USA > Indiana > St Joseph County > A history of St. Joseph County, Indiana, Volume 1 > Part 9
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76 | Part 77 | Part 78 | Part 79 | Part 80 | Part 81 | Part 82 | Part 83 | Part 84 | Part 85 | Part 86 | Part 87 | Part 88 | Part 89 | Part 90 | Part 91 | Part 92 | Part 93 | Part 94 | Part 95 | Part 96 | Part 97
But concerns more important than the birds of the air filled the mind of La Salle as he turned to meet the glance of those flashing eyes that alone gave animation to the dark and rigid features of those men of the wilder- ness. One can picture in his fancy the stal- wart explorer, with pentrating eye. flowing hair and bronzed, stern visage, standing fear- less and self-reliant and drawing to himself the unflinching gaze of those solemn auditors .. La Salle, at the height of his strong manhood. was then thirty-seven years of age and in per- fect health. He was of powerful mold, but there was nothing of the braggart: yet. when it became necessary, he displayed both his physical strength and his mental force. Neither affrighted by goblins, nor
31
HISTORY OF ST. JOSEPH COUNTY.
awed by threats, he was, withal, a cultivated and refined gentleman, and could shine in the palace of a king as well as in this red man's wigwam. The listening warriors were quickly moved by his eloquence, for La Salle was deeply skilled in the forensic arts as they held sway at that time in the American forest.
"We are sorry that our ancestors did not understand the Indian. We wish that they could have understood him as the French did, as La Salle did. The latter having won their hearts, proceeded to show them at this council what great advantages might be theirs, if they would stand under the banner of the great king, Louis XIV. 'He who is my master,' said he. 'and the master of all this country, is a mighty chief feared by the whole world ; but he loves peace, and the words of his lips are for good alone. He is called the King of France, and he is the mightiest of the chiefs beyond the great water. . It is his will that you should obey his laws, and make no war without leave of Onontio," who com- mands in his name at Quebec and who loves all the nations alike, because such is the will of the great king. You ought, then, to live at peace with your neighbors, and above all with the Illinois. You have had causes of quarrel with them: but their defeat has avenged you. Though they are still strong, they wish to make peace with you. Be con- tent with the glory of having obliged them to ask for it. You have an interest in preserv- ing them : sinee, if the Iroquois destroy them, they will next destroy you. Let us all obey the great king and live together in peace un- der his protection. Be of my mind, and use these guns that I have given you, not to make war, but only to hunt and to defend your- selves. '
"And now, to confirm his words and to supply them with a token of his pledge to be their defender, he handed to their chief two
a. The Indian title for the Governor-General of Canada.
belts of wampum." The chief received the tokens. His aet was significant, for it showed that he and his people were disposed to con- sider carefully the propositions of their French guest. The chief made no further re- ply, but dissolved the council. He could make no further reply until the members of the tribe had been given an opportunity to express their preferences. But they did not deliberate long among themselves, for it was found that all with one accord called loudly for the French alliance. So the following day the council was convened again, and the chief gave the tribe's endorsement of a treaty of mutual helpfulness between Miamis and Frenchmen. The oration of the chief was a series of metaphors in which he accepts for his people the protection of the great king. and pledges to his cause the 'beaver and the lands of the Miamis,' and themselves individ- ually-body, intellect and heart. His speech had all the ecstacy and sincerity of a lover's song. And the Anglo-Saxon must admit that it was greatly to the credit of the French that their empires in the American wilderness were thus wooed and won."
Sec. 5 .- DOWN THE MISSISSIPPI .- After his success in the formation of his Indian con- federacy and in securing the agreement of the Miamis and other Indians of Indiana, Miehi- gan, Illinois and Wisconsin to remove to the country around Starved Rock, where Fort St. Louis under command of Tonti should prove a stronghold for their protection and secure both Indians and French from the incursions of the Iroquois. La Salle, with renewed confi- dence, went forward in the prosecution of his great enterprise, the exploration of the Missis- sippi and its valley down to the Gulf of Mex- ico. Ilis good fortune in the organization of the Indians into a confederacy friendly to the French and strong enough to resist the Ero- quois, seemed the beginning of a change in the fortunes of the hard-tried leader. In June, 1681. he had the pleasure of meeting
a. Beads, made of shells, and wrought into belts. Used as money or for ornament.
