LaPorte County, Indiana - Chapter 2: Original Inhabitants, 1904

Lo ! the big thunder-canoe, that steadily breasts the Missouri's Merciless current! and yonder, afar on the prairies, the camp fires break, Gleam through the night; and the cloud of dust in the grey of the day Marks not the buffalo's track, nor the Mandan's dexterous horse-race;

Ha ! how the breath of these Saxons and Celts, like the blast of the east wind, Drifts evermore to the west the scanty smokes of thy wigwams!

A history of LaPorte county should certainly make some reference to its former inhabitants. Oh, that the past might speak and that we might reproduce the echoes of these forests and under¬ stand .something of the hopes, fears and life struggles of the people who preceded us! But after studying all the data at our command, we feel that our knowledge is very incomplete.

Our more recent predecessors were the Amer¬ ican Indians. The Sac Indians, whose posses¬ sions were in the present state of Wisconsin, had a trail through what is now LaPorte county. This was simply a well worn path across the prairie and through the woods. For some dis¬ tance, and until it turned northward, it ran along very nearly where State street in LaPorte is now.

But the original possessors of northern Indi¬ ana were the Pottawottomies. The ascending smoke from the wigwam fires, the human voices by wood and stream, were theirs. For how many ages we know not, these people were the principal occupants of the country which is now LaPorte county. They were children of nature. The men were hunters, fishers, trappers and warriors. Their braves were trained to the chase and to the battle. The women cultivated the corn, tended the pappooses and prepared the food.

And yet these people had attained to a degree of civilization. Though they wrote no history and published no poems, there certainly were tra¬ ditions among them, especially concerning the creation of the world; and their strange war songs were handed down from father to son. Though they erected no monuments they had their dwellings, wigwams though they were. Their civilization was not complicated and yet they lived in villages, graphic accounts of which have been given. They had their own proper laws, manners and customs. In place of roads they had trails, some of them noted ones. They communicated with each other in writing by means of rude hieroglyphics. They had no schools, but their young were thoroughly trained and hardened to perform the duties expected of them. They had no public halls, but they had their dancing floors to which many trails con¬ verged. General Packard says that north of Pe¬ trol grove, on what was afterward the land of Lucas Hixon, they had a burial and dancing ground which was used as late as 1&35. That they should use a burial place for a dancing ground, may strike us as not being strictly within the bounds of propriety ;but propriety is a conven¬ tional thing, what is improper to us was not so

With the Indians there were no uncles, all - were fathers; no aunts, all were mothers; no nephews and nieces, all were sons and daughters ; no cousins, all were brothers and sisters. Every child was the son or daughter of the whole tribe, and the line of descent was reckoned through the mother instead of through the father. This made the lines of descent all converge to and center in each daughter, and insured the integrity of the - tribe to a remarkable degree.

The Indians had not carried agriculture to a high degree of perfection, but they turned up the sod and planted garden vegetables and com, of which latter they raised more than is generally supposed; though the women did most of the farm work. They were not given to commerce, but they bartered goods with the settlers and took their furs to the trading posts where they ex¬ changed them for the white man's products. They made their own clothes, their canoes, their paddles, their bows and arrows, and other weap¬ ons of war, and wove bark baskets of sufficient fineness to hold shelled com. They also under¬ stood how to make maple sugar. They used it to sweeten their crab apple and cranberry sauce. Among the Indians in the northwestern part of the county was a petty chief named Sagganee, who, when the Indians were removed to the west, went to Kansas with some of them, but soon re¬ turned saying that he could not live there because there was no sugar tree. He was a devout Catho¬ lic and would never eat anything without first crossing himself. In his later days he was cared for at the Catholic University of Notre Dame, at South Bend, where he passed away, and where his remains lie buried. He is said to have been a great brave in his day and to have fought in the battle of Tippecanoe. He would become very angry when the Indian defeat in that battle was alluded to.

