Historic Indiana; being chapters in the story of the Hoosier state from the romantic period of foreign exploration and dominion through pioneer days, stirring war times, and periods of peaceful progress, to the present time

Front matter

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Preface

THE history of Indiana is rich in minor incidents of real interest and of importance; but not in events exclusively its own. The State had its share of the romantic and chivalrous adventures pertaining to the dawn of Western history, its share in the encounter with a savage race, in the self-sacrifice of pioneer days, and the heroic patriotism of the war periods. Following this, it had its decades of social and material development, common to the Middle West. It is a goodly land, most advantageously located, and always ready for its part in the national responsibilities.

The history of Indiana's past is the story of her fast vanishing frontier life and the gradual changes which come in meeting modern conditions. The differences in social life broaden so rapidly in this country, that later generations take a keen pleasure in pages that preserve the scenes and experiences of those earlier days.

Unless it is often retold, the memory of heroic endeavors grows dim. Through history and literature the past accomplishments of a people are perpetuated, and their example has a manifold influence. From the pages of story and verse, the virtues and deeds, the energy and leadership of the best citizens are recalled to the remembrance of another generation.

The intention of this book is to include in a single volume an account of various phases of the development of the Commonwealth, whose history must be learned from many sources, not always accessible. Many who have not time for research, and others vi Preface

who have no taste for reading history, may take an interest in the romance of foreign dominion on the Wabash, and in a plain tale of the early settlers. Some may have aroused within them a just pride in their State, in reading of Indiana's valiant part in war, the development of her vast natural resources, and the advanced position which she has taken among the states in provisions for universal education, and the enactment of beneficent laws.

The author's lifelong familiarity with the scenes, the characters, the movements, and the events mentioned, insures to the reader a sympathetic treatment of the subject. Fireside recitals by aged pioneers, addresses at old settlers' meetings, local historical society papers, reminiscences of early citizens, State records, scholarly monographs and histories have all gone to the making of these pages.

An attempt has been made to accredit, either in the text or in the appended bibliography, the statements and facts, freely gleaned, from every known authority. Acknowledgment and thanks are gratefully rendered to them, and to old settlers for their reminiscences.

The centennial year of the State's history calls for a new and revised edition of this book. Its friendly reception indicates a general interest in the events recorded in its pages. Being a narrative of things accomplished by her own people rather than a political history, it has found its way into the schoolrooms and by the firesides, where it is pleased to remain; honored by the recognition and giving hail and farewell to the century past and the years to come.

J. H. L.

Lafayette, Indiana, 1916.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. — La Salle and the Exploration . . i

II. — French Dominion ....

Chapter I

FLOWING through the most fertile part of the land which stretched from the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, was the beautiful river known to the Indians as the Ouabache. It was through the wilderness bordering on that stream that the explorers came who first revealed to Europeans the country south of the Great Lakes.

We are familiar with this domain as a busy section of an established country. We know it as a group of great States, dotted with thriving towns and crossed by thousands of railways; whose trains flash past cultivated farms, and carry their products to the cities which have grown up within the territory. But this is only recent history.

Three centuries ago the region north of the Ohio, then covered with a dense wilderness, was a land of adventure, of tragedy, and of romance. Here the red man, tracking through his endless forests, encountered a new race, that was to deprive him of his hunting-grounds. Other events contributed to the i stirring elements of the drama. Scarcely had the canoes of the white race crossed the Lakes, and drifted down the rivers, of what is now known as Indiana, before the history of the Northwest was but the echo of the strife between the Powers of the Old World, and the ominous contest between their colonists with the aborigines. It requires a little imagination to realize that kings and monarchs exercised dominion over Indiana. Nevertheless, from the time that the gallant La Salle opened the way, until the beginning of the nineteenth century, all of the territory of which it is a part was an international shuttlecock. The whole Mississippi Valley was claimed, ceded, and re-ceded by the nations of Europe, as well as by the native chiefs and the American government.