1
32
HISTORY OF ST. JOSEPH COUNTY.
Tonti at Mackinac. From there he went to Fort Frontenac where he made preparations for his new expedition, and in November was back at Fort Miamis. About the middle of December all things were ready. They did not go at this time by the Kankakee, but moved along the south shore of Lake Michigan to the Chicago river, up which they sailed, crossed the portage and passed down the Des Plaines and Illinois to Fort Crevecœur. On February 6th, 1682, they were on the banks of the Mississippi, and on April the 6th they reached the mouth, or rather the three mouths, of the great river. On the 9th of April, an elevated spot was selected on the bank, in latitude twenty-seven degrees, where a column and a cross were solemnly set up, and the whole country watered by the Mississippi and its tributaries was taken possession of for France and for the Christian religion.ª La Salle called the country Louisiana, in honor of Louis XIV. of France; and the empire so established by this intrepid explorer con- tinued, with one interruption, to be French territory for over one hundred and twenty years. and until another great French ruler, Napoleon Bonaparte, to prevent the rich val- ley from falling into the hands of the English, conveyed it, in 1803, to the American repub- lic, during the presidency of Thomas Jeffer- son.
La Salle called the river "Colbert or Mississippi;" the first in honor of his friend and patron, the great French statesman, the second being the Indian Mesi-sepi, or great river. Marquette had called it the river of the Immaculate Conception. While the discov- eries made by Marquette and La Salle are those that have been fruitful of great results to our country and to the world, yet the river had been seen by white men many years be- fore either Marquette or La Salle. In 1519, the mouth of the Mississippi was discovered by the Spanish explorer, Alonzo de Pineda, who called it the Espiritu Santo. In 1528, another
a. Perkins' Annals of the West, pp. 41-44.
Spaniard, Cabeza de Vaca, crossed the river near its mouth. On May 1, 1541, Hernando de Soto, almost as great a man as La Salle him- self, in his expedition from Florida, reached the Mississippi, not far from the thirty-fifth parallel of latitude, at the lower Chickasaw bluffs, a little below the present city of Mem- phis.ª He called the river Rio Grande, mean- ing the same as the Indian Mesi-sepi, great river.
In 1684, La Salle led another expedition from France. This final venture went all the way by sea, sailing directly for the mouth of the Mississippi; the intention being to found a · colony at that point. In this voyage the evil fortune of La Salle seemed to return. As he had missed the portage of the Kankakee in coming up the St. Joseph with his fleet of canoes. in 1679, so now his ocean fleet missed the mouth of the Mississippi, and he landed at Matagorda bay, or Bay St. Louis, as he called it, in the present state of Texas. Here they built a fort and tried to discover the "Hidden River," as they called the Mississip- pi. Matters grew worse from month to month, until in March, 1687, a mutiny broke out and many of La Salle's friends, including the faithful Mohegan, were put to death. On the 20th of the month he was himself stricken down.b So perished the discoverer of the lower Mississippi and founder of Louisiana; a man fitted for empire, and the greatest, per- haps, of the leaders of French enterprise in America.
Sec. 6 .- THE PASSING OF THE PORTAGE .- In St. Joseph county, local interest in La Salle centers in his voyage up the St. Joseph and over the portage, in 1679; and in his treaty with the Miamis, in 1681. It is a question how far he went up the river when he missed the landing at the portage on his first visit to our county. "We do not know," say Bartlett and Lyon, in their historical sketch of La Salle in the Valley of the St. Joseph, "how
a. Century Cyclopedia.
b. The Century Cyclopedia of Names. Per- kins' Annals of the West, pp. 45-52.