The Indians were not as clean as might be in their habits. Near Westville, Mr. James McCoy, a settler, passed a party of them who had captur¬ ed a turtle and a coon. The turtle was thrown alive upon a bed of hot coals and held there with sticks until it was dead ; a method which any so¬ ciety or individual against cruelty to animals would condemn. Then it was thrown into a camp kettle and cooked with but little dressing. The Indians insisted that McCoy should partake with them of their feast, but just at that time he was not blessed with a very good appetite. The Indians! were considered treacherous, but they never forgot a kindness and they had some sense and practice of justice. On one occasion an In¬ dian had chopped a tree in a pigeon roost for the purpose of obtaining the half fledged birds. The tree in falling killed a pony belonging to another member of the tribe. A council was called, which went through all the Indian forms relating to the administration of justice, and after due de¬ liberation the verdict was that the offender give the loser two ponies in the place of the one killed. Thus they punished the luckless brave for his carelessness. The reason for. this verdict we do not know. Perhaps the two ponies were worth no more than the one killed.

The Indians sometimes stole property from the whites. In the year 1831 a body of Sac In¬ dians passed through the county on their way to Detroit. A number who were in advance of the main body stole three horses from Arba Heald. He followed them a few miles, but, be¬ ing on foot, abandoned the chase as uselessu When the main body of the Indians came up the larceny was reported to the chief. After a coun¬ cil had been held it was agreed to give an order on Colonel Davenport, Indian Agent at Rock Is¬ land, Illinois, for the value of the stock taken. Mr. Heald afterwards went to the agency to get his money. Instead of paying it, measures were taken to recover the horses. They were procured and driven into the town. They had been badly used in hunting buffalo, their ears had been split, and their tails cut off. Having received his horses Mr. Heald proposed to return on the fol¬ lowing morning, but during the intervening night the best one of them was stolen again. This he never recovered, nor any pay for it as the Blade Hawk war put an end to the government allow¬ ances for the Indians on this side of the Missis¬ sippi river. On another occasion the Indians killed an ox belonging to Henly Clyburn. He afterwards received his pay by the United States government keeping it out of their annual al¬ lowance: though being deprived of the use of the ox put him to great inconvenience and hard- ship. In considering such instances we must re¬ member that the Indians regarded the settlers as dispossessing them of their country. They were quite willing to welcome the whites so long as they were few, and to share with them and treat than kindly, but to have them come in sufficient numbers to drive them away from their hunting grounds, was regarded as a great wrong. And when we consider everything, we must admit that depredations by the Indians were very few. Cer¬ tainly they were fewer in this section of the coun¬ try than in many other places, and for good reason.

The Indians with whom the settlers of La- Porte county had to deal were not so savage as others. They had been influenced more or less by coming in contact with Christianity. Before the year 1763 the French had trading posts at Vin¬ cennes, and Indiana formed a part of what was called New France. The Jesuit Fathers established missions among the Indians. Even before the year 1749 those Jesuit missionaries were at work in Indiana, though there is not much certainty as to their labors at that early time. Father Marest is one of die first known as having worked in this field. Father Marquette is another. Another was taken prisoner by the Chickasaw Indians at the same time with Morgan De Vincennes in Artaguette's expedition, and both were burned at the stake in 1736. The records of the Church of St. Francis Xavier at Vincennes, show the exist¬ ence at that time of a regular mission composed of converted Indians and French soldiers, belong¬ ing to a little fort called Post Vincennes, under the care of Father Meuin. It continued under the care of priests belonging to the same religious so¬ ciety until the year 1770, when their names dis¬ appeared and the Rev. M. Gibault, a secular priest under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Quebec, took chaise of the church. In 1769 the French Jesuit explorer, LaSalle, had made his expedition down the Kankakee and had returned in the winter on foot through LaPorte county. It is remarkable that the missions to the Indians were the most successful among the Pottawottomies, who occupied the region which is now northern Indiana. Their chief village, and the chief mission, was at Chitchakos, near the Tip¬ pecanoe river. They were converted, some say, before the middle of the seventeenth century. The

Catholic priests penetrated alone everywhere . preceding even the traders, and announced to the wild Indians the teachings of Christianity. In the spirit of self-sacrifice they shared in the toils and hardships of the ferocious savage and thereby gained his friendship. At first the efforts to con¬ vert the Indians were almost always at the ex¬ pense of the lives of the priests. But when the Pottawottomies yielded to conviction, as was usu¬ ally the case with Indians, they were very firm and devoted. When the priests left them and they remained for many years destitute of spiritual in¬ struction, they taught each other and attempted to preserve the religious influences they had enjoy¬ ed. On one occasion a priest, who afterward be¬ came a bishop, met one of their chiefs, 'who en¬ treated him to visit them, or at least pass through their woods ; for the very thought of the "man of prayer" having been through their country would, he said, be sufficient to remind them of their duties and make them better. Even those who remained in their heathenism retained for the black gown a reverence which is almost beyond description.

