraft, the Delaware Indians, who at the time of the discovery of America, pitched their tents *in the valleys of the Delaware and Schuylkill, were driven from their ancient home by the six nations, and migrated toward the setting sun, establishing themselves by permission of the Miamis, on the banks of the Muskingum. Here they ultimately joined in the league with the Miamis, Wyandotts and other tribes, against the encroachments of the Big Knife, of the Virginia frontier. " After a few years," continues Schoolcraft, " they took shelter on the White Water " (White River). This was with the consent of the Miamis. In truth it seems to have been a sort of exchange of territory, for it was not far from this time that the Miamis broke up their settlements on the Wabash, to a considerable extent, and went into the Ohio country to be near to the British in Canada.

By the consent of the Miamis, and their own act, the Delawares became involved with all the lands watered by the White River and its tributaries. Before 1791, there was a Delaware village at the junction of the east and west forks of White River, and it may be assumed in the absence of evidence to the contrary that the first migrations to the White River country, took place about the middle of the last half of the eighteenth century. They were river Indians, and kept to the streams. Their beautiful river they named the Ofiecomeecah. So says H. W. Beckwith in the Twelfth Indiana Geological Report, 41. On Daniel Hough's map in the same report the name is spelled Wah-me-ca-me-ca. The late John B. Dillon, Esq., gave the writer the following as the Miami name of the river, viz. : Waufiekomica. The orthography was his. These are different spellings, evidently of the same name. The Delawares may have utilized the Miami name. All their villages were on rivers. From the headwaters of the west branch of White River, to its junction with the east fork, Delaware villages were to be met with. The river afforded them an easy means of communication with all the towns. From these centers, hunters went on excursions for game, usually taking their families with them and building their lodges in the woods where the game was to be found. One of these villages was in Johnson County. The reader who will examine a map of the county will observe that White River cuts off the northwest corner, a fraction over a 1,000 acres. On the west side of the river was the site of that ancient town. The first knowledge we have of it, comes from John Tipton, one of the commissioners to locate the State Capital, who visited the spot on two occasions in the spring of 1820. The first notice of the ancient village is in his "Journal," under date of May 26: " We then returned to our camp and set out to examine the northwest side of the river. Crossed into an overflowed bottom; came to a place where the river turns to the west, making a very short bend; runs hard against the west shore and seems to be a very difficult pass for boats of burthen. At this place the growth is all young timber. Some remains of old cabins. I am told there was an Indian village here. Mr. William Landers^ who lives one mile back from the river, told me that an Indian said the French once lived here and that he, the Indian, went to school to" a Frenchman in this place; but they left it about the time of Hardin's campaign, which was about thirty-three years ago." On the 5th of the month following, John Tipton again visited the place, and writes in his Journal as follows: " Here I am told was once a French village; then occupied by Delaware Indians, but evacuated by them about thirtythree years ago."

The statements taken together are very interesting. They esr tablish the fact that the French began a settlement at the place indicated; that they subsequently abandoned it; that the Delaware Indians then took possession of it, and that, about 1787, they, in turn, abandoned it. Now, if the Delawares migrated to the White River country about 1775, as we may assume they did, the abandonment of the town by the French was before that time. How long.'' Not many years. Mr. Landers moved to the country in 1820, and the Indian told him that while the French yet lived there, he "went to school to a Frenchman." They had therefore abandoned the place within the lifetime of a man who told his story not later than in the spring of 1820. This would put the time somewhere between 1760 and 1775; and the first named year was the one in which, by treatv, French Dominion over the West passed to the English. How long before that they founded the town we have no means of conjecturing. Judge Franklin Hardin who has lived for fifty years in the neighborhood of the ancient town site, and who has been much interested in its history, says, that when William Landers came to the country there was a tract of land of 200 acres, and was overgrown with bushes, which had once been farmed by the Indians. Indians still lived on that portion of the once cleared land, lying in White River Township on the west side of the river. Capt. Big Fire, Little Duck, and "Johnny Quack, are remembered, while on the east side, and lower down on the old Morgan, or Denny place, lived Capt. White, another Indian. Here also, was an ancient cleared field. Still below Capt. White's place, on the left bank of the river, was, says Judge Hardin, another Indian location and burial ground, but no cultivation. This encampment was owned by Big Bear. On the old Morgan County part of the old Indian field, Capt. Tunis had his wigwam, and just adjoining in Marion, Old Solomon, his. The wigwams were situated on the right bank of the river, at the southeast corner of the farm, near the middle of Section 31. Here seems to have been, once, a stone wall thirty or forty feet long and five or six feet high, built of portable undressed stones, and laid parallel with the river, and a hundred feet distant. The Indians said this wall was built for defensive purposes against the Kentuckians; that they had seen a bloody battle fought there once, between them and the whites, beginning on the east bank of the river, where they were surprised, and that they were forced over the river, assaulted in the town, and finally driven out. " That thereafter the farm had never been occupied, except by a few returning families. The size of the brush growing on and about the once cleared land at that date, 1820, showed that it had but recently been abandoned. An old Kentuckian of great reliability, Stephen Watkins, on a visit to White River Township, twenty-five years ago, repeated precisely the same history of this town, and the battle and all the circumstances of the fight. He went so far as to point to the near battlefield; he said he had the particulars from one of the actors, and knew them to be true. Does history give any account of this battle? In Dillon's History of Indiana, it is shown that the Pigeon Roost Massacre took place in the north part of Scott County, about eighty miles south of this Indian town, on the 3d day of September, 181 2. The next evening, 150 mounted riflemen, under command of Col. John McCoy, followed the trail twenty miles. On the 6th, the militia of Clark County (no number given) was re-enforced by sixty mounted volunteers from Jefferson County, and, on the evening of the 7th, 350 volunteers from Kentucky were ready to unite with the Indiana militia of Clark and Jefferson, for the purpose of making an attack on the Delaware Indians, some of whom were suspected of having been engaged in the destruction of the Pigeon Roost settlement. * * * But, it is said, a spirit of rivalry which prevailed among some of the officers defeated the intention of those, who, at the time proposed to destroy the towns of the friendlv Delawares who lived on the western branch of White

