USA > Indiana > Lake County > A standard history of Lake County, Indiana, and the Calumet region, Volume I > Part 5
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Lake County was a part of New France until 1763, when the Treaty of Paris gave it to England-with considerable other territory. Soon after the War of the Revolution residents of the old Atlantic States commenced to long for the country beyond the Alleghenies. The regions south of the Ohio first engaged their attention for purposes of settlement, although the great territory northwest of the Ohio to the Mississippi River was blocked out as part of the domain of the United States in 1887, soon after the close of the Revolutionary war. The organic act under which the Northwest Territory was organized provided that that great domain was never to be divided into more than five states; which accounts for Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin-and no more.
There is every probability that there were both French and English fur stations in the Calumet and the Kankakee regions; in fact, certain venerable Pottawatomies, who were in the Calumet region when the first whites located, asserted that tradition had it that in La Salle's time the French traders had a post on Deep River near what was afterward the site of Liverpool, at the union of that stream with the Little Calumet.
THE POTTAWATOMIES IN A MAJORITY
When Fort Dearborn was established just around the southernmost loop of Lake Michigan, the Pottawatomies were in the decided majority throughout all the adjacent country of Northeastern Illinois and North- western Indiana, and thus they continued until their wholesale departure from the Hoosier State in 1836.
SHAUBENEE, THE GREAT
Until that year the Pottawatomies were familiar to the few pioneers who had located within the present limits of Lake County, and several of the most famous chiefs of the tribe were well known to them and closely associated with the primitive history of Fort Dearborn and Chicago. Shaubenee, who for twenty years was head chief of the Pottawatomies, Ottawas and Chippewas, was a grandnephew of Pontiac, the famous Ottawa, and a contemporary of Tecumseh and Black Hawk. Born in Canada in 1775, when twenty-five years of age he accompanied a hunting party to the Pottawatomie country and married a daughter of the principal chief of that tribe, whose village stood on the site of the Chicago of today.
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When forty years of age Shaubenee was war chief of both the Ottawas and Pottawatomies, and was next in command to Tecumseh at the battle of the Thames. When Tecumseh fell, Shanbenee ordered a retreat, whch concluded his warfare with the whites. He was deposed as war chief, but continued to be the principal peace chief of the Ottawas, Chippewas and Pottawatomies. Shaubenee died in Grundy County, Illinois, on the south bank of the river by that name, in 1859, being eighty-four years of age. Although he never lived in Indiana, his name and fame were high among the Indians of Lake County.
ROBINSON, THE TRADER CHIEF
Alexander Robinson, or Chee-Chee-Bing-Way (Blinking Eyes), as he was known in the Indian tongue, was not as great a man among his people as Shaubenee, but is closely related to the wild life of the Calumet region before the civilization of the whites became planted therein. There is said to have run through his veins blood from Indian, French and English sources. He was able and enterprising and in 1809, while still a young man, he was in the employ of John Jacob Astor and engaged in the transportation of corn around the head of Lake Michigan, as well as the purchase of furs. This grain was raised by the Pottawatomies and was taken to Chicago for sale and export in bark-woven sacks on the backs of ponies.
In August, 1812, while engaged in these occupations, he was making a canoe voyage to Fort Dearborn, when some friendly Miamis hailed him from the shore and warned him to avoid that post. as "it would storm tomorrow." On the 15th of that month occurred the Fort Dearborn massacre, for which the Pottawatomies are responsible. But the warning of the Miamis fortunately saved Robinson from any portion of the stigma attached to that horrible affair, as he left his canoe at the mouth of the Big Calumet and passed the succeeding winter in hunting and trapping in the Calumet region. In 1825, the year before the Pottawa- tomies ceded all their lands in Indiana to the General Government by the Mississinewa Treaty, he became the principal chief of that tribe, and four years afterward married a woman of the Calumet region who was three-fourths Indian. At that time there was no more widely known character in Northwestern Indiana or Northeastern Illinois than Alex- ander Robinson. His headquarters were at Chicago, his journeys for the purchase of furs extended as far south as the Wabash River, and his word was law with the now peaceful Pottawatomies.
"It is claimed that he, as a Pottawatomie chief, evidently a trader rather than a warrior, called together an Indian council at Chicago Vol. 1 -2
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during the Black Hawk War (1832), and it is said that in 1836, when the great body of this tribe met for the last time in Chicago, received their presents and started for the then wild West, this trader chief went with them. But, like Shaubenee, who also went out to see his people settled in their new home, he soon returned and passed his last years on the Des Plaines River." The claim is made that Robinson was one hundred and four years of age at the time of his death-in many ways a remarkable man-a veritable link between the restless, migratory red man and the more settled and patient white man.