During all of this time, the tragic part of its history was the ever-present menace of the savage tribes, who were being despoiled of their heritage. Such conditions can hardly be called prosaic, and when the true story of explorer, friar, fur-trader, and pioneer are added, it would be a tale hard to match.

It was more than a hundred and seventy-five years after Columbus discovered America, before any European explored the country south of the Lakes, and revealed those magnificent regions to the world. The beginning was the first journey of La Salle. For fifty years the English settlers had been peopling the Atlantic Coast, while Canada had been the objective point of the adventurous French. Following the accessible water-routes, their explorers had reached out along the region north of the Lakes, as far as Lake Superior; and their fur trading-posts and missionhouses had been established at the strategic points.

South of Detroit and the Lakes, the vast territory of fertile soil and more temperate climate lay unexplored. This was from fear of the fierce Iroquois tribes, who intimidated the most courageous traders.

In the year 1669, a new name was enrolled among the intrepid spirits who were willing to dare further dangers of the wilderness for fame and fortune; and the heroic figure of Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, appears. This brave young man had come out from France three years before, and after studying the explorations already made by others, and addressing himself to the acquisition of seven or eight Indian languages, he considered himself prepared to undertake the realization of his dreams of exploration. Selling all he possessed to defray the cost of the expedition, he threw his whole energies into preparation for the daring venture. His plan was to explore the far country where the "Great River" was said to be, and claim the territory for France. With a little band of fourteen followers, in four frail canoes, he started on the journey from Montreal. The hints grudgingly imparted by the natives, as to the Great River which flowed into the sea, as to fabulous mines in the southwest, and as to a passage to China, he followed eagerly. Except the information regarding the river, the tales were but will-o'-the-wisps.

The "Mississippi" was a name repeated about Canadian camp-fires and in the manors of French chevaliers long before any bold voyageur had travelled far enough from his fellows to reach its banks. Four years after La Salle's initial journey toward the west, Joliet and Marquette, going by Lake Michigan and the Illinois River, reached the "Father of Waters"; and published their achievement of that fact to the world, but it is claimed that this first voyage of La Salle was probably by another route. The eminent historian Parkman tells us that, by the loss of old records, which have disappeared since 1756; we are deprived of the account of La Salle's movements during the two years following his departure from Canada, on this first mission of adventure. The memorandum that is preserved says that, after leaving Lake Erie, six or seven leagues distant, he finally came to a stream which proved to be a branch of the river we call the Ohio; and that descending it for a long distance he joined that river. Some have maintained that he went beyond the confluence of the Ohio with the Mississippi. As the source of the Wabash is near the west end of Lake Erie, a voyage down that river would naturally lead to the discovery of the Ohio. Doubtless, then, the Wabash country was approached from Lake Erie and the Maumee River, as this route was followed in later journey ings of the French. After crossing the broad Lakes in their slight boats, and paddling up the Maumee to its source, they probably made a short portage of their canoes and camp luggage to the head- waters of the Ouabache, only a few miles overland, and launched their boats for the first voyage through Indiana.

No incident could appeal more to the imagination than this advent of those birch-bark canoes, filled with the denizens of countries overseas, paddling down the newly discovered stream whose rippling waters had flowed for centuries through the vast forest, all undreamed of by white men. The shores they passed were lined with enormous forest trees, festooned with vines and filled with singing birds. Fish abounded in the placid stream, and wild game came unafraid

Robert Cavelier de la Salle.

From an engraving of the original painting.