Indian History

River. Now hear what Maj. John Tipton says about these 'friendly Indians' on White River: 'In their way out, thev (the escaping Indians) passed the Saline or Salt Creek, and I there took an old trail leading direct to the Delaware towns, and it is my opinion that while the Government is supporting one part of that tribe (the Delawares), the other part is murdering our citizens. "It is much to be desired that those rascals of whatever tribe they may be harboring about these (Delaware) towns, should be routed,, which could be done with ioo men in seven days.' With this spirit and purpose openly declared by the whites, how long do we imagine they waited for an opportunity to execute it? Will anyone make me believe that 600 armed men at the Pigeon Roost Massacre, after viewing the slaughtered and roasted human bodies and burning houses, quietlv dispersed and went home? Col. Joseph Bartholomew raided these towns on White River with 137 men on the 15th day of June, 181 3, He found three towns,. two of which had been burnt about a month before. (See Dillon, 524.) Who destroyed them? The reason that the battle at the Delaware towns, if a battle did occur, and the breaking them up on White River was never reported, is that the Government during the war with the other Indian tribes in 181 1, 1812 and 181 3, was supporting and protecting the Delawares who had promised to engage in peaceful pursuits. Gen. Harrison had directed the Delawares to remove to the Shawanee's Reservation in Ohio, and most of them had done so soon after the battle of Mississinewa, December 17, 1812. Those who refused to go received but little mercy. But another proof of this battle is in the fact that on the twenty-acre field, in the southeast corner of northwest quarter, Section 32, Township 14 north, Range 3 east, near Capt. White's old camp, large numbers of leaden bullets of every size, battered and bruised, have been found. I have had at least 100 of them myself, and have picked up at least nine, recently, in a wash of the river, and have been told of hundreds being found by others. I have passed a short distance from this field, on other grounds more suitable for finding them, but never yet found any except in this locality. And about three years since, on John Sutton's farm, one mile and a fourth west of the battle-field, and only one mile east of the Indian town, four frames of human bodies were washed out of a low, wet piece of bottom land. The skulls were carried off before I had an opportunity of examining them. No Indian ever buried his dead in a low, wet piece of land. They must have been buried there under pressing circumstances, and by white men." Judge Hardin is a close and accurate observer. He has studied the subject conscientiously, and his proofs are entitled to full "faith and credit" in all the courts of history. But I cannot agree with his conclusions as to the time when the battle he records was fought. I think it ante-dates by many years the campaigns of 1812. In October, 1818, the Delaware Indians ceded their lands on the White River to the United States, reserving the possession thereof for a term of three years. But before their time was up they left their White River homes for a country beyond the Mississippi. They numbered, according to John Johnson, an Indian Agent residing in Ohio, but who seems to have been well acquainted with them, 2,300.* In the fall of 1820, a part of them were removed to Arkansas. f In the spring of 182 1, the remainder were removed. £ The county disagreeing with them, they were soon after given lands in Kansas, where a remnant yet remains to draw a yearly stipend from the United States. Parkman thus photographs the Delaware brave of the far west: " At the present day, the small remnant settled beyond the Mississippi, are among the bravest marauders of the west. Their war parties pierce the farthest wilds of the Rocky Mountains; and the prairie traveler may sometimes meet the Delaware warrior returning from a successful foray, a gaudy handkerchief bound about his brows, his snake locks fluttering in the wind, and his rifle resting across his saddle, bow while the tarnished and begrimed equipments of his half wild horse, bear witness that the rider has waylaid and plundered some Mexican cavalier." The cession of their country and final abanment by the Delawares, seems to have been the signal for the hunters of other tribes to rush in. For a period of five or six years, following 1820, numerous bands of Indians visited the county in the sugar-making season, and again in the fall-hunting season. Some families wintered here. It would be difficult and perhaps serve no good purpose, to give in this place an enumeration of the camping grounds occupied by the Indians, subsequent to the settlement of the county. It will be enough to refer to a few of the more noticeable places. The highlands of Sugar Creek were a favorite Indian camping ground. The Indian name of this stream was Then-a-me- ' say. In the falls of 1824 and 1825, the Indians camped on the creek bluff not far from the " Sugar Creek Bridge." They are supposed to have been Wyandotts and were professors of the Christian faith. It is related that they had killed a bear and one Sunday morning some of the white men of the vicinity visited their camp to purchase bear meat. They found the Indians sitting quietly in their camp. " What do you want?" asked one of them who could talk English. "Bear meat," was the answer. " Come to-morrow, Indians do not sell to-day." The next year, or the year after, a band were encamped near the headwaters of Young's Creek. One Sunday morning Daniel Covert heard a strange noise in the distance and went to investigate. It led him into an Indian camp. They were at their devotions, and motioning him to a seat, he heard them sing hymns and utter prayers in their own tongue. They are supposed to have been the same Indians who had before that camped on Sugar Creek. A young Indian hunter, belonging to the same band, was accidently killed on Sugar Creek, and buried at the roots of an oak, still standing on the bluff, betwe en John Owens' house and the bridge. While "fire hunting" on the creek one night, he was shot by one of his own band by mistake. His comrades made a* trough of an ash tree into which they put his body and covered it with a slab. Over his grave they set a post, as tall as a man, which they painted red, with a cross-piece painted black. The grave was enclosed with ash palings, driven into the earth.

When Judge Franklin Hardin, a lad of sixteen, first visited the country in 1825, riding double with his mother, they traveled along the Whetzel Trace, through what is now known as Clark Township. "Added to the gloom of this dismal place (the Grand Gulf), away to the northwest," says the Judge, " was an Indian encampment, making the most of their privilege to hunt here. They seemed to be making a drive of the game southward, the direction we were traveling to Loper's, on Camp Creek. The constant crack of the rifle, the crash of the brushwood, caused by the troops of the flying, frightened deer, as they rushed thundering on with branching horns and tails erect, widespread, grandly leaping high above the shrubbery, with heads averted, as if to see the distant foe, and the widely scattered flock of wild turkeys as they sped on with long outstretched necks, half on foot, half on wing, far as the eye could reach, was altogether a sight - one never to be forgotten by an old lady and a boy unused to such a wild scene." The Indian hunters who were making such a wild display at that time, belonged to a Pottawattamie band that were encamped on Section 36, Township 14, Range 4 east. James Kinnick moved to his place in 1832, and found thereon the remains of their camp. One of the wigwams was in a good state of preservation.

On a little creek which empties into Young's Creek from the northeast, in Section 16, Township 12, Range 4 east (it runs about a mile northwest of Franklin), the Indians were in the habit of camping early in the year, trapping and making sugar. The little creek bears the name of Indian Creek, which wras given it by Levi

Moore, who settled on Young's Creek, close to its union with that creek. Moore was charged by the Indians with stealing their furs. But no harm ever came to him on account of it. At Henry Byers' place (near Mount Pleasant Church), was a noted camping ground. On one occasion the Indians left that camp for a few days, first tying their peltries in a bundle and springing it into a sapling beyond the reach of any prowling beast. On their return, their bundle was gone.- It had evidently been stolen, but by whom, was never known. Not long after, William and David Burkhart, two brothers, living at' no great distance from Byers', each had a horse stolen in one night. Like the furs, the horses were never heard of. It was thought by many of the pioneer settlers, that the Indians believing the Burkharts had stolen their furs, had taken their horses in retaliation.

In i82<L_ori826, a band of Wyandotts from Bellefontaine, camped " up the rTufric'ane " a short distance from Franklin. Samuel Herriott who was living in the town at the time, had a field of corn, and sold occasionally to the Indians, corn for their ponies. Frequently, when they would come after corn, Mr. Herriott would not be at home, when Mrs. Herriott, would see that they got their corn. She was, however, afraid of them, and always gave them something to eat, which kindness the Indians highly appreciated. There was a squaw belonging to the party by the name of Matilda, who had a pappoose, and Mrs. Herriott having heard of it, and her fear of the Indians having abated, she invited Matilda to come and see her and bring her pappoose. One evening at dusk, three Indian men, Matilda and a boy, walked unannounced into the Herriott home. After seeing that her company was seated around the fire and duly inquiring after their health, she turned to Matilda and 'lasked, "Where is your baby?" "O, sitting up to the outside of the house!" was the mother's answer, and sure enough, on going out, there in the gathering gloom of the night, was the baby strapped firmly to a board.

During that evening's visit, an incident occurred that gready frightened Mrs. Herriott. The baby had been brought in out of the night air and leaned up against the wall on the inside, and host and hostess and their guests were sitting around the blazing fire engaged in conversation. Mrs. Herriott "and Matilda were at one side, and Mr. Herriott next to them, and after him came Dr. Grey Eyes, and then Jocko, and last of all an "ill-looking Indian" whose name has been forgotten. During the conversation, Jocko arose to his feet and presented Mr. Herriott a paper, which, on reading, he found to be a certificate from Gen. Cass, showing that Jocko had rendered important services to the United States in the War of 18.12. Ma- tilda had become interested in the matter by this time, and as something had been said about Pittsburg, she said to Mr. Herriott to ask Jocko if he had ever been there; and in response to the question, Jocko took a coal and making a map on the floor, pointed out the place where Pitsburg should be, and said "Yes." "Ever been to Philadelphia?" "Yes." "To Baltimore?" "Yes." "To Washington?" "Yes." And to other questions as to what places he had been in and persons seen in Washington, prompt answers came. After that Matilda and Mr. Herriott became engaged in conversation and during its progress Mr. Herriott noticed a pallor overspread his wife's face, followed by a visible trembling. Becoming alarmed, he was in the act of going to her relief, when he felt a clutch at his hair, and on turning around encountered Jocko, who had his knife out and was going through the motions of taking his scalp. This was Jocko's joke.