PEACEFUL INDIAN LIFE OF THE CALUMET
One of those home-loving, patient, observing whites who came to Lake County during the keenly impressible period of early boyhood and remained within its bounds until his life was closed by an active old age, has written of this transitional stage of humankind: "The writer of this article had an opportunity to visit the Indian wigwams on the shore of Lake Michigan in the summer and fall of 1837-to see the squaws at their work, the children at their play, the fires in the centers of their frail structures and the hunters as they returned from a suc- cessful chase. He saw their roasted venison and had an opportunity to partake of it. He saw their large birch-bark canoes and the Indian boys of his own age spearing fish. He often saw parties of Indian men and squaws, with the pappooses in their blankets behind their mothers, riding on their ponies one after the other in true Indian file; and he . saw some of them in the attitude of mourners beside some graves at a little Indian burial ground. Something therefore of the reality of peaceful Indian life not far from the banks of the Calumet he has seen. "A similar life, with some quarrels and strife, some scenes perhaps of war and bloodshed, we may suppose the Red Men to have passed for the last two hundred years. For them the Calumet Region must have been peculiarly attractive as furnishing so many muskrats and mink for fur, so many fish and water fowls for food. The opening of a channel from the Calumet between the present Wolf and Calumet lakes, by pushing their canoes through a soft and muddy region, is attributed to the trapper Indians who were here nearly a hundred years ago. This gave them a new and shorter outlet to the great lake. Of the number of Pottawatomies who claimed their special home along our fifty miles of river channel no accurate estimate can now be made. The probability is that there were only a few hundred."
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McGWINN'S INDIAN VILLAGE
Until the white man's era fairly commenced in Lake County, the regions around Red Cedar Lake and along the Kankakee River were also favored haunts of the Pottawatomies. Away from the northern and southern marshes they cultivated corn and grapes to some extent and few there were who were not experts at the gathering of maple sap and its manufacture into syrup and sugar. As late as 1834 they had quite a village south of Turkey Creek, at what was known as Wiggin's Point, now Merrillville. It was then called McGwinn's Village. It contained a large plat of smooth and well-worn ground for dancing, sixteen trails leading from it in all directions. A few rods distant was the village burial ground, the best known Indian cemetery in Lake County, which at the time it was first observed by white settlers con- tained about one hundred graves. At its center was planted a pole about twenty feet high from which fluttered a white flag. The site of the village and cemetery seemed to be well chosen, being at the juncture of the woodlands and prairies. A few black walnut trees grew there, very few of that variety being native to the county. It has been suggested that the black walnut may have had some special significance, or sacredness, to the Pottawatomie mind, as several of these trees were also found near an Indian cemetery on the northeastern shore of the Red Cedar Lake.
BURIAL AND DANCING GROUNDS
At Big White Oak Island, in the Calumet region, was another large Indian cemetery. At Crown Point was a small garden and on the heights Indians often camped, but no permanent village or burial place is known to have been established in that locality.
As a rule wherever there was a village a dancing ground and a burial ground were found; both were necessary for the gathering of any con- siderable number of Indians and the founding of anything resembling permanent abodes.
The dances were usually according to settled custom. The Pottawa- tomies would form a line according to age, the oldest first, the little children last. They danced in lines, back and forth, and the music was furnished by an old chief, a young chief and a venerable Indian, who sat on the ground and shook dried corn in gourds. The song which accompanied these rattlings repeated the name of the principal chief over and over. After the dance all feasted on venison soup and green corn, stewed in iron kettles and served in wooden trenchers with wooden ladles.
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How THEY LIVED, DRESSED AND MOVED
The usual camping places of the Pottawatomies in Lake County were along the banks of the Calumet rivers and the shores of the lakes, at the groves in the southern part of the county and on the islands of the Kankakee region. When they cultivated gardens and raised corn, fruits or vegetables, they lived in well-constructed wigwams. These were made of poles driven into the ground, the tops converging, and around the cirele formed by the poles were wound flags or rushes. The Indian man wore a calico shirt, leggins, moccasins and a blanket; the squaw, a broadeloth skirt and blanket. The Indians along the Kankakee marsh kept a good many ponies, which, when migrating, they loaded heavily with furs and tent-matting. They also used canoes for journey- ing up and down the river. During the winter the men were busy trapping, usually camping in some of the groves bordering the marsh ; Orchard Grove was one of their most popular "winter resorts." If the winter was very severe they suffered accordingly, getting short of provisions and losing many of their ponies.
