St. Joseph County, Indiana - Chapter 8: The Townships, 1907 (part 2 of 2)

"Every one who passed along- the road and saw the shanty and covered wagon would stop and inquire where we were from, and if we had come to stay.

"Mrs. Abbie Druliner, who lived on the Wade-Reynolds place, came a few days after we had located, introduced herself and inquired where we were from ; hoped we w^ould be satisfied, saying- that they needed people to help improve the country and as we were near neighbors she hoped we would remain as such.

" 'We have been here two years,' she said, 'and anything- we have in the Avay of provision that you haven't we want to divide with you. I have the material for maJjing soap ; come over and help make it and we will divide. ' Whether this kind act had anything to do with their friendship or not, I assure you they were fast friends all their lives. They visited each other, their neighbors, and the sick and needy. Everyone seemed delighted to have new comers and worked for one another's interest. The Indians were quite numerous, passing' along- the road in squads of two to tweniy. You may imag:ine how a boy of ten would feel after hearing all about the depredations the Indians had committed the past two years. It so happened one day in my father's absence that I went down near the road to cut some wood out of a large oak top. We had an old dog. Rover, in some respects like Mary 's lamb ; wherever I went he was sure to go. He was lying near where I was chopping and all at once commenced growling, his hair standing on end. I told him to be quiet, but I knew that something was up. I commenced looking about and soon discovered two big Indians coming down the road, with feathers in cap, and with tomahawks and scalping knives in their belts. With not much time to think, I bade the old dog be quiet and settled down in the top of the tree, hoping to avoid their notice until they passed. But when they got opposite where I was one of them straightened up and pulled out a scalping knife. I went out of that tree like a jack rabbit; out ran the old dog ; and my hat and everything else landed into the shanty, half way across the room. My mother said, 'What's the matter with thee ? ' ' Two big Indians ; I guess they have scalped me. ' The Indians were quite docile, except when they had firewater; then they would pass along the road in single file no matter what their number was, whooping and yelling, with their ponies at full speed. We soon became accustomed to them and had but little fear. Many of their wigwams were very attractive, lined with furs of different kinds and fancy blankets, the squaws sitting on robes doing fancy work, with papooses lashed to boards hanging to a limb or leaning against a tree, and the older children frisking about, practicing with bow and arrow, jumping or running races. The surroundings seemed the height of contentment and they acted very friendly, but would never invite you inside."

"The first record I find of white settlers in Olive township was in 1830. In that year quite a colony seems to have arrived, for I hear of Jacob and Israel Rush, John, Barzilla and Gamaliel Druliner, John Jacob and Paul Egbert Jacob and Joseph Adams, Samuel Garwood, Charles Vail, Garrett and Henry Nickerson, Wm. White and John Carskaddon.

"In the same year. 1830, an act of the legislature had formed St. Joseph county, and as the law then stood it was governed by a board of three justices. The board of justices divided the county into four townships, Michigan, Deschemin, German and Portage. What is now Olive, was in Deschemin, taking a strip of Laporte county on the west.

"The year 1832 was an eventful one in the history of Olive township. The board of oommissioners reorganized the township and laid it out under its present name. Charles Vail had married Olive Stanton and this was the first marriag-e among the white settlers, and to her was given the honor of fixing her name upon the new township.

"In June, 1832, the Black Hawk war broke out. We can hardly realize the fear and trouble it brought upon our old settlers. It may seem strange to us now, that less than one thousand poorly armed Sacs and Foxes in M^estern Illinois could awaken such fears as they did in the summer of 1832.

"But this was when Fort Dearborn and half a dozen log huts were all of what is now Chicago, and when five hundred volunteers were all that could be mustered in northern Indiana and southern Michigan. Black Hawk was no stranger. He had often led his tribe along the Saulv trail that is now the road through Terre Coupee on his way to Maiden, Michigan, to receive the government annuities. Then northern Indiana was still the home of the Pottawatomies^ and to the north, in Michigan, the Ottawas were still numerous and powerful. It was not then as now that the news was flashed across the continent bytelegraph, or that we could talk hundreds of miles over a wire.

"The tale of the frightened and fleeing settlers, its horrors as it sped from cabin to cabin, uncontradicted, until in the imagination of the fearful, the whoop of the savage was heard borne on the night wind and the smoke of burning dwellings was seen in the west by day. This is no exaggeration. At one time the report came that the Sacs had reached Door Village, in Laporte county, and that they were burning houses and murdering settlers on their way east. Many fled to Ohio. One fugitive had stopped to pass the night at Samuel Garwood's. Some mischievous or badly scared traveler spread a report that the Indians were coming. At midnight he huddled his half-dressed wife and children into his wagon and hurried on. I have spoken of this to mention the only fort or military erection of any kind ever built in

Olive township. It was commenced in May, 1832, and was located on land now owned by Eugene Wykoff. The location was chosen for its nearness to a narrow strip of timber that ran out into the prairie about half a mile on the lands of John Druliner, now owned by James Reynolds, and far enough from the woods so that there would not be a hiding place within rifle shot of the fort. A trench was dug about four feet deep around a square of three or four rods on a side. In this sticks of timber were set 12 or 16 feet long. They were left round if not more than 4 or 5 inches in diameter, and if larger split in halves. The ditches were filled and on the outside the prairie w^as broken up and the sods piled again.st the palisades about breast high so as to stop chance balls which might otherwise pass between the palisades.