to the water's brink. Leagues on leagues and miles on miles of unknown lands, sparsely inhabited by savage peoples, stretched away from the narrow river which carried the slight canoes with their handful of men. It is a picture to remain in the mind, this first coming of the old world into the new west. Such slight records of those earlier journeys have been preserved that we must await further research for verification, and for details of the happenings. We know that on later voyages, in the years 167 1 and 1672, and again in 1679-1680, La Salle entered the State from Lake Michigan through the St. Joseph River and traversed the northwestern part of what is now Indiana. Following the suggestions of the Indians, he ascended the St. Joseph to about three miles from the present site of South Bend. Here a slight elevation separates the waters that drain into the Gulf of Mexico from those that flow toward the St. Lawrence, and the land flattens out into great stretches of swamp and meadow. Across the grassy plains, covered with game and wild fowl, and strewn with the skulls and bones of buffalo, they carried their boats four or five miles to the origin of the Kankakee. Coming to a little clear thread of water, in the surrounding swamp, it is recorded that they set their canoes on it, and pushed down the sluggish streamlet, looking at a distance like men who sailed on land. Fed by an unceasing tribute of the spongy soil, which extended on either side over sixteen hundred square miles of valley, the stream quickly widened into a winding river, with its two thousand bends. On this stream they floated amidst that voiceless solitude toward the Illinois, and through it to the Mississippi, which was the goal of their wanderings.

From these two journeys through the region that is now called Indiana, La Salle may in truth be called its discoverer. The routes he opened up were followed for many decades by succeeding voyagers. The two parts of the State that he explored were widely different in their physical features. The Wabash Valley was heavily wooded, and the surface of the country high and rolling, while the lands south of Lake Michigan were vast plains dotted with lakes. The explorers wrote to France that they had found the country good and pleasant; that the climate was admirable, and the soil extraordinarily fertile. They found game in abundance, and mentioned particularly the wild turkey.

These first excursions of La Salle into the Indiana wilderness, at the opening of his career, and before jealous enemies tried to thwart his far-reaching plans of dominion, were full of hope and expectation. Later there were stirring tales of his courageous adventures on the Mississippi; the history of his long journeys to France for authority and funds, the counterplotting of Canadian foes, his triumphant recognition by the King, and, last of all, his early death at the age of forty-three, in the Louisiana wilderness. In the preface to JouteVs Journal, the following recognition of La Salle's services to France places him among the illustrious heroes sent out by the Grand Monarch. There it is urged :

"Let us transmit their names to posterity in our writings, for the consequences of their labor are most honorable and advantageous to the Nation. ... La Salle was dignified, bold, undaunted, dextrous, insinuating, not to be discouraged at anything, ready at extricating himself out of any difficulty. No way apprehensive of the greatest fatigues. Wonderful steady in adversity, and, what was of extraordinary use, well versed in several languages. Having such extraordinary talents, he was very acceptably employed in these affairs" 1

and added a domain larger than Central Europe to the possessions of his sovereign.

The quaint language of the faithful Henri de Tonty, friend of La Salle, in his tribute to that leader, picturesquely presents the discoveries as they impressed the explorers themselves.

"Monsieur, the plunderers of your fortune cannot take away that discovery, or blot out the World you then opened. And what is Europe compared to this vast country? At the height of his magnificence, Louis cannot picture to himself the grandeur of this Western Empire. France is but the palm of his hand beside it. It stretches from endless snow to endless heat; its breadth no man may guess. Nearly all the native tribes affiliate readily with the French. We have, to dispute us, only the English, who hold a little strip by the Atlantic, the Dutch with smaller holdings inland, and a few Spaniards along the Gulf. It is an Empire, which Louis might drop France itself, to grasp."

There can be no doubt that La Salle had a clear comprehension of the value, to France, of his explorations, for he not only established trading-posts for gain, but he also endeavored to carry thither people to colonize and preempt the territory. The sad ending of his short life came all too soon for the successful carrying-out of his dreams of an Empire, but enough was accomplished by La Salle and. Tonty to place

> Joutel's Journal of La Salle's Last Voyage, Introduction, page 16, Reprint of Caxton Club, 1896.

them as the great frontier knights of the middle West in the dawn of its history.

For many years after these first voyagers paddled down the Wabash, the only travellers to the region were the hardy and adventurous coureurs de bois. No records were kept of their journeys, — how soon they followed the explorers, or how often they came and went; but long before the French government established military outposts, these wandering traders and trappers, with an occasional zealous priest, were the sole visitors to the wilds of what is now Indiana.