The high and dry lands bordering upon Indian Creek, in Hensley Township, afforded inviting camping grounds to the Indians. From this circumstance came the name. In the fall of 1824, the largest number of Indians ever known to enter the county, camped on Indian Creek. The number was estimated by the settlers at 100, consisting mainlv of Miamis, with a few Pottawattmies. After a short time there the last, numbering about twelve, withdrew from the Miami camp, and made another on the south fork of the creek, in the southeast quarter of Section 27. After the fall hunt was over, about half of the entire number went elsewhere, and those left behind staid there all through the winter and until late in the fall of 1825. These Indians seem to have behaved themselves quite well. Among so many, it would be strange if there were not some who would steal. Richardson Hensley had cause to complain of the squaws in green corn time. Under pretense of buying his roasting ears, they would steal them before his eyes. " In spite of me," he said to the writer, " they would pull the ears and hide them in their blankets. Often I have jerked at one corner of the blanket and scattered the stolen corn on the ground." They also stole a dog belonging to John Stevens. His boys, Alexander and Gideon, and a foster son, Ephraim Hareell, went to their camp on Sunday in search of the dog, which they found tied securely, and took him home with them. The camp was deserted save an old man and his squaw. Their wigwam was made by stretching skins over a pole frame. In the center of the ground floor was a fire over which they had hung a brass pot, in which they were cooking an unwashed and unskinned bear's head, together with a quantity of black beans.

Johnson County. If the Burkhart horses were stolen by the Indians, it was never known. On one occasion a riot was threatened by the Indians in Franklin, which at the time, foreboded evil. It was in 1825, and most likely the Indians from Indian Creek were the chief actors. It was on the occasion of the fall muster, and Bartholomew Carroll, of Union Township, came, provided with whisky and honey, to sell to all who would buy. The Indians present were among his best patrons. Toward evening they became somewhat boisterous and some of them insisted on having whisky and honey free. This being refused, they mounted the wagon and proceeded to help themselves. With the aid of the cooler heads of the band, they were induced to desist. Mounting their ponies, however, they galloped around the public square whooping and screeching at the top of their voices, and finally left town. The militia present were armed and it required all the persuasive influence of the leading citizens, to hold the more hot-headed in check and prevent a collision. After 1826, but few, if any, Indians ever returned to the county to engage in any of their pursuits. ,

Early Settlements - Territorial Times - Traces and Early Roads - The Whetzels - The Bluffs - Struggle for the State Capitol - First Permanent Settlement - Story of the Settlement by Townships - The White and Blue River Settlements - Founding Franklin - Reminiscences.

^NDIANA was admitted as a State of the Union in 1816. Delegates from thirteen counties framed the new State's constitution. The population at the time of admission was 63,897. The settled parts constituted a narrow fringe, extending from Wayne County, down the Ohio State line, to the Ohio River, thence down that to the Wabash, and thence up that to Fort Harrison, now Terre Haute. Throughout the entire region north of the border, savage Indians roamed. The White River, and its numerous tributaries, were owned and occupied mainly by the Delawares. The region was no less remarkable for the great abundance of game found in its forests, and of fish in its waters, than for the fertility of its soil. The Indians were loth to part with their possessions, and the white people eagerly desirous of having them do so. After one or two abortive attempts to procure a cession, in October, 18 18, a treaty was made, under which the Delawares surrendered their claim, and consented to their removal to a new home beyond the Mississippi, which was effected in the spring of 1821. Thereafter, their old possessions were known far and wide as the " New Purchase." Bands of Weas, Potawattamies and Miamis claimed small parts of this territory, and ceded the same, as did the Delawares, but the latter held undivided claim to all of Johnson County.'

Before the time of their going, the smoke from white men's -cabins was seen in many places throughout their domains. Bloomington, on the border, was settled in the early part of 1819. The same year, three permanent settlements were planted in Bartholomew County, one in Morgan and one in -Marion, where Indianapolis was subsequently located. In 1818, James Wilson settled on the Blue River banks, four miles north of the present site of Shelbyville, and in the following year, a number of other pioneers, with their families, moved into Shelby County.

Trappers' and hunters' camps were to be met with along the streams, and in other favored places, all through the ceded region. It was not only celebrated for its great abundance of game, but also for its fur bearing animals, the most valuable of which was the beaver. Their dams and ponds were everywhere to be seen in the level lands of the country. Long anterior to the time of the treatv, the White River countrv had been the scene of the trappers' exploits. The Canadian vovageurs came as early as in the latter half of the seventeenth century. A hundred years afterward they were followed by the agents of the Northwest Company, and of the Mackinaw Company, which were British corporations. The American Fur Company, with John Jacob Astor at its head, followed about the beginning of the present century. All these drew large supplies of furs from the White River country.

The territory framed into Johnson County, lay along the line of an ancient Indian highway. Geologists tell us that in the night of time there flowed a glacial river southward through Johnson County toward the Falls of the Ohio, at Louisville. The print of its bed remains to this day. That ancient river bed presents a comparatively smooth and even surface, nearly or quite all the way to the Falls. The buffalo that once traveled in herds from their winter feeding grounds in the Kentucky canebrakes to their summer pastures, on the Wabash, doubtless traveled over that smooth and level, ancient river bed. Certain it is the Indians did, and after

The Falls was a celebrated Indian crossing place. At the mouth of the Kentucky River was another. Thence, bearing northwesterly, a trail ran till it united with the Ancient River trail, not far from the upper rapids of the Inqaah sahquah, the Indian name for the Driftwood River. At the mouth of the Kentucky, Brig. Gen. Charles Scott, with 800 mounted men, crossed the Ohio, on the 23d of May, 1 791, on the march to the Wea village, eight miles below the present site of Lafayette. The route~^e took was, according to his report, " the most direct," and this would be along the line of the Kentucky River trail to the Driftwood, and thence along the Ancient River trail, through the territory of Johnson County. Not many years ago a broken sword blade and hilt with a pistol attached, was found in a running stream four miles south of Franklin. It belonged to a pattern of cavalryman's weapon that has long been out of vogue, but was to be met with a hundred years ago, and the inference seems reasonable that it was cast aside or lost by one of Gen. Scott's troopers on that march. All through the period of border warfare, the Indians living upon the Wabash and upon the upper waters of the White River, made frequent forays along these trails to the Kentucky settlements. Many a pale face's scalp has, no doubt, been carried at the belt of a brave, and many a white prisoner, foot sore and weary, has been driven by his savage captors, through the gloomy forests of this county. Later, in' the contests between civilization and savagery, the yeomen soldiery from the settlements in the river counties, not infrequently followed the Ancient River trail in pursuit of their savage foes. Maj. Tipton, Col. Bartholomew, and others, were leaders in these expeditions, but there came a day when the wars were ended, and the trails became highways of peace. In the settlement of central Indiana the Kentucky River trail and the Ancient River trail were for a time important highways. Some of the first settlers -found their way to the White River wilderness by them. Some time in 1819, Capt. Richard Berry, following the Kentucky River trail out to the Blue River crossing, built a cabin and established a ferry. North and south of his new home he blazed the old trail, and thereafter it came to be known as " Berry's trail." From the crossing at Blue River (a mile below the present site of Edinburg), it ran in a general northwest direction till it crossed Burkhart's Creek, in Section 20, Township 12 north, Range 4 east. Thence it kept a general north course, passing the Big Spring at Hopewell, and entering Marion County territorv near the northwest corner of Pleasant TJbwnship.

