A Twentieth Century History and Biographical Record of Laporte County Indiana, Part 4

Author: Rev. E. D. Daniels
Publication date: 1904
Publisher:
Number of Pages: 1273

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The next interesting feature of the country is the sand ridges north of the summit. At the present shore line of Lake Michigan there is a long line of sand dunes of different shapes and heights, with irregular valleys between them. The largest of these-certainly once the largest- is called "Hoosier Slide." In the year 1860 this was 175 feet high, and in some places only 20 feet wide at the top. This was originally covered with a growth of small white oaks and other veg- etation which was subsequently cut away for fuel. Denuded of the trees which protected it, and the roots which held it together dying and losing their strength, this mountain of sand was left at the mercy of the winds and became so re- duced that in 1874 it was only 120 feet above the lake. At times when its base was washed by the waves the sand would roll down in an avalanche. Hence it was called "Hoosier Slide." Other sand. dunes still retain their vegetation and are covered with small white pines, alders and other growths.

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HOOSIER SLIDE.

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HISTORY OF LAPORTE COUNTY.

On the beach between this ridge of sand dunes and the lake, the mail stage and other carriages were driven in pioneer times from Michigan City to and from Chicago. The sandy beach, made hard by the waves, was at one time the best road that existed.

It is easy to see how this ridge of sandhills was formed, for the process is going on before our eyes. When a storm is in progress, or the. wind is high, each succeeding wave brings up from the depths of the lake a small cargo of clean, white sand and lands it high on the beach. The storm abates, the waves recede, and the wind takes this sand and carries it landward. The wind eddies about the trees and bushes which grow near by, and piles up the sand at their roots. The trees and bushes keep growing, and the wind keeps piling up the sand, until after a very long time a large sandhill is formed, and even a ridge of them around the shore of the lake, whose tops and sides are covered with vegetation. N. S. Shaler, Professor of Geology in Harvard Uni- versity, says that the sand dunes on the south shore of Lake Michigan are the best example in the world of this process.

Now, thousands of years ago-how long we know not-the lake was much higher than now. Its shore line was much nearer the northern base of the ridge which divides the watershed. There precisely this process of washing up the sand and piling it around the trees went on until, after some ages, a line of these sand hills was formed there. This, with added vegetation and many changes, now constitutes the first sand ridge of hills north of the summit. The lake receded and after a time made another stand, and repeated the process until a second and lower sand ridge of hills was formed. And so it was with ridge after ridge, until the lake receded to its present shore line and took its stand there. No continu- ous sand ridges are found south of the fifth from the lake, though the valleys and hollows are more or less floored with this wave-washed material. There is no evidence that Lake Michigan was ever on the south side of the summit, but until it receded it was high up on the north side. It is remarkable that the sand ridges successively are nearly parallel with the present shore line of Lake Michigan, showing that they mark former shore lines. Not only so, but the land between

them, under its accumulated soil of decayed vege- tation, consists, as railroad cuts have shown, of sand with occasional beds of clay, which is pre- cisely the case at the bottom of Lake Michigan at the present time. So that the evidence is con- clusive that the sand ridges mark the ancient shore lines, and the valleys between them mark the recessions of the lake.

A large body of water like Lake Michigan sustains the same relation to the circulatory sys- tem of nature that the heart does to the human body. The atmosphere is the lungs, the rain- storms are the arteries, the soil is the flesh, the rocks are the bones and the brooks and rivers are the veins. As the heart sends the blood into the lungs, so a lake evaporates the water into the air ; as the lungs send the blood into the body again, through the arteries, so the atmosphere sends the water to the earth through the rain- storms, to refresh and nourish it. And as the veins take the blood back to the heart again, so the little veins, the brooks and rivers, conduct the water down to the lake. Humanity is stamped upon nature from God who is the source of it, and it is of some advantage to live near the heart where irrigation is sufficient.

It has been said that climate and soil control in a large degree the destines of the human race. This is why LaPorte county has become, and will remain, one of the foremost counties of the state, On account of its advantages of land and water transportation, drainage, climate and soil, it will take even a higher rank than it has now. The country has been comparatively free from earth- quakes, cyclones, tornadoes and disastrous storms. It has occasionally had an extreme of cold or heat, as for instance during the past win- ter, and on Monday morning May 11, 1857, when ice froze in tubs to the thickness of half an inch; but in the main the climate, tempered by the in- fluence of Lake Michigan, is free from excessive heat or cold.