33
HISTORY OF ST. JOSEPHI COUNTY.
far they ascended the river beyond this point [the portage landing] before their mistake was discovered. It is fair to presume, how- ever, that they could not have continued for any great distance above the spot known as the south bend of the river [a little east of the present Miami street]; for they must soon have discovered that beyond this place the trend of the river-bed led away from the region of the Kankakee. They landed and prepared to search for the portage. La Salle in his eagerness to find the path, set forth alone. And here the unexpected happened. He was soon lost. The situation was one which might easily confuse any ex- plorer. He was on the spot where the very tip end of the Kankakee valley merges into that of the St. Joseph. Over this spot the water of the latter river once ran, when, in ancient geo- logical times, the portion of our river above the south bend was a continuation of the val- ley of the Kankakee." La Salle was looking for a ridge which should divide the two river velleys. He doubtless supposed that the hills to the south of the present road between South Bend and Mishawaka [Vistula Avenue], formed that ridge and strove to reach their summit. In doing so, he was compelled to pick his way through the long, swampy tract lying between these hills and the St. Joseph. The view from the highland showed him the great Kankakee marsh on the west. But in his return to his companions, he missed the devious path by which he had come, and tried to go around this marshy tract extending for several miles to the east. Tonti says that 'he had to make the detour.' In doing so he must have gone east nearly as far as the present site of the village of Osceola. Here he came again to the banks of the St. Joseph."
In Hennepin's account, already quoted, we are informed that it was two o'clock in the night when La Salle reached the river. He had left the party the day before, and con- sidering the shortness of the days in Decem-
a. See Chapter First, Sub-Division VII, "The Great Kankakee."
ber, he must have been walking for ten or twelve hours before he got around the swampy grounds which are now the rich peppermint flats above Mishawaka. Hennepin tells us, moreover, that after La Salle had reached the river and fired his gun to notify his followers, and, receiving no response, he thought the canoes had gone ahead of him; and that he then kept on his way along up the river, marching more than three hours more before he saw the light on the high ground, where he believed his 'companions were asleep, but which was an Indian's resting place in which he soon after went to sleep. This gives us probably fifteen hours of travel from the time La Salle left the canoes at the south bend of the river until he settled himself to sleep in the frightened Indian's bed of grass and leaves. It would seem that, allowing for the difficulty of walking in the snow and for all other delays and obstruetions, this fifteen hours of con- tinuous walking would have taken La Salle far above the present site of Osceola. The next morning he seems to have changed his mind and turned down the river to find his companions; but it was four o'clock in the afternoon when those in the advance saw him coming along the margin of the river. How high up the river was this point of meeting is also uncertain. From Hennepin's account it is certain that it was far above the portage, for the canoes had gone up beyond the south bend of the river before La Salle left them to search for the trail, and Hennepin says that next day he took a lightened eanoe and as- cended the river to seek their leader. And after they had found him and the Mohegan had come up and told them that the portage was far below, and they had sent back all their canoes with the Indian to wait at the portage, Hennepin says that he staid all night with La Salle "who was very much fatigued," and that on the next day they went down the river and joined the rest of the party at the portage. Tonti says that the point where the Mohegan found the party was two leagues, that is, six miles, above the portage. It would
3
34
HISTORY OF ST. JOSEPHI COUNTY.
appear, therefore that the point where La Salle was first discovered coming down the margin of the river, with the opossums hang- ing from his belt, must have been not lower than within the present limits of the city of Mishawaka, while the night before was spent by him at least as high up as the site of Osceola.
III. PRIMITIVE INHABITANTS.
Dr. Montgomery," in speaking of the time towards the close of the last ice age, when the great Kankakee carried its waters from Sagi- naw Bay down the valleys of the St. Joseph and the Kankakee to the Mississippi, tells us that, "If a man could have stood upon the hills of Rum Village, a vast panorama of water would have met his gaze: To the north- east, as far as the eye could reach. a stream from five to six miles wide and a hundred feet in depth, passing at his feet and rolling onward to the southwest, confined only by the hills on the north and on the south ; and to the northwest a tributary of the same great stream three miles wide and limited in the line of his vision only by the horizon." And he adds : "And primitive man was here." This conclusion, that the first man was . already here, is read by the learned scientist in the records of our rocks.