Early Settlements

Long after the settlement of the county, and the abandonment of the trail, evidences of it could be seen in the notches and blazes on the trees along its course. Two miles north of the Big Spring, at Hopewell, near the late residence of Daniel Covert, and in the near vicinity of a deer lick, in addition to axe marks on the trees, inscriptions cut in the bark were long to be seen. On one were the letters : ibmal 1812. On another: e. maxwell 1814.* Still another was the legend, " forty rods to water |3|FV' A never-failing spring burst from the banks of the creek at the place indicated.

In 1818, Jacob Whetzel, an inhabitant of Franklin -County, in this state, became the owner of a tract of land in what was known as " Harrison's Purchase," near the mouth of Eel River, to reach which, by the ordinary route of travel, required a journey by the way of Louisville. But Jacob Whetzel was not the man to, go a round-about way when a nearer lay through the woods. He was of that Whetzel family so celebrated in border warfare. He had been used to the wilderness all his life, and was not a stranger to Indian fighting. When eleven years of age, his father had been killed, and himself and Lewis, a brother two years older, taken prisoners. Crossing the Ohio River, near which his father's cabin stood (which was not far from Wheeling, W. Va.), the Indians led the lads a distance of twenty miles in the Ohio woods, and camped for the night. Under cover of the darkness they escaped, and, eluding their enemies, who followed in hot haste, they reached the Ohio, which they crossed in safety, to find their father's cabin in ashes, and his mutilated body a prey to the wild beasts. It is said the boys vowed eternal enmity to the Indians, a vow which the elder kept in letter and spirit to the day of his death. His name never ceased, as long as he lived, to be a terror to the red men, and it is connected with many of the most romantic and thrilling episodes of border warfare.

Jacob Whetzel seems to have been of a less sanguinary disposition than his brother Lewis, although he bore his part well in the Indian wars of his time. He was in many of the principal campaigns, and rendered to both Generals St. Clair and Harrison, signal service as a spy. But when the fighting was done, he settled down to the peaceable life of an agriculturist. Nevertheless he remained a woodsman in a sense, and so the Eel River purchase being made, he applied to Anderson, the chief of the Delawares, and from him obtained a license to cut a trace from Brookville, on the White Water, to the White River. This was in June, 1818, and in July following, he set out to perform the work. His son

Cyrus, a youth of eighteen, accompanied him, as also did Thomas Howe, Thomas Rush, Richard Rush and Walter Banks. His plan was to reach White River, and work back to Brookville. Taking one of the men, Thomas Rush, he went in advance, marking the route, leaving his son and the rest of the men to follow with nine days' provisions. Cyrus and his men had not entered far into the wilderness when, late one evening, they met a party of Indians whose actions, notwithstanding their warm protestations of friendship, excited suspicion. The two parties passed each other, but the white men who were unarmed, kept a more vigilant guard that night than was common even in that day. The night set in cloudy, and rain soon began falling, but the hours passed quietly on, until the camp fire burned low, when the man on guard discovered Indians lurking in the vicinity. Quietly waking his sleeping companions, they as quietly abandoned their camp, and, notwithstanding the gloom of the night, they followed Jacob Whetzel and his man, by " feeling of the notches and blazes cut in the trees." Whatever the motive that led the red men to prowl around their camp-fire that night, nothing more was seen of them again on that journey.

Meeting with no other hindrances, save such as were incident to the trackless wilderness, Cyrus Whetzel and his comrades journeyed on in the path indicated by the blazing of the trees, and crossed Flat Rock about seven miles below the present site of Rushville and Blue River, about four miles above Shelbyville and Sugar Creek, a little north of Boggstown. On reaching a water-course a few miles east of White River, a nest of honey bees was discovered in the hollow limb of a walnut tree, which yielded a liberal supply of honey; but it was too bitter to be eaten, and reluctantly they threw it away. Nevertheless, from this circumstance, came the name of " Honey Creek," the first creek within the borders of this, county to receive a name at the hands of white men.

White River was struck at the Bluffs, the place being so named by Jacob Whetzel at the time, and we may well imagine that the scene which met the gaze of himself and companions was such as they little expected to see. Jacob Whetzel had set out to reach by a short cut a home at the mouth Of the Eel River; but standing on the Bluff in the July days, he looked out over a wide, deep and rapidly flowing river, through whose clear depths the eye could penetrate to the white pebbles that lay on the bottom, far below, whose waters swarmed with fish, and whose level bottoms and the adjacent rolling uplands were covered with great forests that grew from a soil of wonderful richness, and there on the banks of the Ofie-co-mee-cah, of the Delaware tongue, he resolved to. establish his future home.

Jacob Whetzel went alone down the river to his Eel River possessions, while young Cyrus, with the axemen, turned back and began the work of cutting out what was long known as "Whetzel's Trace." Their progress was slow. A path was cut of sufficient width to admit the passage of a team. Their chosen route led them by what is now known as " Doty's Hill." After passing the rolling land extending a short distance back from the river, they found a level country, which at that season of the year, was one continuous swamp. In the dry seasons of previous years the Indians had burned it off, and the road makers went farther in their work that first day than any succeeding one. They reached the place of an ancient beaver dam near the present eastern boundary line of Pleasant Township. It was built across the outlet of a swamp and made a pond of water a half mile long, and varying in width from a few yards to several hundred, but at that time it apparently had long been deserted by its furry inhabitants.

The road these men made wound in and out among the trees and around the fallen logs as sinuous as a "runway." The purpose of its makers was to make a path along which the Whetzel teams could travel to the White River. They had no thought of any subsequent travel.

At the Hurricane, which they crossed in Section 18,. Town 13 north, Range 5 east, and which afforded the only running water between Honey Creek and Sugar Creek, they established their camp, and thence worked on the road east and west. This they found to be a good camp site, and it occurred to Cyrus Whetzel to name the stream Camp Creek, a name that afterward gave place to Covert's Creek, and that in time to the present name, Hurricane, so given to commemorate a wind storm that prior to the settlement of the country had prostrated much of the timber along its course.

Slowly hewing their way through the woods eastward, the axemen came at length to a great swamp about two miles west of the present east boundary line of the county, which was known in the early day as the Great Gulf. This was a mile in width and two miles in length. Two streams, Flat Creek and the Leatherwood, entered the low land, constituting the gulf at its northern end, and their combined waters at the southern made Little Sugar Creek. Sugar Creek was already named when the Whetzels came. Its Indian name of Theu-a-me-say was not in use among the white trappers and hunters who were already familiar with it. Great forests of sugar trees grew at intervals along its banks, to which the Indians themselves, in the sugar making season, came, and to the circumstance of these growing trees, it is supposed the present name of the stream is owing.

Cyrus Whetzel never forgot the hardships endured while cutting out the "Whetzel Trace," and especially that part of it lying between Camp Creek and Sugar Creek. "We were often midsides in water," said he, "and at night we had to make brush heaps on which to sleep."

After crossing Sugar Creek they cut through to the next considerable stream, a distance of five miles, encamping on its banks late one evening, when Jacob Whetzel, on his return from his Eel River expedition, rejoined them. After the scanty meal of the evening, Jacob produced a bottle of peach brandy, which he had procured in Owen County, and over it, the part)- in a merry mood, pledged the memory of wives and sweethearts at home. To the inspiration due to that bottle, are the people of Shelby County indebted for the name of one of their prettiest streams - Brandyvrine. The name was given that night. Soon after, their provisions giving out, the road making was abandoned, and Whetzel and his men went on to their homes; but in a short time he returned and completed his work. WhetzeFs trace proved of considerable importance in the settlement of Marion, Johnson, Morgan and Shelby counties. Hundreds of the early settlers traveled over all or parts of it in search of wilderness homes.

