USA > Indiana > Lake County > A standard history of Lake County, Indiana, and the Calumet region, Volume I > Part 6
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EXTENT OF THE FUR TRADE
This trade in furs continued profitable until the middle '80s. An old resident of the county, who had thoroughly investigated this phase of pioneer life, writes thus in 1884: "For the last fifty years, in the fall and spring, some of this class of men have been along this river (the Calumet). The amount of fur taken can only be estimated. It can never be fully known. One trapper and his son caught this last fall some fifteen hundred muskrats and mink. The same trapper has taken in one trapping season, including fall, winter and spring, about three thousand. From twenty thousand to forty thousand have been taken in a season in past years by the different trappers. The number of these animals living along a few miles of this river is surprising to those who have never investigated the habits and ways of wild animal life. It was estimated by those who had experience as trappers that in the fall of 1883 there were forty thousand rats on the lands claimed by the Tolleston Club Company.
"The number of rats and mink trapped and speared in the last fifty years along this fifty miles of river in our county would, if actually known, be quite astounding. The annual value of the fur taken here would be, at a low estimate, five thousand dollars; and at this rate, for fifty years, the amount would be, for Calumet fur alone, two hundred and fifty thousand, or one-quarter of a million dollars!
"(The income from the immense quantities of ice shipped from this river every year cannot here be estimated.)
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LAKE COUNTY AND THE CALUMET REGION
"To leave for a few moments the Calumet, the intelligent citizen of Lake will remember that we have along our southern border, on some twenty miles or more of the Kankakee River, and on fifty square miles of that noted marsh, a still richer fur-producing region even than this which has just been noticed. And when it is recalled to mind that in the days of the early pioneers, Deep River and our three large creeks and the Lake of the Red Cedars were all abounding in these fur-bearing animals; that not only muskrats and mink, but many otter and some beaver used to be found here, and large numbers of raccoons-the state- ment having come to some of those pioneers that three Indians caught here in one season thirteen hundred raccoons, which they sold for sixteen
TYPICAL PIONEER CABIN
hundred and twenty-five dollars-and that our small marshes were then, as some even yet continue to be, the abodes of the muskrat-it will be evident that it would be difficult to find in all that then was called the West, a richer fur-bearing region than was included in the present county of Lake.
THE KANKAKEE TRAPPING REGION
"Venturing still to continue this digression, it may be stated here that in the Kankakee trapping region of our county there are two rows of trapper grounds; the lower one along the Kankakee River, the upper comprising wet marsh land that does not lie on the river. One of the trappers on this upper range, whose claim covers some two square miles
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LAKE COUNTY AND THE CALUMET REGION
or twelve hundred and eighty acres, obtained from his grounds fifteen hundred and forty rats in one season. Taking the two lines of trapper camps across the county, the annual yield of Kankakee fur may 'be placed at thirty thousand muskrat skins and several hundred mink skins; the muskrat skins, at an average of fifteen dollars a hundred, making four thousand five hundred dollars received by these trappers each year for muskrats alone. Some eighteen years ago, mink skins were sold for ten dollars apiece. Now they do not sell for more than one dollar apiece. Five thousand dollars annually is not a high estimate for the Kankakee fur of the county; and this, for the fifty years now past, would make another quarter of a million of dollars, which, added to the value of the fur in the Calumet Region, makes a fair income as received by the trappers, with but small outlay in capital for the annual outfits.
CALUMET MUSKRATS AND DUCKS
"We now return to the Calumet Region, and while we may not make the acquaintance of the individual trappers who here spend several months each year, we see how abundant are the fur-bearing animals and how remunerative is the employment. Muskrats, the trappers say, are quite prolific. One pair will have three litters in a year, averaging six in each litter. These would amount to eighteen. Then the three pair in the spring litter would each have ordinarily a full litter of six each. This will make eighteen more, or in all thirty-six, as the increase from one pair in one year. One pair would thus produce, if left undisturbed by mink and trappers, more than thirteen thousand rats in three years. These animals, the trappers say, have houses of three kinds-breeding houses, feeding houses and excrement houses. The first are compara- tively large; the other two varieties are smaller.
"It may be added that fowlers find the Calumet Region attractive as being a great resort for water fowl. There have been shot here, by a very few sportsmen, three thousand ducks in a season. Two wagon- loads of ducks have been sent away from one of the noted sportsmen's resorts on the river, each load containing six hundred ducks, the result of two days' shooting. Further figures have not been obtained; but these are sufficient to show the abundance of water fowl in that trapping region. The Grand Calumet, being now navigable to Hammond, and likely to be made as far as Clarke (north of Tolleston), this river channel will in the future bear the white sails of commerce where the mink paddled in the grassy brink; but the Little Calumet may yet continue for many years to invite the trappers as in former days."