Not only so, but the Pottawottomies had come in contact with civilization. They had not only received the civilizing teachings and felt the civil¬ izing influences of Christianity, but had actually seen something of that civilization itself. At an early day the French had established themselves at the spot where Chicago now stands, and also at Detroit. The Indians were continually passing and repassing between the two places, and their trail lay through what is now LaPorte county. At the end of the French and Indian war the country passed into the possession of the English, and in 1804 the United States government estab¬ lished Fort Dearborn, at what is now Chicago. - This was a great trading post which the Indians often visited. At the trading posts they received impressions from the white man's manners and customs.

The Indians of this county had been subject not only to the influences of Catholicism but to those of Protestantism. As early as 1817 a Prot¬ estant mission called the Carey Mission had been established at Niles, Michigan, the influence of which was felt over a wide region of country. For some years there was a school which was an offshoot of that mission, in what is now Hudson

But French Catholicism had a more powerful influence than Protestantism over the Indians. One reason for this was that the Protestants had not been at work as long as the Catholics. The beginning of *heir missionary efforts did not date back to the first half of the seventeenth cen¬ tury. And their labors did not cover so wide a territory, their ministers did not penetrate every¬ where with a spirit of self-sacrifice, like the priests. But the main reason for the more potent influence of the Catholics over the Indians is to be found in their ritual. The ritualism of the English Episcopal church at that time was at a low ebb, even if the Indians ever saw it, and the other churches were not ritualistic at all. The Catholic church, on the other hand, preserved her ritual in all its elaborateness. It was a system of symbolic teaching ; every particular of it meant something. And to symbolic teaching, the Indian mind is peculiarly susceptible. The Indian thinks by means of the objects which are before him. He speaks by the use of things. He is of a sensuous nature, incapable of abstract speculation and interior thought. The ceremonies of the Roman Catholic church are well adapted to occasion certain mental states in those who witness them, and the Indian mind in its simplicity was good ground for this. This was probably the main reason why Catholicism exerted a more powerful influence than Protestantism over the Indians.

The last lingering bands of thePottawottomies did not leave this part of the country until the year 1838. Mrs. Theodore Armitage, of Westville, a daughter of Henly Ciybum, the first settler of New Durham township, relates that on one occasion her father cared for several hundred of them in a grove just west of the present town of Westville. It is probable that this was the time when he did so. The Logansport Telegraph of Monday, September 10, 1838, tells of an emigrating party of one thousand Pottawottomies who had arrived and encamped within a mile of Logansport the Thursday evening before, and who were to leave Monday the 10th for their future home beyond the Mississippi. They were being conducted westward by General Tipton and a small body of soldiers. For months the United

States Government had agents employed in try¬ ing to get a census of the Indians. The re¬ moving agent was on the ground, desirous to remove them, but the Indians with few exceptions refused to emigrate, General Tipton, however, had them all gathered in, a census taken, and the Indians on the march for their new country, within six days. Thereupon the cry was raised that the Indians were being persecuted and cruelly treated. Quite* a controversy arose on the sub¬ ject between the Michigan City Gazette and the LaPorte County Whig , then edited by James M. Stuart, who had formerly edited the Gazette . The Gazette took the part of the Indians and the Whig the part of the Government. But it does not appear that the Indians were abused in this in¬ stance. Probably they had been defrauded of their lands, either by Government instructions, the knavery of interpreters, or from some other cause; but it was better for them to remove to the west. It was for their own interest and wel¬ fare. The white and the red men could not live together. The indolence and simplicity of the one could not compete with the industry and enter¬ prise, and far too often the knavery, of the other. But it does not appear that they were cruelly treated on this march. Many were sick but they were made as comfortable as circumstances would admit, and were treated with kindness and humanity.