The following March, 18 19, Jacob Whetzel, with his son Cyrus, returned to the Bluffs. Selecting a camping ground about 500 yards below the place where the Waverly mills were afterward built, he began building a cabin, but ere this was done, a violent snow storm came on and lasted until the snow was fifteen inches deep. At length, he prepared a place of shelter, and that spring cleared a small field in which he planted corn, not forgetting to plant a quantity of peach seeds he had brought with him. The following fall he moved his family to his new home, and thus he became the first settler in Morgan County.

The permanent settlements of the Delaware Indians were on White River, and their favorite mode of travel was in canoes along that stream. But their towns were nevertheless connected by trails, usually winding through the forests not far from the river. Through that part of Johnson County, in which White River runs, the Indian trail was on the east bank of the stream. Indeed, the highway from Martinsville to Indianapolis, which passes through Waverly and over the Bluffs, runs, in the main, not far from the line of that ancient trail. Other trails intersected it coming from the south, and so the White River trail was an important highway of the red men. And it cut some figure in the colonization of Johnson County by the white men. While many of the early setlers came into White River Township by the Whetzel trace, the

From the year of the admission of Indiana, up to the time of the taking of the census in 1820,' the population of the State more than doubled. The census showed a population of 147,178 in 1820. Indiana was well advertised abroad during the Indian wars. It had been well traversed by a citizen soldiery, principally from Kentucky, and the wars being over, the same soldiery and their friends came in large numbers in hunt of homes.

On the nth of January, 1820, commissioners were appointed bv the General Assembly to locate a new seat of government, which was done in the month of June following. John Tipton, who was subsequently elected to a seat in the United States Senate from Indiana, was a member of that commission, and he has left a Journal containing an account of the travels and action of himself and the commission, which, although very brief, and written without any pretence of literary skill, is nevertheless packed with valuable information to the student of the past. Tipton and Gov. Jennings set out from their homes at Corydon on the 17th of May. They laid in plenty of " baken coffey etc.," and took with them " Bill, a black boy" and a tent. Striking the ancient river trail somewhere below the present site of Columbus, they traveled thereon all the way through this county and on to the mouth of Fall Creek, above the present site of Indianapolis. The party, which had increased on the way till it numbered seven, did not reach Bezzy's place till Saturday evening, the 20th of the month. It took them four days to ride from Corydon to that place, and two hours and a quarter to ride from the upper rapids of the In-quah-sah-quah. With Bezzy they staid over night. Tipton, who " had an eye for good ground, and at various times owned large tracts," saw the beauty of the prospect around him. " Good land, good water and timber," he wrote in his Journal. The next morning at half after four o'clock they set out again, but now that these commissioners, accompanied by the Governor of the State, are traveling through Johnson County over an Indian path, and their movements become more interesting to the thread of this history, the Journal becomes provokingly obscure. It says:

" Sunday, twenty-first,, set out at half-past four. At five passed a corner of Section 36, Township 1 1 north, of Range 4 east, passed a place where Bartholomew and myself had encamped in June, 181 3, missed our way. Traveled east then. At 8 o'clock stopped on a muddy branch, boiled our coffey. At 9:30 turned back. I killed a deer, the first one I have killed since 1814. Came on the train (trail) at 10; found tree where J had wrote my name on the 19th

It was the northeast corner of the southeast Section of Nineveh Township, that was passed at 5 o'clock that Sunday morning; but where was it that General Bartholomew and himself had encamped in June, 181 3? It was after passing that corner they missed their way and traveled east. If we knew the time that elapsed after passing the Section corner, before they missed their way, we might, with some degree of certainty, locate the " muddy branch " and perhaps identify the very farm whereon the future United States Senator killed his deer, that Sunday, June morning, so many years ago, and may be find the spot where grew the tree on which he wrote his name on the 19th of June, 1813. But the most we can say, is, that the encampment must have been in Nieveh Township. The boiling of the " coffey " and the shooting of the deer, most likely took place within the borders of Blue River, and the tree on which the name was written may have been in Nineveh Township, but was probably in Franklin Township.

The Commissioners were sworn in on the 23rd of May, and made the location on the 7th of June, fifteen days having been spent traveling up and down the country examining the several places mentioned in connection therewith. One of these was the Bluffs on White River. Recurring to Tipton's Journal, we find of the date of May 26th, this: "The bluff is about 150 feet above the river, but very uneven. The water good. * * Out of this bluff issues a number of fine springs, one of which some distance back from the river, has near twenty feet fall. Back of this bluff is a beautiful creek. They (the bluffs) front on the river near one mile. If they were level on top it would be the most beautiful site for a town that I have ever seen."

Two of the commissioners favored the Bluff for the capital location, but the majority went for the present site of Indianapolis. Before the commission to locate the capital set forth on their work, the United States Surveyors had begun their work in the New Purchase, and they kept it up, long after the capital site was chosen. All of Nineveh Township was surveyed by Abraham Lee, as early as the month of September in 1819. In June, 1820, John Hendricks surveyed so much of Franklin Township as lies in Congressional Township 12, Range 5, and, in- August of that year, Thomas Hendricks surveyed Congressional Township 12, Range 4, being in the west part of Franklin Township. In the same month of August, John Hendricks surveyed all the lands comprised within the present boundaries of Blue River Township, and, as soon as he had completed this, he went over and surveyed the Congressional

Township, better known as Union, and, while he was at that, B. Bently was surveying Hensley. W. B. McLaughlin surveyed all of White River, in Congressional Township 14, and Bently all that is in Township 13 ; and, later in the season, all the territory now contained within Pleasant Township was surveyed by Thomas Hendricks, while John Hendricks surveyed all contained within Clark Township.

First Permanent Settlement. - The time has now come when the first permanent settlement is to be planted in Johnson County. In 18 1 4 a young man by the name of John Campbell, born and reared in Tennessee, went to find a home north of the Ohio. Fate directed his footsteps to the vicinity of Waynesville, in the State of Ohio, where he married Ruth Perkins, a native of South Carolina. In 1817 he moved to Connersville, and in 1820 to the "new purchase" on Blue River. It was as early as the latter part of February, when, with his wife and four sons he set out through the wilderness to become the first settler of a county that was yet unformed and unnamed. Four little girls belonged to his household, but these were left behind to follow on horseback, when the home was prepared for them. A neighbor, Benjamin' Crews, went with him and helped to clear a path and drive his domestic animals and team. The road which they cut must'have been the most primitive of paths, for, when two years after, Alexander Thompson, Israel Watts and William Reynolds came over the same general route, they found a wagon road to Flat Rock, south of Rushvilfe, but thence on they were compelled to cut their own way.

Campbell reached the Blue River on Saturday, the 4th of March, and at once began the erection of a pole cabin, on the tract of land lying immediately south of the present site of Edinburg, and the same spring cleared a small field which he enclosed with a brush fence to keep out his own stock, in time to raise a crop of corn. Crews returned to Connersville for his family and moved to Campbell's neighborhood the same spring, arriving on the 17th of April. On a spot already selected by him, which afterward proved to be on the Bartholomew side of the line, he encamped the evening of his arrival. That night his son Jonathan, a lad eight years of age, while lying down and looking at the moon, through the limbs of a large tree, " saw something reach out a hand and pull up a limb," to which he at once called his father's attention, who said it was a coon. The next morning, on inspection, the tree was found to be hollow, and Benjamin Crews at once cut it down, and as it fell crashing to the ground, a she bear and her two cubs tumbled to the earth from their den in a hollow limb. The dogs at once mounted the old beast, but cuffing them right and left, she made her escape, leaving her cubs in the hands of their captors. Stripping the horses of their halters the two young bears were soon securely tied, but the horses now thoroughly alarmed at the unwonted commotion, and finding themselves at liberty, took the back track for the White Water country and ran eight miles before being overtaken and recaptured.