See. 1 .- THE MOUND BUILDERS .- But other and more easily deciphered records are found upon the face of the earth, all over the region of the Mississippi valley, indicating the presence, at a comparatively recent period, of a highly intelligent raee. These people, for whom we have no name, but who are vaguely included under the general term of Mound Builders, have left evidences of extensive works in the vicinity of our great rivers and their tributaries. These works are of three kinds : Mounds : square and circular enelos- ures; and raised embankments of various forms. The absence of remains of buildings is explained by the circumstance that timber
a. "The Glacial Phenomenon, etc.," cited in Chapter I.
was here abundant, and would therefore be chosen for building instead of stone. The Mound Builders are believed to be the same people who have left buildings of stone in New Mexico, Arizona. Mexico and various parts of Central and South America. The stone structures of those countries remain, but the wooden buildings of our own region would leave no trace after a few hundred vears. These mysterious people disappeared from our country ages ago. Nature does not give a forest growth at onee to abandoned fields ; a preparatory growth of shrubs and softer timber comes first. But forest trees have been found upon the summit of these mounds which show, by annual rings and other signs, at least six hundred years of growth. There could be no better proof of the great antiquity of these mounds. The Mound Builders occupied the country, at least the southern part of it, where their popula- tion was densest, for a very long time. This is shown by the extent of their remains, by their workings in the copper mines of the Lake Superior region, and by many other proofs. At the south they were at peace; but as they advanced northward they came more and more into contact with the wild tribes, before whom they finally retired again towards the southern countries from which they had come.
In the Lake Superior region have been found, as already intimated, the copper mines worked by these ancient people. In one of these mines there was discovered an immense block of copper weighing nearly six tons. It had been left in the process of removal to the top of the mine, nearly thirty feet above, and was supported on logs of wood which were partly petrified. The stone and copper tools used by the miners were discovered lying about as they had been left by their owners ages ago. At the mouth of this mine are piles of earth thrown out in digging the mine: and out of these embankments trees are
35
HISTORY OF ST. JOSEPH COUNTY.
growing which are nearly four hundred years old.ª
As said by Maurice Thompson, in his de- lightful Stories of Indiana, it is hard to realize now what the face of the land looked like fifty or sixty years ago, even when old people most graphically describe it from memory. Still more difficult do we find it when we try to look back to the far-off time when the first human footprints were made in Indiana. We might naturally suppose that these first visitors were Indians. but we do not know that this conjecture is anywhere near the truth. What we do know is that strange and interesting traces of human activities, dating back probably many centuries, are clearly marked in almost every region. These are mostly earthworks of various forms-mounds, embankments, and curious garden-like ar- rangements of soil beds with walks between. In some places beds or heaps of shells, broken and charred bones of fish, birds and quad- rupeds, suggest camping spots where cook- ing and feasting went on for years. And al- most always in connection with these mounds and the like are found human bones, curious copper and stone and pottery implements, and the erude ornaments worn by the people. They had for arms bows and arrows and spears, and used stone axes and knives; while the women sewed with flint needles. They were hunters, fishermen and warriors.
It is said that the Indians found here when white men first arrived had a vague tradition that their distant aneestors came from far towards the setting sun, probably the south- west. These first men liked to dwell beside running streams, where they could build earthworks, on high, well-drained land over- looking the course of the water and command- ing a view of the surrounding country. Some of the most beautiful landscapes in Indiana lie round about these sites of ancient encamp- ments. Doubtless the Mound Builders were
a. The Undeveloped West, by J. H. Beadle, as cited in Northrop's Four Centuries of Progress, p. 18.
expert canoemen and used the streams as highways of travel and as base lines from which to make explorations and hunting ex- cursions; for almost every water course in Indiana then navigable for canoes has here and there along its banks traces of the Mound Builders' art. The implements of copper, of stone and of pottery found imbedded in the mounds show the effect of patient and quite accurate work. Arrowheads of flint were sometimes so neatly finished that they are marvels of symmetry even when compared with like heads made of steel by the best workmen of Europe for archers in the time when the bowmen of England were the finest soldiers in the world. Stone mortars and pestles for pounding grain and the kernels of nuts and acorns into meal served them in- stead of mills. For knives they had sharp stones and keen-edged blades of bone. It is evident that the Mound Builders depended mostly upon spears and bows and arrows for killing game. If we knew the form of their bows it would aid us greatly in finding out more about their character as men ; for among the wildwood hunters. before firearms reached them. the bow was the best sign of their condition. Short. weak hows stood for an inferior people: long and strong bows in- dicated a stalwart race of men. But many of the arrowheads found in the mounds are large and heavy, fitted for use only with powerful bows: and the axes and spear points were ponderous weapons suggestive of great muscular force in those who used them.