In the county there are four different kinds of soil-sandy soil, timber loam, prairie loam and some vegetable mold. The sandy soil prevails in the northwestern portion, in Michigan, Cool- spring and Springfield townships, where the country declines toward Lake Michigan. It will not produce wheat as abundantly as other kinds of soil, though the quality of what is produced is

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HISTORY OF LAPORTE COUNTY.

excellent. But it is warm, and especially adapted to the production of the potato and of fruits, es- pecially small fruits. In some places on the hills the soil is a strong clay. The timber loam pre- vails in the northeastern portion, in Galena and Hudson townships, where the declension is toward the St. Joseph river. This soil is of great depth and richness, and has fully rewarded with abundant harvests those who have persevered in clearing it and subduing the natural obstacles to cultivation. The above two varieties of soil be- long to the northern belt of the county, which originally was mostly covered with timber. The prairie loam is peculiar to the prairie belt, which constitutes the larger part of the county. It is a sandy loam resting on a subsoil of gravel and sand with some clay, and is exceedingly produc- tive. It is well adapted to raising all sorts of ce- reals, as well as horticultural products, but is chiefly suited to the production of wheat. It has made LaPorte one of the chief wheat growing counties of the state. The vegetable mold is found in the Kankakee valley, and in other places, where there are evidently extinct lakes. It is composed of decayed vegetable matter. It is a great peat bed, in some places forty feet deep, and where not cultivated is covered with a rank growth of marsh grass and flowering plants. By drainage and proper treatment it is rendered ex- ceedingly fertile. In these places bog iron has been found, and underlying many of them are beds of marl.

But upon what do these soils rest? Upon an immense glacial drift. LaPorte county, in com- mon with Indiana's three northern tiers of coun- ties, is of glacial origin. Authorities say that this drift formation is the most important of all. There was a time when nearly the whole of this North American continent, north of certain de- grees of latitude, was one vast region of ice fields. Huge glaciers were formed in the north, by the melting and compacting of snows. The glaciers filled the space between the mountains and hills, the ice melted at the bottoms and sides and lubri- cated the track, and gravity slowly pushed the great masses of ice southward. On the way, great rocks were broken off and rounded by the steady grinding, soil was gouged out and tumbled over upon the ice, and a vast mass of material was added to the sides of the glacier. The ma-

terial thus formed is called a moraine. Some- times two glaciers moved out of their valleys and united; and then, of course, in the larger glacier thus formed there was a large mass of material in the center as well as at the sides. Slowly the glacier made its way southward until finally there came a change and it melted. While its accumu- lated matters and substances were being depos- ited, and the water was running down over them, there was a segregation of materials. The finest and softest was filtered through the rest and formed beds of clay, and wherever a huge piece of ice made a dent in the clay, like the fist in a piece of putty, there the ice melted and left an inland lake.

Other material which was coarser and harder was washed together and formed beds of sand. There were gravel washouts formed of stony materials rounded off and reduced to greater or less fineness by the grinding and washing of ages. LaPorte county is covered with this glacial drift. There is a huge ridge of this deposit called the Valparaiso moraine, about six miles wide, which extends in a northwesterly direction across the county, the crest of which is the dividing line of the watershed between the north and south. In certain places where borings for natural gas have penetrated to the underlying stratified rock, the thickness of this drift is known. At LaCrosse it is 38 feet, at Michigan City 250 feet and at La- Porte 295 feet thick. Within the walls of the Pen- itentiary at Michigan City a well was bored to the depth of 5411/2 feet. The boring showed the fol- lowing strata :

Surface sand, 48 ft. oo in.

Clay, 4 ft. oo in.

Sand,

24 ft. 00 in.

Clay,

66 ft. oo in.

Sand, 30 ft. oo in.

Slate (Marcellus Shale), 76 ft. oo in.

Limestone (Upper Silurian)

293 ft. 06 in.

with fossils.

541 ft. 06 in.

The bore terminated in a porous limestone from which flowed a stream of water so impreg- nated with gas and mineral substances as to ren- der it unfit for drinking and cooking purposes. The water rose twenty-two feet above the surface of the ground, and discharged about three hun-

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HISTORY OF LAPORTE COUNTY.

dred gallons per minute, with a temperature of fifty-seven degrees Fahrenheit. This well emits such an offensive odor that it has been found necessary to plug it and stop the flow of water. But even now the odor escapes and it is proposed to erect a pipe as high as the water rises, and drop cement into it and thus effectually stop the well down in the depths. In other counties there are found, in the glacial drift, beds of white clay, formed by selection and precipitation by water of silica alumina and lime taken from the drift mass. Also strata of muck soil, vege- table mold, fragments of wood and deposits of peat. The first gas well sunk at Frankfort was abandoned while the drill was in the bed of an ancient lake or pond now filled with a slush of sand, loamy muck and vegetable remains. This was struck at a depth of about one hundred feet. From all this we may form a general idea of the formation on which we live. Our soil is not formed on the rock bottom, which is comparative- ly near the surface in other sections of the state, but upon a glacial drift which at LaPorte is nearly three hundred feet above it.