John Campbell's neighbors were Crews and Richard Beny, the latter who lived a little over a mile below him, but within the present limits of Bartholomew County, whither he had removed the year before. But he did not have to wait long for others to come in. A half dozen or more families, it is said, moved into the Blue River woods, the same spring, but this is not certain. A large number did come in during the year. The lands since incorporated, in part, into Blue River Township, were surveyed in August of that year, and on the 4th of October, the same year, were exposed for sale at the land office in Brookville. That day these purchases were made of Blue River lands ( which were the first within the county ) by James Jacobs, William W. Robinson, and John Campbell, (who afterward lived in Sugar Creek), and on the day following, John Campbell, the first settler, and eight others made entries. Thirty-nine entries in all were made before the close of the year, covering a total of 4,400 acres.

As far as now known, eighteen families moved into the new settlement during the year, of which Henry Catsinger, Simon Schaffer, Jesse Dawson, Zachariah Sparks, Elias Brock and Joseph Townsend, were Kentuckians; William Williams, and as already stated, John Campbell, were Tennesseeans; Amos Durbin was from Virginia; John A. Mow and Joshua Palmer, were from Ohio; Isaac Marshall and John Wheeler were from North Carolina; Samuel Herriott, from Pensylvania, while the native places of Louis Bishop, Thomas Ralston and Richard Cormorave are unkown.

The second year of the settlement, twenty-seven families are .known to have moved in. Elisha Adams came from Kentucky and moved to the north end of the township, and founded the Adams neighborhood. Richard Foster -and John and William, his brothers, Patrick Adams, Patrick Cowan, Arthur Robinson, Curtis Pritchard, David Webb, William R. Hensley, William C. Robinson, James Farrell, John Adams, John P. Barnett, Jacob Cutsinger, Isaac Harvey (a Baptist preacher), Lewis Hays, William Rutherford, Jefferson D. Jones, Thomas Russell and Samuel Aldridge, all Kentuckians; and Isaac Collier, Israel Watts and Jonathan Hougham, Ohioans; and Alexander Thompson, from Virginia;. Jesse Wells and Thomas Doan, from North Carolina, and William Reynolds, from Tennesee, moved in. By the close of this year, the lands contiguous to Blue River were taken up, and a line of settlement extended nearly across the south side of the township, while John Campbell, an Irishman, had laid the foundation of a settlement at the mouth of Sugar Creek, and Lewis Hays and William Rutherford had joined John Adams' settlement higher up the creek.

In 1822, fourteen families moved in. Of these Able Webb, James Connor, Hezekiah Davison, William Hunt, James M. Daniels, John Shipp, William Barnett, David Durbin, Hiram Aldridge and Thomas Russell were from Kentucky; Charles Martin and Samuel Umpstead were from Ohio; and it is not ascertained whence came Baker Wells and Samuel Johnson, who came in this year. In 1823, William Freeman moved from Bartholomew County into the township, and Richard Shipp and John Hendrickson also moved in. All these were. Kentucky born. By the close of 1823, there were at least sixty-three families living in the township.

Let us turn now from the southeast to the northwest, from Blue River to White River. Capt. White, an Indian, early in 1820, was found occupying a tract of land on the east bank of White sRiver, since known as the Denny place, and being near the Center of the northwest quarter of Section 32, in Township 14 north, Range 3 east. Here was an extensive Indian clearing. Capt. White left the country the same spring, going with his people, the Delawares, to Arkansas, and in the " month of April or May," the same year, one Daniel Morgan, a bachelor from western Pennsylvania moved to White's place and took possession. He cultivated a small field of corn," but the squirrels devoured his crop before maturity, and he returned to the land of his nativity. In the fall of the same year, George Beeler, a resident of Morgan County, with his wife and sister-in-law, moved to Capt. White's place, 'and took posession; but Beeler died the same fall, and the White camp was once more vacated.

The following spring another man moved to the Capt. White place. This was Abraham Sells, a Virginian, who came to Washington County, in Indiana, about the middle of February, 1821. " Leaving the female members of his family in that county, accompanied by his brother John Sells and four of his sons, and three of his own, Isaac, William and Franklin, he set out for the White River and reached Jacob Whetzel's about the 1st of March." He had crossed over to the Indian trail, on the east bank of White River, up which he traveled, entering White River Township on Friday, the 3d day of March, 1821, and at once he took possession of White's old wigwam. Abraham Sell's came to stay. He and his, brought seventy-five hogs, eleven cattle and eight horses, besides a goodly assortment of tools and provisions for the summer. Their families were to come in the fall. The hogs and cattle were turned into the woods to shift for themselves, together with such of the horses as were not in immediate use. A field of five or six acres was " brushed out " and enclosed with a temporary fence and planted in corn. " West of the river was an old hackberry deadening, containing fifteen acres, requiring but little labor to bring it into cultivation. In the year 1820, and in years subsequent, a small green worm stripped the hackberry trees of all their leaves, killing them in a few weeks."* That was also planted in corn. The corn grown on the Capt. White place was broken into and destroyed by their own hogs. After the crop was laid by, all except two of the company returned to Washington County, where John Sells, the brother of Abraham, and the latter's son, Issac, died. Late in the fall the others, with their families and household stuff, rejoined their White River brethren, and the permanency of their settlement was maintained.

Abraham Sells may justly be accounted as the first Englishspeaking white man to make a permanent home in White River Township. Close upon his heels, came Thomas Lowe, a North Carolinian, with his family and his two sons-in-law, Permenter Mullenix and William Sanders, and their families. Sells entered the township, as we have seen, on the third day of of March, 182 1, and Lowe came "between the 3d and 10," a very few days after. The latter settled on a choice tract of land in Section 8, about two miles northeast of the Bluffs, and at once made preparation for raising a corn crop, the ensuing season. About the middle of the same month of March, David Scott moved from near Bloomington, Ind., to White River Township, and camped just below the mouth of Pleasant Run,j- near Abraham Sells, and cleared and planted a 'field of corn. His family he left behind, proposing to move them out the coming fall. Late in the Summer, however, his horses escaped, and he became so much discouraged, that he sold out to Sells,- and abandoned the county.

On Wednesday, the 10th day of May, following, John Doty and his family, from Hamilton County, Ohio, entered the township. He had set out with his large family and all of his worldly possessions in search of a home "in the West," and entering the Whetzel trace at its eastern terminus, had traveled upon it till within three miles of its western end at the Bluffs. Coming to a shapely, wellwooded hill, then, as now, a landmark, along the northern side of which the trace ran, he was so well pleased with the outlook that he unvoked his cattle and made a camp, and "went to living." The next morning after their arrival, he and his three sons, Peter,' Samuel, and George, began a clearing, and by hard work they managed to plant three or four acres in corn, which, when earing time came, fell a prey to the raccoons. It is said these rodents came in droves, and stripped it of the last nubbin.

During the time the father and sons were making their clearing, the family occupied an open camp and were greatly annoyed by rattle snakes. One morning while at breakfast, they were horrified at the sight of a monster which came crawling in at the open door of their camp. It had been attracted, it is supposed, by the odor of frying venison. More than thirty of these venemous reptiles were killed in and about the hill the first season. The next persons to move in, were Daniel Boaz and John Ritchey. These men with their families moved in one vehicle. Boaz was a Virginian, by birth, and Ritchey a Kentuckian. They came to White River in the fall of 182 1, and were the last of the arrivals for that year. The close of the year saw eight families living in the White River settlement. Twelve more, it is certainly known, came the year following, 1822. These were Archibald Glenn, and John Murphy, from Kentucky; Nathan and Benjamin Culver, from East Tennessee; Nathanial St. John, from Ohio; Daniel Etter, Michael Brown, Andrew Brown, and one or two others, who long since left the county, from Virginia; and William and Samuel Blean, who were born in Ireland. By the close of the second 3-ear, after the first settlement was made, not less than 100 people were living in the White River settlement.