They were accompanied by a clergyman, the Rev. Mr. Petit, who had been with them some time, and had succeeded in teaching them some of the arts of civilization, by which their condi¬ tion had been much improved. This gentleman had deservedly gained their esteem and endeared himself to them, and the fact that they did not wish to leave him was one obstacle to their mov¬ ing westward ; but when he consented to accom¬ pany them he not only gave additional proofs of his regard for their welfare but rendered himself worthy of notice by the Government. Through his influence there was soon a visible change in the feelings of the Indians, and many who had been averse to going west expressed their willing¬ ness to emigrate.

It was reported that the Indians were mal¬ treated on the journey, that they were forced to make long marches when it was not necessary, that they were not permitted to get water on the road, and that the order of General Tipton was to drive them along at the point of the bayonet if necessary. These reports were contradicted by trustworthy per¬ sons who were members of the emigrating party. It is quite true that the first day's march was long and severe, being a distance of twenty-one miles. But this was unavoidable, because there was no place within a shorter distance where water could be obtained, sufficient for the camp of so large a party. It was a time of drouth, and water was so scarce on the route that in some places persons refused to give it to either Indians or whites. The greater number of the Indians rode on horseback and the sick were conveyed in wagons.

In every instance the instructions of General Tipton were to treat the Indians with kindness; and any person violating these instructions, if reported to him with proper evidence, would be immediately discharged from the service.

So departed the last Pottawottomies from this region of country. There is a pathos in their history and destiny which may well stir the poetic soul. As one has said, "They were here, those copper-colored, uneducated, native chil¬ dren of America, but a few years ago, where are now our towns and villages, our farms and or¬ chards, our churches and schools, our domestic animals and our homes. Some of their stone axes, their arrow and spear heads, and many of their bones are left in our soil, their dust is here to be mingled with our dust, but they have passed away forever."

But earlier than the Indians the mysterious mound builders were here. We know but little of them. Long before the advent of the American Indians, a numerous people lived in this country which is now the United States, who left tens of thousands of mounds, and fortifications of earth and stone. These works are from five to thirty feet in height, they are in symmetrical forms such as circles, ellipses, squares and poly¬ gons, and inclose various areas. One in Arkansas is said to embrace a square mile. The fortifica¬ tions generally contain the mounds, and some¬ times a larger fortification incloses a smaller one. They were provided with cisterns for water. Within the enclosed area have been dug up ele¬ gant vases of earthen or copper ware, pipe bowls decorated with human heads like those of the makers or with heads of birds and other animals, domestic utensils, personal ornaments, stone hatchets, and weapons of copper and other ma¬ terials. Also many human skeletons have been found. From all this we may infer that a people lived here who had a civilization, a knowledge of the arts, who worked the mines, who remem¬ bered and hoped and suffered, and, alas! who fought each other, as we do; but further than this they are wrapped in impenetrable mystery, no one knows whence they came, nor whither they went, nor what causes swept them away.

LaPorte county is not without their remains. What is now New Durham township contained two of these mounds, originally about six feet high ; but they have been lowered by cultivation until they are not discernible. There are several also in Union township, near a tributary of the Kankakee river. These have been opened. On one occasion Dr. T. Higday, of LaPorte, led an excursion to these mounds and secured a large number of flint and copper instruments and pottery, also skulls and other bones. In one the party sunk a pit to the depth of thirteen feet, discovering three human skeletons, near the heads of which were two copper hatchets, two copper needles, a piece of sulphuret of lead, several pieces of mica, a pipe carved to represent some animal, and an earthen vessel containing black mold. Dr. Higday afterwards left some of the specimens with the Chicago Historical Society, in whose presence he read a paper giving an account of the expedition and its results. Others of the specimens are in the LaPorte Public Library Museum, while still others are in the possession of private individuals. It was the in¬ tention of Dr. Higday to make a careful classifi¬ cation of these specimens and properly label them, but he passed away without having done so.