The coureurs de bois of Canada ranged over the whole northern and western part of the new continent from Hudson Bay to Louisiana in search of adventure, and to trade with the Indians. They belonged, largely, to the lower classes of adventurers who came out continually from France; but their numbers were constantly augmented by impoverished members of the nobility, or reckless gallants who were reduced in fortune, or fugitives from justice. Inspired by love of adventure, or seeking the oblivion of the forest, these men of gentle blood joined fortunes with the reckless, shiftless voyageurs. Hunting, trapping fur-bearing animals, trading with the Indians, and living with the natives in utter abandonment of previous civilization, was the life into which they drifted. As they rowed down the streams, their paddles kept time to the gay strains :

Tous les printemps, . . .

Tant de nouvelles . . .

Tous les amants . . .

Changent de maitresses . . .

Tous les amants . . .

Changent des maitresses .

L'amour me reveille . . .

They married the squaws; sold spirits to the braves against all law; ofttimes discarded all clothing; and sometimes conspired against the authorities. They have been known to leave the explorer or missionary alone in the wilderness, to the mercies of the savages. Such were those dauntless adventurers, the coureurs de bois, who were peculiar to early Canadian life and history. As most of the territory of which Indiana formed a part was included in that domain in the eighteenth century, these romantic characters were its first white inhabitants. They did not found any homes or towns. They came singing down the rivers in their light canoes, and lodged with the Indians, traded with them, drank with them, and monopolized the forest bargaining. It was through these gay French vagabonds that the savages obtained their bright-colored blankets, their gaudy trinkets, and also the powder, the arms, and the firewater, which made them more dangerous than before. Only such irresponsible, weather-hardened voyageurs could have endured the privations of that savage life; and their daring adventurous spirit secured to them the fur-trade of the forest. Not a trace of their existence in Indiana remained at the time of the conquest of 1779, when the French still inhabited the posts. No name, habitation, or landmark was left of those who thus io Historic Indiana

entered and disappeared from the rivers and woods of the Wabash, and whose history reads like a legend.

When the first white explorers came down the Indiana rivers, they found few settled tribes of Indians. This was on account of the recent Iroquois war. But later, numerous Indian tribes, of many different names, roamed the territory, and all belonged to the great Algonquin race, which occupied the whole of the middle West, and the New England coast. These allied families of Algonquins, while often warring among themselves, united their strength in terror of their bitter foes located on either side of them. The cruel Iroquois separated the Eastern forces by occupying the region now known as New York and southward; while the bloodthirsty Siouan tribes held the country west of the Mississippi. The Miami confederacy, whose barbarian villages dotted the central and northern part of Indiana, included the Weas, the Foxes, the Piankeshaws, the Pottawattomies, the Shawnees, the Ouiatanons, and the Kickapoos, with whose barbarous names the early settlers, alas! were to become so familiar, and who were all branches of the Algonquin race.

The regions now called Indiana and Kentucky were reserved as hunting-ground, but they were also perpetual battle-fields. Across this expanse surged these countless allied tribes and their hereditary enemies. Back and forth from east to west, from north to south, from Florida to the Dakotas, they fought in endless warfare against each other and against their foes. To and fro, defeating or defeated, seldom utterly vanquished, unless exterminated, they came and went on the war-path, always planning to return to the fray, if checkmated in their savage raids, when new combinations with more tribes should render them strong enough for a fresh attack.

All of the tribes were passionately fond of the excitement of games of chance, and sat about the fires and gambled until their last possessions were gone; staking clothing, weapons, pipes, ornaments, or wife on the last throw of the dice. It is said that if invited to "come eat" it was unheard of to refuse; the person invited took his dish and spoon and went ; grunted "Ho!" upon entering, and to every remark that interested him.