LOST INTEREST IN ECONOMY
In the early times the Pottawatomies not only trapped large numbers of muskrats and mink, but many raccoons, which they sold for over a dollar apiece. It is said "they trapped economically until they were about to leave forever the hunting grounds of their forefathers. They then seemed to care little for the fur interests of those who had purchased their lands, and were destroying, as well as trapping, when some of the settlers interfered." As we shall see, the white trappers knew on which side their bread was buttered, and for many years after the last of the Pottawatomies left the country were even able to eat cake from the profits of the fur trade drawn from the Calumet and the Kankakee regions.
PIONEER STORES IN THE KANKAKEE REGION
The trade of the Kankakee region, and the constant travel through it of trappers and traders, induced several Frenchmen to open stores on the best known islands. On Red Oak Island there were two stores kept by French traders named Bertrand and Lavoire, both of whom had Indian wives. At Big White Oak one Laslie, a Frenchman also with an Indian wife, kept a store; and there were others.
As a rule, the most friendly relations existed between these French-
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Indian merchants and traders and the pure white pioneers of the Kanka- kee region. A father and son of the latter class, who remained over night at one of these stores, having been delayed while searching the marshes for stray horses, tell of a pleasant New Year's morning which they passed at the store on Big White Oak Island.
The neat Indian housewife gave them clean blankets out of the stock, and treated them courteously and so generously that she refused to receive pay. New Year's morning of 1839 dawned. The native children of the encampment gathered, some thirty in number, and the oldest Indian present, a venerable man, gave to each of the little ones a silver half dollar as a New Year's gift. That was their custom. And more and more touching-as each child received the shining silver it repaid the old wrinkled Indian with a kiss.
REMAINS OF FIRST SETTLERS AND TRAVELERS
The most striking evidences of primitive life found in Lake County have been discovered in its southern sections. Within the last seventy years various "finds" have been made by old settlers, in the prosecution of every-day improvements, and the plowing of the soil, which have been of interest not only to local antiquarians but to archaeologists of national reputation.
The first noteworthy deposits to be discovered were near the north- west corner of section 33, township 33, range 8 west, in the vicinity of Orchard Grove. There, in the late '40s the trappers and pioneers found two mounds. As soon as the plow bit into them, they commenced to yield their contents-human skeletons, arrow heads and pottery ; and the work of exhumation and discovery has gone on from year to year.
On the northeastern shores of the Lake of the Red Cedars, under the shelter of a large bluff, is the old Pottawatomie burial ground, of which mention has been made. How long the Indians had lingered and died in that vicinity "history saith not." But to the story.
YIELDING SKELETONS AND HISTORY
In October, 1880, two young men whose father lived near Lowell and had purchased a mill site at the head of the lake commenced to make excavations for the foundations. The spot selected was a little mound on the lake shore, sloping eastward, westward and southward, with a gentle declination northward. At that time a railroad was being built along the westward shore of the lake, the beautiful and sunny knoll had been the camp of a gay party of tourists the summer before, and every-
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thing seemed to breathe of today. On the edge of the southern slope, a few feet from the water line, there was a winding line of burr-oaks. The old Indian cemetery was ninety rods east of the mound.
The young men had not plowed two feet under before they struck a mass of human remains and soon turned up about a dozen skeletons, a few rodent bones and some large shells. A few days afterward T. H. Ball, whose youth had been spent on the west side of Cedar Lake, accom- panied by his son, who had made various archaeological explorations and studies in the far West, visited the locality and made further search under the first of the burr-oaks. Let him tell what he found then, as well as thirty years before : "Soon he found a piece of lead ore, bearing the marks of having been cut by some instrument, then a single arrow head, and next an entire skeleton. One large root of the oak passed over and seemed to press hard upon the skull, and another large root passed between the lower limbs.
"The waters of the lake were flashing in the bright beams of the warm October sun, the leaves of the oaks and hickory trees were just beginning to assume their gorgeous autumn hues, when the bones, the framework of this human form were unearthed. When and amid what circumstances had that form been there laid in earth ?
"The head of the skeleton was eastward. The tree was soon removed and under its roots was found another skeleton with the head toward the west. And not far away was soon afterward another unearthed. In all twenty were exhumed.