Two settlement centers, the Blue River and the White River, have been under review; let us pass to a third. In the spring of 1S21, Amos Durbin settled on the outskirts of the Blue River settlement, so far from its center that when the civil townships came to be organized, he was found to be in Nineveh Township, and he is therefore entitled to the destinction of being named as the first settler of Nineveh. The township derived its name from its principal creek, and it in turn from the following circumstance : Richard Berry had a son, Nineveh, who, while hunting one winter's day, crossed the creek, which was orginally known as the Leatherwood, and killed a deer. With it on his back he undertook to recross the stream on a log, but loosing his footing he fell in, and came near being drowned. His father ever after spoke of the stream as "Nineveh's

But another man must be accredited with the honor of founding the first distinctive Nineveh neighborhood. That man was Robert Worl, of whom but little is now known. He was an Ohioan, who set out for the New Purchase the latter part of the summer of 1 82 1. With his family and a few personal effects he floated down the Ohio in a boat to some point on the Indiana shore, whence he made his way over the Indian trails to the Blue River Settlement, and thence through a pathless forest to Leatherwood Creek, or as it is now known, the Nineveh, where he arrived sometime in the month of September, and at once erected a pole cabin on the bank of the creek, a mile east of the present site of Williamsburg. Worl and his family lived alone through the fall and winter, depending for food mainly on the rifle. The region round about was filled with game. Wild turkeys, deer and bears were as plentiful as domestic stock in the same neighborhood is to-day.

Doubtless, the first fall and winter spent by the Worls in the Nineveh woods, they found exceedingly long and dismally lonesome; but the season of leaf and flower came at last, and with it. three neighbors. On Friday, the 15th of March, Joah Woodruff and William Strain, came directly from Ohio, and Benjamin Crews, who two years before move4 to the Blue River neighborhood, and settled over the line in Bartholomew County. All three had families, and had been Worl's neighbors in Ohio. That was a busy spring on the Nineveh. Crews camped by the side of a log for eight weeks, from the middle of March to the middle of May, by which time he had nine acres cleared after the fashion of the times, which he planted in corn, and then he built a cabin.

During the year of 1822, eleven men, with their families, are known to have moved into the Township-. In addition to those already mentioned, were Adam Sash, Daniel and Henry Mussulman, and James Dunn from Kentucky, David Trout from Virginia, and John S. Miller from North Carolina.

The next year, James and William Gillaspy, William Spears, Curtis Pritchard, Louis Pritchard and Richard Perry, Kentuckians; and Jeremiah Dunham, an Ohioan, and Elijah DeHart, from North Carolina, moved in. In 1824, Robert Moore and George Baily Aaron Dunham, of Ohio, arrived, and Isaac Walker, Perry Baily, Joseph Thompson and, Robert Forsyth, all from Kentuck/. In 1825, Daniel Pritchard, John Parkhurst, William Irving and Amos Mitchel, from Kentucky, and Jesse Young, from Ohio, moved in, and, in the year following, came Thomas Elliott, Prettyman Bur- ton, William Keaton, Clark Tucker, Daniel Hutto, John Hall, John Elliot, all Kentuckians, and Thomas Griffith, Samuel Griffith, Richard Wheeler, James McKane, James and John Wylie> Ohioans. In 1827, of those who came, John Kindle, Aaron Burgett and the Calvins - James, Luke, Thomas and Hiram - Milton McQuade, John Dodd, Robert Works and, as is supposed, George Henger and Jeremiah Hibbs, are all believed to have been from Ohio, and James Mullikin, David Forsyth and James Hughes, from Kentucky. The next year Joseph Featherngill, Gabriel Givens, Mrs. Sarah Mathes and James White came, followed by Hume Sturgeon, in 1829, and by Walter Black, David Dunham, John Wilks and Aaron Burgett, in 1830. Sturgeon was from Kentucky, Mrs. Mathes from Virginia, and the others from Ohio, save Black, whose native place is uncertain.

In the year 1822, the Burkhart brothers,% David, Lewis, George, Henry and William came to this county from Greene County, Ky., by the way of the ancient river trail. Henry and George settled on the north side, while David built his cabin within the borders of Franklin Township on the land on which the late Michael Canary so long lived, and ultimately died. All three built cabins on the trail, and they have left their family name in Buckhart's Creek, in their old neighborhood. About the time of the arrival of the Burkharts, came Levi Moore along the trail, from the south as far as the Big Spring (now Hopewell), whence he turned to the east and built a cabin on the high ground, a few hundred yards west of the place where the Bluff road crosses Young's Creek. This cabin site has never ceased to be a place of residence. It is now occupied by John McCashin. Of Moore, but little is known. In the summer of 1825, he built a cabin and log stable on the east side of, and close to the line dividing the east and west halves of the southwest quarter of Section 9, in Township 12, afterward owned and occupied by Aaron LeGrange. Moore had entered the west half of that quarter, and publicly gave out that he owned the east half, but Adam Sash learning otherwise, entered that half, and the ownership of Moore's cabin and stable thus fell to him.

On Young's Creek, which flowed through the west eighty, he. built a mill, but the site was inauspicious. At that point the creek run between low banks through a wide valley, and he found it impossible to construct a dam that would withstand the freshets. His log mill*house was built over the creek bed on piles driven into the earth with a maul, and he put in machinery with which he could grind " from ten to fifteen bushels of corn per day." Driven to desperation by repeated washouts, he at last felled a large sycamore tree top on his dam, hoping in this way to hold it down; but find- ing it a vain effort, after a year or two he abandoned the enterprise, and soon after left the country and went, no one knew where. The foundation logs of his mill, after sixty-three years, are still to be seen, embedded in the Young's Creek mud, apparently as sound as the day they were placed there.

Moore left a.bad reputation behind him. He was charged with over-tolling the grists that went to his mill, and, not content with that, he caught a portion of the descending meal in his wide sleeves which he transferred to his own barrel, a trick not uncommon with rascally millers of his day. It was laid to his charge also that he stole his neighbors hogs, and scrupled not to rob the Indians, who camped now and then in his vicinity. Certain, it is, that he and his family were phenomenally untidy about their home. Under the high porch of his cabin, his little flock of sheep were penned every night, winter and summer, to keep them from the wolves, a precaution that his pioneer neighbors could have excused perhaps, but the ducks and geese that slept upon the porch and in the cabin itself, to keep them from their prowling enemies, the foxes, and minks, the neighbors could not excuse. Moore could not build cabins and mill houses and roll logs without calling upon his neighbors for assistance, nor could they assist without dining at his table. But the memory of the combined odors of the sheep-pen, of the goose and duck sleeping apartment, and of the Moore cookery, remains to this day. It is said that a boiled egg was the only article of food a man could eat at the Moore table without a qualm. Nevertheless, Levi Moore left his name in a certain sense indelibly - impressed upon the county. Upon the little creek, that, taking its rise a mile north of Franklin and flowing thence southwesterly till it discharges into Young's Creek, not far from the site of his first cabin, he gave the name of " Indian Creek," from the circumstance, that the Indians frequently encamped upon it in the early days, and by that name it is still known. In another stream, Moore's Creek, which unites with Young's Creek, near Hopewell, his name will be held in perpetual remembrance, for it carries his name.