From the northernmost part of the state down to the Ohio river the Mound Builders had their fortifications, and the same may be said of the whole country on down to the Gulf of Mexico. In many places stone walls were built instead of earthworks, the masonry being regular and strong. but laid without mortar. We have noted that the mounds were almost invariably built on high points of ground overlooking considerable areas of surrounding country. This choice may have been a measure of precantion against the ap-
36
HISTORY OF ST. JOSEPH COUNTY.
proach of enemies, but there was a more urgent and natural reason for it. In those early days Indiana's territory was almost as much water as dry land. During a great part of the year nearly all the low, flat lands were too wet for camping purposes, and in times of long-continued rain even the animals were all forced by the water to take refuge on the high places. How easy it was then for the Mound Builders to go in their light canoes to the grounds thus surrounded by water and take all the game they needed. No doubt the floods often drove whole herds of deer, flocks of wild turkeys, and even many bears and pumas, wild cats and wolves up to the very walls of the encampments. And this may be why such vast numbers of arrowheads are to this day found on the high grounds.
A great many signs point to the south and southwest as the direction whence the first inhabitants reached Indiana. Sometimes lit- tle things are more significant than large ones, and the fact that some of the arrow- heads and stone ornaments found in and around our ancient earthworks are made of certain kinds of stone not appearing any- where this side of Tennessee, speaks almost as clearly as written legend of the route by which their owners came to this region. Some historians have thought that the Mound Builders were a race greatly superior to the Indians found here by the whites, and have tried to show, by remains left here by that vanished people, that they were advanced in intelligence. Others maintain that the Mound Builders were but ordinary Indians, the an- cestors of tribes still in existence when the French missionaries and traders came to this region.ª
While no remains of great magnitude, left by the Mound Builders, are found in St. Joseph county, yet indications of the presence of those mysterious people are discovered in many places in and near the valleys of the St. Joseph and the Kankakee.
a. Thompson's Stories of Indiana, pp. 15-20. See also Smith's Hist. Indiana, Vol. 1, pp. 41-61.
Near New Carlisle, on the borders of Terre Coupee Prairie, and at various other points such remains are discovered. The most re- markable of these are three large mounds and two small ones, found in Warren township, on the northwest bank of the furthest south of the group of Chain lakes, just south of the Lake Shore railroad tracks. These mounds have supplied some of the finest of the copper axes in the collections of the Northern Indiana Historical Society and other collections; while in the vicinity of the mounds are the usual cloth-marked frag- ments of pottery and broken stone imple- ments indicating the presence of that old race whose remains are so conspicuous throughout the valley of the Kankakee and the Illinois.
Across Portage Prairie, by the portage or pathway from the St. Joseph to the Kankakee, the Mound Builders, like the Indian tribes that came after them, carried on the com- merce that went from the lakes to the gulf in those far off years. Old residents who yet remain with us remember this pathway as deep and straight, so deep in places that a man on horseback could almost touch the level ground on either side with his foot. It is not difficult to understand why this pathway, this ancient trail from the St. Joseph to the Kankakee, should have been straight and deep ; caused as it was by one dusky traveler and burden bearer, moving, man after man, in the footsteps of his predecessor, and by the moccasined foot pressing the soil deeper and deeper, year after year and age after age.
Unnumbered centuries and countless hosts knew the trend of this ancient highway; ages when the hosts of the lower Mississippi and the gulf, and the regions to the south, sought the copper mines of the upper lake region. Not only in the mounds throughout the great valley and the gulf region, but also in the oldest of the Peruvian tombs, are found im- plements and tokens made from Lake Su- perior copper. And we may not doubt that the traffic which these facts imply was itself,
37
HISTORY OF ST. JOSEPH COUNTY.
in part, responsible for the depth of this path across our Portage Prairie.ª
Sec. 2 .- OUR MIAMIS AND POTTAWATOMIES. -But the earth records of the Mound Builders are almost as unsatisfactory in the reading as are the records of the rocks which tell us of the presence of man in the geologi- cal ages ; and we turn with relief to the some- what scanty written records .- letters, jour- nals and reports of missionaries, fur traders, explorers and adventurers,-who tell us of the people that occupied these regions when they first became known to civilized man.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.