"From three counts of the rings of annual growth, that scrubby tree was found to be about two hundred years old. The circumstances indi- cated that the burial took place before the tree began to grow. We find, then, man at the Red Cedar Lake more than two hundred years ago. The size of the bones, the jaws well filled with teeth, indicate that these remains were all of men between twenty-five and forty-five years of age, not quite six feet in height; and from the want of order in the burial, the promiscuous heaping together of the bodies and the absence of tomahawks, arrow-heads and other weapons, it is inferred that these were vanquished warriors, members of a tribe where lead ore existed, and who in a stern conflict fell before the valor of the dwellers by the lake. No drier soil, no more sunny spot could have been found for burial; and so the bones remained undecomposed.
WAS THIS A MESSAGE FROM LA SALLE?
"About 1850 there was taken from the heart of a majestic oak grow- ing on that bluff which has been mentioned, a little instrument called a
1
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mail. It appears to be composed of steel. Outside of it in the tree were layers of wood, counted one hundred and seventy. The shaft of this little instrument is round, the point end is edged, not pointed; the head on the top is flat and very smooth, and besides this surface it has twelve small plane sides, each smooth and well wrought. This nail is of fine workmanship and it takes us back to about 1680.
"Before 1665 a few adventurous traders had passed into the great wilds west of the Great Lakes. In that year the first Jesuit missionary passed into these wilds; and in 1673 Marquette, Joliet and five other Frenchmen passed in two canoes down the Wisconsin River into the Mississippi. In December of 1679, La Salle with thirty-two persons in eight canoes, passed from Lake Michigan into the St. Joseph River, across the portage into the Kankakee and down that river into the Illinois. On March 2, 1680, with three Frenchmen and an Indian hunter, La Salle started on foot to travel across the country, over prairies and through woodlands, for the northeastern limit of Lake Ontario, distant some twelve hundred miles. With the energy of a soul upon which despair never settled, he shouldered his musket and his knapsack and commenced, with his four companions, the long land journey.
"From his leaving an Indian village near the present town of Ottawa, on the Illinois River, there is of his journey no record. Our lake would seem to be directly in his line of travel. It is not improbable that his party encamped for a night upon that wooded height. But why insert the nail in the oak?
"It is recorded that before he left the portage in December, 1679, letters were fastened to trees to give information to other Frenchmen; and what more natural than that, camping here on the border line be- tween prairie and woodland, before entering the dense dark forests, which, surrounding a few small prairies, stretched across Indiana and Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York, he should nail to a tree a record of his journey thus far eastward-a letter for some of his friends in case he should never reach his destination? The paper perished. The polished instrument remained in the wood for one hundred and seventy years. Of the presence here of La Salle, who spent most of the year 1683 in the Illinois country and around the Great Lakes, or of some other Frenchman, let us infer that it bears witness."
RELICS AND COLLECTIONS
This historic relic was long in possession of Mrs. M. J. Cutler, of Kankakee, Illinois, a daughter of Judge Hervey Ball, so many years prominent in Lake County. She also owned a beautiful specimen of
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wrought copper taken from a wolf hole in Hanover Township. What are believed to be genuine Indian pipes have been found near Lowell, Plum Grove and Southeast Grove, and beautiful arrow heads have been unearthed in several localities in the county. One of copper, discovered in St. John's Township, is apparently molded, having three small notches on each side.
One of the large collections of arrow heads, spear heads and various small implements, the manufacture of which is attributed to the Indians, was gathered and owned by H. L. Keilman, of St. John's Township.
THE CHESHIRE AND YOUCHE ANTIQUITIES
The first considerable collection of American antiquities in Lake County was made by W. W. Cheshire. It consisted of 300 specimens of stone implements, mostly axes, and about one hundred arrow heads. Some of the arrow heads of chalcedon and agate are very beautiful. Mr. Cheshire moved to Washington City, and portions of his cabinet were obtained by the Crown Point Public School and J. W. Youche.
The latter, who is a son of the late Hon. J. W. Youche and grandson of Dr. J. Higgins, of Crown Point, has been continuously adding to his collection until it is now the most complete in the county.
In 1911 various prominent citizens of Hammond raised $500 for the purpose of securing the Youche collection to the public library of that city. As the relics are said to comprise the most complete private col- lection of the kind in Indiana, it is fortunate that it is thus preserved and protected.