In the month of February, 182 1, Elisha Adams, a Pennsylvanian by birth, but moving from Kentucky, and Joseph Young, a North Carolinan, and Robert Gilchrist, from Washington County, Ind., came to the county. Young settled in the delta formed by the union -of Sugar and Lick Creeks, while Adams moved farther north, and built a cabin near the present site of Amity. Lick Creek was so named by the United States surveyors, because of the great number of most excellent deer licks found near its source. But Young's cabin soon came to be known better than the licks, and the first settlers caring little for the name bestowed

In the autumn succeeding Adams' arrival William Rutherford moved on Sugar Creek in Section 33, less than two miles northeast of Adams', and became the first settler in what is now known as Xeedham Township.

About the time Rutherford was building his cabin, Adams' horses strayed off, and while hunting for them in Bartholomew Countv, he met with John Smiley of Washington Countv, who said he was looking for a mill site. While hunting game, Adams had more than once noticed a place on Sugar Creek in Section 34, where he thought a mill could be advantageously built, and he not only acquainted Smiley with the fact, but gave him such a glowing account of the country adjacent to the site, that Smiley came to see for himself, the following summer. The place suiting him, he made a purchase, and in the ensuing fall moved his family to the county, and after erecting a cabin in which to live, began at once building a mill, which was finished the same fall, and which was the first mill in the county.

In October, 1820, George King, Simon Covert, Samuel and Cornelius Demarer, Peter A. Banta, William Porter, James and Wallace Shannon and Prettyman Burton, all of whom were residents of Henry and Shelby counties in Kentucky, made a tour of parts of Indiana, to " look at the country." Crossing the Ohio, a few miles below Madison, they traveled eastwardly through Jefferson and Switzerland counties, thence to Versailles, in Ripley, and through Napoleon and on to the "Forks of Flat Rock." Shortly after crossing the Ohio, William Hendricks joined them, but at the "Forks" he turned aside to become the proprietor of the county seat of Decatur Countv. King and his company kept on till they reached Connor's Prairie, where they took the back track on the Indian trail till they came to the location of the seat of government, wmere "four little cabins" were all there was of the future city. Crossing the White River at that place, they visited Eagle Creek and then White Cieek, after which they re-crossed the river at Whetzel's. Riding up to the Bluffs, they followed Whetzel's trace out to the Indian trail, where they saw Loper's unfinished cabin, and thence they traveled southward past the Big Spring and Berry's ford, and so on to their homes, having been absent seventeen days. The following fall, King and Covert, who were brothers-in-law, and William Shannon, a neighbor, returning to the state, made another journey to examine the country. This time they went direct to Indianapolis, passing through Johnson County, and attended the first sale of lots in that new city. Crossing White River the same day, they rode to the neighborhood of Eagle Creek where they camped. The next morning they set out in earnest for the Wabash country and saw but .one cabin from Tuesday morning till the following Sunday evening. The journey was a disappointment to them. The country was not apparently as good as they had been led to expect. " Good land was like the milk sick, still ahead." They returned to their homes by the way of the Vermilion River country.

After another year, King and Covert made a third trip to the state. This time they were accompanied by Garrett C. Bergen, and the purpose of their journey seems to have been to enter lands in Johnson County. King, who was the leader in all these expeditions, was of the age Of forty years. His native place was Wythe County, in Virginia, whence he had moved with a widowed mother to Kentucky while a lad, where he had been apprenticed to a wheelwright with whom he had learned the trade. He had the knack of money getting, and having accumulated a small sum, he was desirous of settling himself in a new country at such a place as he would be enabled to control the location of a county town, on lands he might himself own. On this third visit he saw his opportunity. On the 8th of January, 1821, an act hadtbeen passed organizing Bartholomew County, and on the 31st of December following, bills to incorporate Morgan, Marion and Shelby counties ! had been approved by the Governor, leaving the territory lying between, to be incorporated thereafter. The situation was patent to every one, but King seems to have been the only one who was able to take advantage of it. On reaching the Blue River settlement he fell in with Samuel Herriott, whom he questioned concerning a suitable town site in the neighborhood of the center of the unorganized territory, and from him learned of what was supposed to be a suitable tract lying in the angle formed by the confluence of Lick and Camp creeks. The land lookers went at once to it, and after looking the land over and each selecting his tract, they rode off to Brookville to make their entries. But when there they learned that the unexpected thing had happened. Twehty-rtwo days before, Daniel Pritchard had entered the very eighty that King had marked as his own. But George King was not the man, when once he had put his hand to the plough, to look back. He purchased the eighty adjoining the Pritchard tract on the west, while Bergen bought on the north and Covert on the east, as they had originally intended, after which they returned to the neighborhood of their purchases, and King finding the owner of the coveted eighty, -paid him two hundred dollars for his bargain and took a conveyance in fee. Covert and Bergen returned to their homes, but King remained. Securing names to a petition to the Legislature, praying for the .organization of the territory lying between Morgan and Shelby into a county, he went by the way of Corydon,* then the capital of the State, and procured the passage of an act organizing the new county, which receiving the signature of the Governor, became a law on the 31st of December, 1822, and the county was named Johnson, in memory of John Johnson, one o£ the Judges of the Supreme Court of the State.

John Smiley, the miller, was appointed by Governor Hendricks, sheriff of the county, and in accordance with the law, issued a writ of election to be holden on Saturday, the Sth day of March, 1823. Two voting places were named, one at the house Of Hezekiahs Davison, on Blue River, and the other at the home of Daniel Boaz, on White River. Israel Watts and Daniel Boaz, were elected associate judges; Samuel Herriott, clerk of the circuit court; William Shaffer, county recorder; and William Freeman, John S. Miller and James Ritchey, commissioners, and a county government was thereupon duly organized.

Here let us pause in our story and take a look backward. Up to the close of the year, 1822, there were three centers of settlement in the county, Blue River, Nineveh and White River, the first of which contained fifty-nine families, the second twenty and the third fourteen. There were a few cabins scattered here «nd there throughout the county, outside of these, settlements as -we have seen, enough by actual court to bring the whole number up to an even 100, which according to the usual method of computation in such cases, gives a population of 506.*

All these original settlers were poor men. It is hard for the people of this more favored age to form a clear conception of the depth of their poverty. The greater part were land owners, it is true, but unimproved land was selling at " Congress price," and a cabin and five or six acres of cleared land added from fifty to seventy-five dollars to that price. The number of acres of cleared land contiguous to the' 100 cabins in the county did not exceed 500. Probably there were as many horses in the county as he&l8 of families, and three times as many cattle. Hogs were becomflig. numerous, in a few localities, but were worth little more than mj many wild deer. All the furniture in the 100 cabins did not cost as much as the furniture to be found in a single one of a good many houses in the county to-day. It is hard to estimate aggregate values in the absence of the assessor, but it is believed that

* In my History of Johnson County, published in 1881, by a printer's mistake the number is put at 550. It was written 500. I inadvertently repeated the mistake in " Making a Neighborhood."

excluding land values, an assessor on the first day of January, 1823,. could not have found over $5,000 or $6,000 worth of property in the whole county.

Returning from this digression, we find that George King, having secured the county organization, early in the following spring (1823), moved to his purchase, that he might be on the ground when the time for locating the county seat came round. It was in the latter part of February or first of March, that accompanied by his two unmarried daughters and his married daughter and her husband, David McCaslin, and Simon Covert, whose wife staid behind until the ensuing fall, and Isaac Voorheis, a young and unmarried man. King left his Kentucky home and came to Johnson County. The movers found a road cut out to Elisha Adams' place, and thence on, assisted by Robert Gilchrist,* they made their own road up the east bank of Young's Creek to* the mouth of Camp Creek."

It was late in the day when the axemen followed by the teams and cattle reached the creek, where they found a dark and turbulent stream rolling between them and their destination. Not knowing the fords the teams were driven back to a high dry knoll where a camp fire was started and a camp made. Little did the campers on that knoll, as they watched by the light and warmth of their camp fire that night, dream that they would live to see the day when that knoll would become the site of a college devoted to " Christianity and Culture." j-