But as we have gone so far, let us go a little deeper and consider the question whether the people of LaPorte county can have a reasonable hope of finding oil or natural gas beneath them. Of course we cannot tell absolutely. Gas and also oil-for the two are from the same source-may be found where we think they do not exist ; but from all the known facts there is no reasonable hope of finding either, in this part of Indiana. Oil has indeed been found in small quantities in this part of the state but it is a very different thing to find it in commercially paying quantities. The pressure which forces the gas out of a well is simply water pressure, as in artesian wells. In the bowels of the earth, the water which is heav- iest will be below the oil and the oil below the gas. Natural gas was generated from animal and vegetable matter, and is a product stored in the earth and not now forming. For the storing of natural gas two things are necessary-something to contain it, and something to confine it. The reservoir which contains it is the Trenton rock which extends over the whole state nowhere turn- ing its edges to the surface. The prison which confines it is the Utica shale, a dense and close cover through which the gas cannot pass. But

in order to contain it the Trenton rock must be porous. It must have gone through a decomposi- tion which has left holes in it something like a sponge. It is all the better if it has a structural relief like a dome to serve as a pocket. But it must be porous or there is no room in which to store the gas. And unless there is a cover to con- fine it, it will escape, either to the surface or to some higher stratum. When the drill penetrates through the Utica shale into one of these pockets the gas escapes, often with tremendous force and loud noise. Thus far the drill has shown that the Trenton rock is porous only in a certain area in the east central part of the state. With the ex- ception of a few spots, as in Dekalb and Pulaski counties, the Trenton rock is not porous else- where. It is hard and dense in LaPorte and neighboring counties, and hence, according to all the facts thus far known, we need not expect to find either gas or oil in this region of country. Of course, even where the Trenton rock is porous and properly covered there are other conditions necessary to insure an abundance and perman- ancy of this valuable fuel, such as area, thickness and pressure. None of these conditions have been found to exist in the northern counties.

On the northern border of the prairie belt there are many small lakes. Their origin, flora, fauna, deposits and the causes of their diminu- tion, are known to comparatively few. Yet some of them are of charming beauty and are fruitful subjects of study. Says an eminent authority : "The lakes of northern Indiana are the brightest gems in the corona of the state. They are the most beautiful and expressive features of the landscape in the region where they abound." Says State Geologist Blatchley, "The original bot- tom of these is composed of an impervious clay or mixture of clay and gravel, which is probably nowhere much less than one hundred feet in thickness." There is no evidence that these lakes were ever a part of Lake Michigan. When the ancient glaciers melted and retreated, many low basins were left which might have become lakes, but their bottoms were composed of sand, gravel or other porous material, and they would not hold the water. Many a huge piece of glacier lay bedded in clay, and when it melted the water remained where it was, and forms the lake of to-day. Other lakes were formed by the washing

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HISTORY OF LAPORTE COUNTY.

of the great streams as they poured down from the melting glaciers. These streams washed out channels in the clay, and dammed themselves up therein, and have remained until the present time. After the drift material had been deposited and settled and the lake was formed, surface water from the surrounding hills flowed down into the lake; and water from the subterranean veins, fol- lowing the course of least resistance, broke through the clay bottom from below and fed the lake by springs, and in these two ways the loss of evaporation was sustained.