"A shallow ditch was left just outside the embankment. It was the plan to erect blockhouses at each corner with loop holes for riflemen, higher than the palisades, from which the sentinels could watch over the prairie on all sides. The work on the fort went on rapidly at first ; but as reports of coming Indians were heard, some stole away.

"The work lagged as the scare grew old. The blockhouses were never finished and when the news of the capture of Black Hawk came the work stopped. The palisades were carried off for firewood and after a few years a few rotten timbers in the ground and a rank growth of grass was all that marked the site of the old fort. Over thirty years ago I could not find its locality.

"Plainfield was the first platted village in the township, platted in December, 1833. The village of Palestine was next laid out in December, 1834. It was about I14 miles east of Plainfield, and you can't point out its site. In fact. I doubt if many of you ever heard of it.

ton, later Terre Coupee, laid out in 1837, is on its way to join Plainfield and Palestine." Mention is made in Mr. Haines' reminiscenses of the Carey Mission, near Niles. Although that mission, like the mission at Fort St. Joseph," above Niles, was without the limits of St. Joseph county, and even beyond the boundaries of the state of Indiana, yet so intimately was each of those missions connected with the early settlement of the St. Joseph valley, that no history of any county that borders upon our beautiful river would be complete without some account of both of them.

Just over the Michigan line, half way between Niles and Buchanan, in the great northern bend of the St. Joseph river, but at a considerable distance to the south of the stream, was located the Carey Mission, named after a distinguished Baptist missionary to the East Indies. an institution well known in the early history of southern Michigan and northern Indiana, and of particular interest to the neighboring people of Olive township and western St. Joseph county during the years immediately following the first settlement of the township. The Carey Mission was established in 1822 for the education of Indian children. The founder was the Rev. Isaac McCoy, a zealous Baptist missionary and educator. Mr. McCoy and his assistants exhibited the greatest self-sacrifice and zeal in their effort to build up in the wilderness an educational institution that might serve as a center from which Christianity and civilization should be diffused among all the Indians of the northwest. A large farm was cleared and comfortable log buildings erected which served as dwellings, school houses and barns. Good crops of wheat and other grains were raised, and, in 1825, a flouring mill was built, the first miU west of Tecumseh or Ann Arbor, and for a time the only one within a hundred miles of the mission. The enterprise attracted the favorable attention of the people of Michigan, and Lewis Cass, then governor of the territory, sent agents at different times to examine into the management and work of the mission. The reports were most favorable. At one time there were as many as two hundred Indian pupils in the institution, and the future of the mission seemed very bright. White emigration, however, proved to be the ruin of the work of the benevolent missionary. It was foreseen that the Indian title to the adjacent lands would soon be extinguished, and that the Indians would be forced to remove to the west, as indeed proved to be the case in a very few years. "Accordingly," says Mr. Edward B. Cowles, from whose history of Berrien county, Michigan, the foregoing account is chiefly taken, "preparations were made at the mission for bringing it to a close, and for its removal beyond the western boundary of Missouri. It was not fully wound up, however, until 1832. "« The name of the ' ' Carey Mission, ' ' and of its founder, the Rev. Isaac McCoy, were familiar words in the history of St. Joseph county during the existence of the mission, from its establishment, in 1822, until its dissolution and removal, in 1832.

Among the towns in Olive township are Warwick and Terre Coupee, formerly called also Prairie Coupee, but better known -as Hamilton. These are on the Great Sauk Trail. Hamilton was at one time a place of considerable importance. The Methodist society erected the first church at Hamilton, in 1839, or a little later. Another old town is Plainfield, a little north of the present Terre Coupee railroad station on the Lake Shore. The principal town of the township, and one of the prettiest towns in the county, is New Carlisle, sometimes called Carlisle Hill. It stands on a fair eminence overlooking the beautiful Terre Coupee prairie. Where else could the ideal rural home be found, if not here, ou this fine hill, before which stretches out so fair a garden of delights? Beautiful Terre Coupee, how the view must have transported the early missionary, coureur des hois, traveler or emigrant, or even the stolid Indian, as he passed from the thick woods while making his way along the old Sauk trail and this vision of lovely landscape burst upon his eyes. Prairie Coupee, a prairie cut out of the dark woods and lit up with the light of heaven, it must have seemed to his enraptured vision.