Many of the wigwams or huts of the Indians were fashioned of bark or of skins and were covered on the inside with rude sketches of scenes from the chase and battle, commemorating their deeds of valor. Most of the aborigines painted their faces and bodies with soot, ashes, and the juice of plants. Very often they were cruelly tattooed. They were naturally very fond of ornaments, and were easily beguiled by gifts of finery. One possession all Indians valued above any other, was the belt of wampum. This consisted of beads, white and purple, made from the inner part of certain shells. They were made at the expenditure of great care and labor. The wampum was at once their currency, ornament, pen, ink, and parchment. It is affirmed that no compact, no speech, or clause of a speech, to the representatives of another nation, had any force unless confirmed by the delivery of a string or belt of wampum. It was the task of certain braves, detailed for that duty, to remember and reproduce what each bead recorded. The Indian's idea of music was crude, discordant, and unpleasant sounds, a drum or tom-tom being the most universal instrument of tone. His perceptions of good and evil were shadowy, and belief in a future state of reward and punishment was by no means universal. He thanked the Good Spirit for blessings and prayed to the Evil Spirit, whom he regarded as the agent of disease, death, and mischance.

The Indian had a very material notion of the happy hunting-grounds, and his idea of the fate of the wicked was that he should be doomed to eat ashes in cold dreary regions where there was always snow. All tribes were the dupes of their medicine-men, sorcerers, and witches. As a matter of course, so limited an intelligence believed in magic, in the realities of dreams, and in signs and tokens. Their limited knowledge of the laws of nature kept them in perpetual thraldom to fears of which civilized man knows nothing. Although inhabiting the most desirable area, and living in the most favorable climate on the continent they had attained little intellectual or material advancement and gave no promise of any. Their life was a round of hunting, eating, and fighting. In summer the braves were hunting and fishing when not on the war-path, but with little thought of the future, they stored up meagrely for the needs of the long and cruel winter. The men condescended to build wigwams, fashion the weapons, make their wonderful pipes, and shape their canoes, but to the women fell all the drudgery. They gathered the fire-wood, dressed the skins, made the cordage and cloth, and prepared the food. In addition they tilled the land for the scanty crops of corn and beans and pumpkins. They planted, hoed, and harvested laboriously with the little stone tools. On the march it was the squaws that bore the burdens and slaughtered the game. In battle they often bore a part. In consequence of their hard life they changed early from comely girls to hideously repulsive hags, many of them more fierce, cruel, and vindictive in war than the men. The children showed no advancement beyond the generation before and were trained in the grim lessons of savage stolidity, superstition, and endurance shown by their ancestors. When food was plenty they all gorged to repletion, and when there was no provender they lived on the roots, bark, and buds of trees.

Indians showed no tenderness or consideration towards the sick or disabled. Each shared with all, in weal or woe. Upbraiding or complaints were unheard.

The Miami tribes of Indians that were living in Indiana were of a degraded type, who practised cannibalism in its most revolting forms, and continued the practice for a hundred years after La Salle's appearance in the West. They had great dread of the evil spirits, whom they tried to propitiate, charm, and cajole. A description of these natives by an explorer characterizes the roving Indians as possessing the sagacity of a hound, the penetrating sight of a lynx, the cunning of a fox, the agility of a bounding roe, and the unconquerable fierceness of a tiger.

There have been many romantic notions of the Indian, and the early settlers were often pressed to the opposite sentiment of vindictive hate. To unprejudiced persons the native was recognized as full of contradictions. The same man who would give way to demoniacal fury, at other times held himself in the most taciturn self-restraint. His pride would sustain him at the stake but did not prevent his begging for whiskey or cast-off food. His skill at hunting and trapping showed him full of perception of nature and his resources in constructing boats, traps, pits, and spears gave evidence of his cunning, but he had little power of reasoning. They had their own form of humor and were fond of telling tales of their prowess by the camp-fire. A practical joke, or the awkwardness of a white man would move them to roars of laughter, and like the white man they were fond of a joke at the expense of the weaker sex. Such were the natives of the Indiana region when the white man came in, and with whom the coming settlers must be brought into close contact. From the mistakes of governments, and the impossibility of the two civilizations mingling peaceably, both races suffered untold misery. No imaginary tale could be more harassing. Their woes appear on each succeeding page of history, insuring them the sympathy of posterity. After the natives acquired from the white man the use of whiskey and firearms, they became what Mr. Roosevelt terms the most formidable savage foes ever encountered by colonists of European stock.