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LAKE COUNTY AND THE CALUMET REGION
CROPS WHICH CROWDED OUT THE FUR TRADE
The trapping and spearing of the lusty muskrat and the wary mink may have been somewhat adventuresome and picturesque, and the opinion of the writer of the foregoing account seems to be that the profits of the trade were something enormous. But at the time he wrote, other industries of Lake County had so far overshadowed it as to crowd fur out of the list of really commercial products. In 1882-83, for instance, the following conservative estimates were made, as to the annual quantities and values of the county's principal products :
ARTICLES
QUANTITY
VALUE
Corn, bushels.
1,158,132
$463,252
Beef cattle, head.
8,000
400,000
Timothy hay, tons
35,293
358,930
Oats, bushels.
1,000,000
300,000
Butterine, pounds.
3,000,000
300,000
Mixed hay, tons
30,000
300,000
Sand, cars
23,000
275,000
Stock cattle
8,000
240,000
Milk, gallons
785,000
223,125
Hogs, head
16,526
165,360
Horses shipped
1,500
150,000
Butter, pounds
544,529
136,149
Wool, pounds
26,553
79,749
Potatoes, bushels
150,000
75,000
At the time mentioned the ice harvested was bringing in $35,000 every season, and even eggs, $25,000. Over two hundred thousand pounds of cheese were being manufactured, valued at $22,000, and the erops of berries, mainly gathered from the Calumet region, brought more than $18,000 to the pickers. The 4,397 dozen chickens raised and sold realized an income of $13.191 every season-$3,000 more than the pro- ceeds derived from the sale of all the fur-bearing animals in Lake County ; the clover seed crop, one of the least profitable agricultural products of the county, was about on a par with fur as an income producer.
From all of which it may safely be inferred that the fur-bearers were back numbers as commercial animals of modern times and were mainly interesting as reminiscences.
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LAKE COUNTY AND THE CALUMET REGION
HOME BUILDERS DISPLACE WHITE TRAPPERS
But Indians, half-savage French traders with Indian wiyes, and uneasy white trappers, were to give place to real settlers and home builders. The change was gradual; there are always overlapping edges to all such transformations. In Lake County the mixed red-and-white period, during which the Indians were vacating their lands and lakes, and the whites were coming to examine and occupy them, was from 1832 to 1840. Notwithstanding the treaties at the Mississinewa in 1826 and Tippecanoe in 1832, the Pottawatomies were not eager to get beyond the Mississippi, and although most of them left in 1836, some lingered as late as 1840, and in Pulaski County they were even more sluggish than in Lake. Win-a-mac, its county seat, was originally an old Indian town, and its beautiful position on the Tippecanoe River, with fine hunting and fishing grounds adjacent, so endeared the locality to the Pottawatomies that they could not be induced to vacate entirely until 1844, when the white man's town was fairly planted.
LAKE SHORE ROUTES AND TRAVELERS
In the early '30s that dirty little village just around the western bend of Lake Michigan called Chicago-which had, in years past been the headquarters of the Pottawatomie domain-was so coming into notice as a center of the white man's fur and grain trade, as well as a future railroad town, that emigrants from the East were drifting thither in hundreds, by way of Western New York. They hugged the shores of the lakes as closely as possible, which necessarily brought them through Lake County.
As early as 1833 a route of travel had been opened along the beach of Lake Michigan, and another, not long afterward, a few miles inland. Four-horse coaches had been put upon the road for conveying passengers and mail from Detroit to Chicago.
The first traveler along these lake shore roads who became associated with the history of Lake County was James H. Luther, who, in 1834, when he first viewed the country, was a youth of nineteen whose father's home was said to be in Porter or Laporte County. Some years after- ward he married into a Lake County family, "settled down" and became a prominent citizen.
THROUGH NORTHERN LAKE COUNTY IN 1834
Mr. Luther has left a very interesting account of the Calumet region at the time when the first white settlers were squatting upon the red
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LAKE COUNTY AND THE CALUMET REGION
man's lands in Lake County. He says: "In company with the Cutler boys of Laporte County, I traveled with ox teams upon the beach near where Indiana City was afterward built, to Chicago and Fox River, Illinois, which was then called Indian Country, was unsurveyed and occupied by Aborigines. Our object was to make claims and secure farms. I was then nineteen years old.
"We returned in the spring of 1835 for teams and supplies. After the grass had grown so that our cattle could subsist upon it we, with an elderly gentleman from Virginia by the name of Gillilan, who had a large family of girls, three horses, a schooner wagon filled full, started West, and this time struck the beach at Michigan City. Our first camp was on the beach where, back of the sand ridge, were extensive marsh lands with abundant grass, upon which we turned our cattle, consisting of eight yoke of oxen and one cow. In the morning, when hunting up their oxen, one was missing. They found him mired in the marsh and almost out of sight. They succeeded in getting his legs out of the mire and then rolled him about five rods to ground upon which he could stand.