Previous to Dr. Higday's expedition some of these mounds had been opened by Professor Cox, who reports as follows, both concerning his own exploration and that of Dr. Higday: -

"About twelve miles south of LaPorte, on the low bank of a small creek which is tributary to the Kankakee river, are several mounds built up almost entirely of sand, and ranging from six to twenty feet in height. Some of these were dug into by the citizens of the neighborhood and one human skull, two copper hatchets, two broken earthen vessels and a pipe taken out. The latter is carved from a dark-red clay stone (not from the red pipestone quarry of Minnesota), and is a unique specimen of prehistoric art, unmistak¬ ably intended to perpetuate, in a convenient and useful form, the graceful outline and seductive charms of a favorite mistress, a thought, though rude in its inception and execution, the ante-type of that refined devotion which is expressed in marble and on canvas by the most enlightened people of modern times.

'The largest one of the group, near the water's edge, had been partly cut away by the current of the stream; this was opened by re¬ moving the overlying earth with road scrapers and teams; thirteen feet from the top a layer of ashes was found two inches thick ; near the center and three feet deeper two adult skeletons were exposed, one of which was resting upon the de¬ cayed remains of what was supposed to have been a log of wood. Along with these skeletons were found a pipe, a copper needle, fragments of pottery', and part of a marine shell. Two smaller mounds were opened, revealing nothing which would indicate that they were erected for other than sepulchral uses.

"The black mold contained in the vessels above mentioned, and in many others found in similar situations, is regarded by some archeolo¬ gists as the remains of food placed there at the time of burial, for sustenance until the deceased had become settled in the 'happy hunting ground' beyond the grave.

"This is a reasonable inference, and one around which clusters a world of interest coming from the dark forgotten past as a ray of light that has bridged centuries to tell its wondrous story, a simple devotional act of a crude unlettered people pointing with unmistakable significance to their faith in that immortality to which hu¬ manity instinctively aspires."

From 1878 until 1883, W. C. Ransburg, Esq., now an attorney in LaPorte, then a power in edu¬ cational matters in the county, gave much study and attention to the mounds and archeology of this region. He made many excursions, traveled widely, opened several mounds, consulted and corresponded with scientific men, and was quite enthusiastic in the pursuit of this kind of knowl¬ edge. His studies and investigations convinced him that there were three different classes of the former people who had buried their dead in the county.

First there were the old original mound builders, the most ancient of all. The mounds belonging to this group had their center in and south of Union Mills. Mr. Ransburg did ex¬ cavating in five of these mounds, three of which had never before been opened; though they had been plowed down somewhat by the cultivation of the farmers. Originally the largest of these mounds was on the site of the Flannigan house, now owned by Charles Blodgett. About forty rods southeast of this house, Mr. Ransburg opened the largest of the mounds, and also a smaller one near its base. For mounds of this class are found in pairs, a larger and a smaller. The smaller is always placed northeast of and overlapping the larger. The base of the larger was forty feet, that of the smaller five feet. The larger was nine feet high, even after sixty years of plowing. The Flannigan mound was opened during the years 1879-80. In excavating, the earth was removed very carefully so as not to disturb any objects which might be buried, and so that every indication might be carefully studied. The appearance of the earth indicated that fires had been built above the grave. First there was a layer of earth, then a layer which was evidently the remains of a fire, then another layer of earth, and so on, the layers of earth and fire alternating as the excavation was deepened. The explorers thought that probably they were watch fires.

In the mound were found three skeletons in a reclining posture about a foot above the natural prairie level. Two of them appeared to be the skeletons of women, the other that of a man. They were reclining on the side and facing the west. Near the right shoulder of the largest skeleton were found several arrow and spear heads of very fine material and workmanship, several ornaments of copper and stone, and a finely wrought pipe of greenstone, representing a beaver sitting on a curved chip. The animal constituted the bowl, and the cavity for the tobacco was drilled down from the shoulders of the beaver, and the hole for the stem was drilled in through a part of the chip. The work had been done smoothly and with much skill. Near the

To the north about four feet from the skele¬ tons and about two feet above their level were found some of the bones of a dog or similar ani¬ mal. Why was the animal there? Was it a dog, or some other animal ? Or, if a dog, was he there to watch over the grave of his master, or for some other purpose?