Parkman remarks that "there is 'a disposition to assume that events like that just recounted were a consequence of the contact of white man with red; but the primitive Indian was quite able to enact such tragedy without the help of Europeans. Before French or English influence had been felt in the interior of the continent a great part of North America was the frequent witness of such scenes, still more lurid in coloring and on a larger scale of horror. In the first half of the seventeenth century from Lake Superior to Tennessee and from the Alleghanies to the Mississippi was ravaged by wars of extermination in which tribes large and powerful, by Indian standards, perished, dwindled into I feeble remnants, or were absorbed by other tribes and vanished from sight. " x

1 A Half Century of Conflict, vol. i., p. 296. Little, Brown & C<*

Chapter II

A CENTURY and a half between La Salle and the beginning of history in the Indiana territory! Truly the new domain waits for its settlement. Silent as the records are of any account of life in the wilderness, we know that the hardy coureurs de bois came down the rivers and sojourned among the Indians, trapping and trading for pelts. "For a century and a half fur was king."

A few fugitive voyageurs among the more adventurous probably tarried, but the first French colonists, or rather the first inhabitants who made their homes at the posts and brought their families out with them, were the soldiers. The wandering boatmen came and went singly and in pairs without intention of remaining. It was their route for barter, the Indiana rivers being a part of the marvellous continuous waterway from the Lakes to the Mississippi.

" In the opening of the North American Continent," says Mr. Ogg, "the Frenchman had this great advantage over some of his rivals — that he entered the land from the right direction, and at a very strategic point. The St. Lawrence set them on the most inviting path to the vast interior, through the Great Lakes and into the eastern tributaries of the Mississippi, finally down that noble 15 stream to the Gulf. As a consequence of this, and to the further fact that by nature the Frenchmen who came to America were of a more roving disposition than the English, their explorations moved much more rapidly. They had ranged and mapped the country continuously from Labrador to the Gulf of Mexico, before the English yet knew the upper courses of even the James, the Hudson, and the Connecticut." 1

And yet, if their exploration and trade were more sweeping, their colonization was far less effective and permanent in that far West.

Following La Salle's constant urging of the importance of establishing military posts from Quebec to New Orleans, for the purpose of maintaining the sovereignty of France, against the Spanish and the English, the government of Louis XIV. made some weak establishments on the Lakes and the Mississippi ; but they were barely a roof for the wandering missionaries to the savage nations, or a trading station. It is not certain that any posts were established on the Wabash until 1720, and the visitations of the zealous priests to the Indians were the only means of control which France maintained over the wilds of Indiana until that time. During all this period the missionaries were always followed, and sometimes preceded, by a class of traders who gave intoxicating liquors to the Indians in exchange for furs and pelts. "The drink among the Indians is the greatest obstacle to Christianity," wrote the good friars; "they never purchase it, but to plunge into the most furious orgies of riot and bloodshed." For all their despair of the savage character, the Jesuit fathers and the holy friars persisted in their labors, growing old and perishing in their

1 Ogg> Fredk., Opening of the Mississippi.

attempts. Younger ones stepped into their vacant places, and took passage with the voyageurs whose little barks penetrated every wilderness.

The gradual movement westward by the British, from the Atlantic Coast, was what prompted the French to establish new posts, and strengthen old ones, along the water-routes from Canada to Louisiana. These prominent points along the courses were selected and fortified, in the rude frontier fashion of palisades and blockhouses. In these primitive stockades were installed a handful of French soldiers and their families, the priest who guided their very wandering footsteps back to religion, an occasional slave, some half-breed Indians, and a few domestic animals — all of whom were a part of the French system of trade and religion. In a short while each had a plot of garden cultivated by the women, and fruit soon hung on their trees. The posts were not powerful enough for conquest, but they were sufficient to protect the -trade with the natives, and to that industry the activities of the lazy little colonies were mainly limited. The post was a convenient rendezvous for the trapper and hunter, and the voyageurs; and a point from which the priest reached out to convert the Indians to his faith.