But, alas! the lakes were born to die, and be- gan to die as soon as born. The surface water : from the surrounding hills, and the fountains from below, deposited in the lakes other material than water. Aquatic plants began to grow and decay on the bottom and fill the lake with muck, and this is the most important cause of the ex- tinction of the moraine lakes. The muck beds are usually found on the south and west shores of the main basins of the lakes. There the waters are least disturbed by wave action, for the pre- vailing winds blow upon the east and north shores. Muck also forms quickly in the bays and channels for the same reason. In the words of Dr. Dryer, in his studies in Indiana Geography, "The lakes are literally being filled with solidified air; the great bulk of the solid material which composes the plants being absorbed from the gaseous ocean above, and consigned to the watery depths below." All green plants, whether aquatic or terrestrial, are continually absorbing carbon and building it into their own tissues. On this account many lakes in the county have already become extinct and are now merely beds of muck. Many of them are under cultivation and the soil is most excellent. And those which remain are going the same way. In 1873 Professor Cox re- ported some of the lakes entirely free from any growth of vegetation, and remarkably clear and mirror-like when unruffled by the winds. But none of them are so to-day. He said that others, especially those which received considerable drainage from the adjoining lands, were thickly set with aquatic plants of the water lily family. On the other hand it is said that the lack of drain- age from the adjoining lands causes the lowering of the lakes. For instance as long ago as 1874,

General Packard, in speaking of Hudson Lake says : "Like all the lakes in the country, it be- came less in volume as the land was cleared up, the timber cut off, and the sod broken. * * The lake is now at least four feet below its former level." So then, it appears that the lakes are fated to go, whether they receive drainage from the surrounding country or not; if they receive it, aquatic plants grow and decay on the bottoms, and the lakes are filled with muck; if they do not receive it, they lack sufficient water to offset evap- oration.

That each lake is a basin independent of the others, may be seen from the fact that before connection by channel was opened between them, there was a difference of levels in neighboring lakes, the water in one at times standing several inches higher than in another. The same thing has been observed in neighboring lakes in other counties.

If the above view is correct-and it is sup- ported by the highest authority-it would appear that dredging does not lower the lakes. Dredg- ing may perhaps break through the muck, but it will hardly break through the deep clay at the bottom of it, which forms the real basin. . Nor will drainage, as for instance by the Kankakee ditches, lower the lakes directly. But it will in- directly; for it will lower the water level in the surrounding hills, and prevent the lakes from re- ceiving a supply of water equal to that which is evaporated.

: Professor Cox says, "These, like other lakes in northern Indiana, have been subject to fluctu- ation of surface levels, or a gradual sinking away of the water from five to seven feet during a peri- od of from six to ten years, and in turn as grad- ually rising again to or near its original level in about the same length of time. This oscillation has continued through unequal periods of time, since the earliest observation of white men, and doubtless dates back to the time when the glacial sea retired and left these basins in their present isolated situation.

"The annual rainfall recorded through a series of years, does not correspond to the oscillation of the water levels of these lakes, nor have they been observed to rise any more rapidly during a wet than during a dry season, or vice versa, but rather

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HISTORY OF LAPORTE COUNTY.

to continue to the maximum during a period of rising, or to the minimum during a period of subsidence."

All this is simply in harmony with the gen- eral rythm of nature, and by it we need not de- ceive ourselves into thinking that the lakes will ever return to their former level. The perodical rising of the lakes is like that of the ebbing tide; each incoming wave rises nearly as high as the preceding one, but not quite. As surely as the tide goes out, our lakes will recede until nothing but muck beds remain. They are born to die, as certainly as any other objects of the material crea- tion.

It is sad to part with these jewels from the bosom of our county, but it will be a long time before they cease to shine, and what compensat-

ing feature will appear before then we know not. Change is the law of nature, but the law of com- `pensation is not less universal; and when the lakes are gone there will be compensation in some form, though we cannot tell what. The streams will still seek their level, the prairies will still stretch away in undulations, beautiful groves will still dot the meadows, the birds will sing, the flowers will bloom, and "while the earth remain- eth seed time and harvest, cold and heat and sum- mer and winter and day and night shall not cease."

Such is the nature of the region which be- came the county of LaPorte, one of the brightest stars in that galaxy of counties which constitute the state of Indiana.

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CHAPTER II.

ORIGINAL INHABITANTS.

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; It is a caravan, whitening the desert where dwell the Camanches! 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! -LONGFELLOW.

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- tro's grove, on what was afterward the land of Lucas Hixon, they had a burial and dancing ground which was used as late as 1835. That they should use a burial place for a dancing ground, may strike us as not being strictly within the bounds of propriety ; but proprietyis a conven- tional thing, what is improper to us was not so

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HISTORY OF LAPORTE COUNTY.

to the Indians, and their dancing was not always for amusement, but was often a very serious matter.

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 corn, 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 corn. 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.

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A Twentieth Century History and Biographical Record of Laporte County Indiana, Part 4

Author: Rev. E. D. Daniels Publication date: 1904 Publisher: Number of Pages: 1273

Author: Rev. E. D. Daniels
Publication date: 1904
Publisher:
Number of Pages: 1273