The explorers secured a femur or thigh bone, a skull, some teeth, and the dog's skull and teeth; but the most of the bones were in such a decayed condition that they slacked or crumbled quickly on being exposed to the air, and it was impossible to handle and preserve them.

Of all these specimens, not including the skeletons, a tintype picture was taken, which for some years was in the museum of the Valparaiso college; but it disappeared and has not since been seen. The pipe and some of the relics are now in the private museum of Mr. Norman Spang,, Esq., of Aetna, Pennsylvania.

other of the mounds in the same locality. Mr. Ransburg also examined the mounds opened by Dr. Higday and the specimens which he secured, and he places them in the same class with the foregoing. He also examined the mounds in the Chesterton group just at the edge of Chesterton, and classifies them with the same.

Another class of mounds Mr. Ransburg re¬ gards as intermediates, or those of a people who lived after the original mound builders and before the American Indians. About a mile from the former group, on Dormain prairie, there is, or was, a group of mounds which upon examina¬ tion proved to be those of a different class of people. They buried their dead by sinking a pit or digging a grave two or three feet below the prairie level, and placed the corpses in a sitting posture, then they raised a mound above them to quite a height, though at the time of examination these mounds had been lowered by having been plowed over for many years. In these mounds there was no evidence of fire, but there were a quantity of soft red stone and a few splinters of pipe-stone. In these mounds there were found few relics of the people whose remains seem to have been buried there, but near by were found arrow points of three different kinds - some like those found in the former mounds, others like the Indian arrow heads with which all are familiar, and still others which were not so per¬ fect as, but larger than, those used by the Indians.

In order the better to satisfy himself as to the specimens he had found, Mr. Ransburg visited the caves in the southern part of Indiana and in Kentucky, including the Mammoth and Wyan¬ dotte caves; but he found no evidence that the true mound builders had manufactured their articles from materials gathered in those caves; on the contrary their stock seems to have come from the north.

The third class of mounds visited were those of the ordinary Indian burial ground, concern¬ ing which there is little to mention beyond what is already known. We have already referred to one of these, which existed in LaPorte county. It is said that a physician living in Michigan City went to a famous Indian burial ground at Wig¬ gins' Point, in Lake county, and took out of the earth the body of an Indian wrapped in a blanket, a deer skin, and a belt of wampum. With the body were found a rifle, and a kettle full of hickory nuts. Sometime afterwards two Indians armed with rifles came into the field where Wig¬ gins was at work alone. They went to the grave which had been desecrated, set down their rifles and began to talk to each other. Wiggins was claiming the ground and had allowed his plow to pass over the graves, and he supposed that they had come to avenge the supposed acts of desecra¬ tion. But after a time they went away without offering any violence.

The Indians preserved among them legends of the creation of the world, and they had a belief in immortality. They also believed in God, whom different tribes represented in different ways. The Ottawas called Him Michabou, the Great Hare, and believed that He formed the earth and developed men from animals. Some think that this is evidence of the Darwinian hypothesis of the origin of one species from another, but more likely it is a relic of that very ancient time when men believed in the interposition of the divine power at each ascending step. There may be, nay, there must be, a lower matrix or receptacle, but it requires the divine creative energy to mould therein, and bring forth therefrom, a higher grade of living existence. The type is found in the manger of Bethlehem. Unless an effect can be greater than its cause, and exhibit that which is not contained in potency in its cause, the divine creative energy must act at each higher step of existence.

Such were some of the strange people who inhabited this county before us. The lands which we now till, the country dotted over with our com¬ fortable dwellings, the localities now occupied by our populous towns and villages were once the home of people of a different genius, with dif¬ ferent dwellings, different arts, different burial customs and different ideas ; but they were human beings, and the manner in which our interest goes out to them, and the peculiar, inexpressible feel¬ ings which come to our hearts as we look back over the vista of ages and study the few relics they have left, are proof of the universal brother¬ hood of man, and the universal fatherhood of God, and that, as the apostle says, "God hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on the face of the earth."