In a letter to Dr. W. F. Howat, then as now president of the library board, A. M. Turner, the spokesman of the subscribers, presents the following valid reason why such a collection should be housed in Lake County : "For the same reason that Lake County is fast becoming the industrial center of our country because of its geographical location, so it was the favorite camping and meeting point of the American Indian; hence it was that no county in the State furnished so fertile a field for the relie hunter, and, as early as the '50s, W. W. Cheshire, superintendent of the Crown Point schools, county superintendent and county clerk, began the assembling of the instruments used by the Indians in their daily duty and their warfare. He enlisted every teacher and scholar and all the people of the county in this effort. After his departure from the county the work was taken up by J. W. Youche, who spared no time or expense in adding to the collection. In my judgment this collection will increase in interest and value with age, and should be to the public library of this city a most valuable volume of historical interest."
CHAPTER III
PIONEER BUILDING
THE WHITE TRAPPER SUPPLANTS THE RED-EXTENT OF THE FUR TRADE -THE KANKAKEE TRAPPING REGION-CALUMET MUSKRATS AND DUCKS -CROPS WHICH CROWDED OUT THE FUR TRADE-HOME BUILDERS DISPLACE WHITE TRAPPERS-LAKE SHORE ROUTES AND TRAVELERS --- THROUGH NORTHERN LAKE COUNTY IN 1834-VIRGINIAN-AFRAID-OF- THE-LAKE-THE FAMOUS LONG POLE BRIDGE-OLD BAILLYTOWN --- OTHER EARLY STAGE ROUTES-TRAVELER SETTLES INTO SOLID CITIZEN -ANOTHER TRAVELER FINDS THE FIRST RESIDENT FARMER-INN KEEPERS ALONG THE BEACH-ROSS, THE FIRST SUBSTANTIAL PIONEER JAMES ADAMS, NOTED GOVERNMENT MESSENGER-PUBLIC LANDS SURVEYED-SETTLERS OF 1834-SOLON ROBINSON AND CROWN POINT- THE ORIGINAL BUTLER CLAIMS-A HAMLET BORN-MAIN STREET LINED OUT-DISAPPEARANCE OF THE OLD ROBINSON HOUSE-FOUNDER OF WIGGINS POINT-PLOWING UP THE OLD INDIAN CEMETERY -- THE BRYANT SETTLEMENT AND PLEASANT GROVE-OTHER SETTLERS IN 1835 -- SOLON ROBINSON'S HISTORICAL SYNOPSIS-LAKE COURTHOUSE POSTOFFICE - COUNTY ORGANIZED -- INDIANA CITY - LIVERPOOL FOUNDED-GEORGE EARLE, A REAL PROMOTER-THE JOHN B. CHAP- MAN TITLES-JOHN WOOD AND WOODVALE-SETTLERS AROUND RED CEDAR LAKE-HERVEY BALL-BAPTIST PIONEERS OF LAKE COUNTY- FIRST BAPTIST SOCIETY FORMED-LEWIS WARRINER-RECOGNIZED AS CEDAR LAKE BAPTIST CHURCH-FIRST METHODIST MISSION-CROWN POINT METHODIST CHURCH FOUNDED-THE CHURCHES, CUTLERS AND ROCKWELLS-1837, ALSO A BUSY YEAR-EBENEZER SAXTON SUCCEEDS JERE WIGGINS-MERRILLVILLE FOUNDED-THE BROWNS OF EAGLE CREEK-SETTLEMENT OF THE WEST CREEK NEIGHBORHOOD-SOME ENGLISH SETTLERS-GERMAN CATHOLICS OF ST. JOHNS TOWNSHIP- GERMAN LUTHERANS OF HANOVER TOWNSHIP-EARLY SAWMILLS AND BRIDGES-1838, FIRST YEAR OF BRIDGE-BUILDING-COMING OF SAMUEL TURNER AND WIFE-JUDGE DAVID TURNER-SQUATTERS' UNION PROTECTS SETTLERS.
As we have seen, the oldest business prosecuted in Lake County which reached the importance of a commercial stage comprised trapping
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and the trade in furs. Indians, Frenchmen, Englishmen and Americans all were engaged in it at different historic periods, and in the early portion of the nineteenth century altogether.
THE WHITE TRAPPER SUPPLANTS THE RED
Before 1840, when the Indians completely disappeared from the fur- bearing regions of the Calumet and the Kankakee, the white trappers had gradually been supplanting the red men. They had better canoes, warmer blankets, more secure tents, and both they and their ponies were in a higher physical condition and able to withstand the severities and changes of the seasons; furthermore, the white trappers, like others of their race, were more systematic and persistent in their work, and looked at the trade through the eyes of ambition-as something more than a bare means of subsistence. Thus the red trapper gave place to the white.
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