VIRGINIAN-AFRAID-OF-THE-LAKE
"We only made about three miles on our way that day. We finally reached the Calumet, now South Chicago, without further accident, and went into camp. That region was then all a common, with plenty of feed. A small ferry was then used there by the single inhabitant living on the north side of the river in a log cabin. After considering the matter well and consulting with the ferryman, we concluded to drive into the lake below and go around the river on the sand bar. After studying and getting our bearings, we hitched our friend's lead horse before the ox teams and I, as pilot, led the way and succeeded in getting the ox teams nicely over. Our Virginia friend and family came next. They had never seen so large a body of water before, and were very timid in spite of all. The only danger was in getting too near the river, not in getting too far into the lake. I hitched on to them and started in. They were scared and screamed, and begged me to get nearer land, which I presume I did, and the wheels began to sink in the softer sand near the river, and we were stalled. The boys on the other side hastened to us. I dismounted into the cold liquid to my armpits; could hardly keep the precious freight aboard our wagon. But the oxen came, were hitched on, with my horse to lead, and we pulled out all safe and well pleased.
"This was exciting. We boys feared nothing, but it was awful to our Virginia friends. But they soon cooled off, settled on a claim near ours, and were happy.
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LAKE COUNTY AND THE CALUMET REGION
THE FAMOUS LONG POLE BRIDGE
"I drove teams between Chicago and Laporte up to the fall of 1836 and did not know any other way but via the beach. I have not traveled along that beach since 1836 (written in 1884), but in the spring of 1837 I started from Valparaiso for Milwaukee. I intended to take the regular beach route, but missed it and came upon what my friend, Bartlett Woods, speaks of as the 'ever-to-be-remembered-by-those-who- crossed-it' Long Bridge over the Calumet River, at the mouth of Salt Creek, built of logs and covered with poles. I had far more fear in crossing this than I had in getting around the mouth of the Calumet River."
This rather remarkable bridge, he thinks, was built by Porter and Lake counties in 1836. His father, James Luther, was the commissioner. of Porter County for building it. Constructed of logs and covered with poles, it was commonly called the Long Pole Bridge, and probably many supposed that nothing but poles entered into its construction. It was sixty-four rods in length.
In the same spring of 1837, James H. Luther returned from Chicago to Porter County by stage, and he gives his line of travel as "along the lake banks to the Calumet, which we ferried, thence to the Calumet again (where Hammond now is), thence the road ran on between the Grand and Little Calumet rivers, via Baillytown, to Michigan City."
OLD BAILLYTOWN
Baillytown was originally a trading post or fur station, named prob- ably a dozen years before young Luther ever saw the country, the keeper of the post being a Frenchman named Bailly. It was about five miles from the mouth of Fort Creek and when the first whites commenced to come into the country was quite a rendezvous for the Pottawatomies, who came thither to exchange their peltry for goods. About 1834 Bailly made a feeble attempt to plat the place, but no lots were ever bought by white settlers, and it was never more than a trading post and an Indian settlement.
OTHER EARLY STAGE ROUTES
Besides the beach route, which was evidently the first main-traveled road between Michigan City and Chicago through Northern Lake County, faint traces vet remain of the two other highways which were used in the days of the early stages. One passed not far from the
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LAKE COUNTY AND THE CALUMET REGION
present Hessville, in Lake County north of the Little Calumet; the other south of that stream, by way of the Pole Bridge and the early Liver- pool, along the high sand ridge where now are Highland and Munster.
TRAVELER SETTLES INTO SOLID CITIZEN
Mr. Luther's glimpses of Lake County, while he was teaming between Laporte and Chicago, induced him to spend some portion of 1840 at Southeast Grove, on the charming banks of Eagle Creek. At least he found a pretty young wife among the daughters of the well-known
OLD TIME MAIL COACH
Flint family of that locality and brought her back with him to Porter County. In 1849, however, he became a resident of Crown Point, where he engaged in the hotel business, made fortunate investments and be- came a citizen of property and influence. He was also generous, sym- pathetie and kind-hearted. The people liked him and trusted him in their private and public affairs. In 1860 Mr. Luther was elected county auditor and ably held the office for eight years. Naturally he was inter- ested in any record of the development and changes of the region with which he was so long identified; so that the Old Settler and Historical Association of Lake County had no more earnest or active member than he, and he continued to contribute to its archives almost to the day of his death in his eightieth year. Vol. I-3
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LAKE COUNTY AND THE CALUMET REGION
ANOTHER TRAVELER FINDS THE FIRST RESIDENT FARMER
A second traveler, and perhaps the first to pass through the county of which he afterward became a resident, was James Hill, of the well- known military family of Kentucky. His father, William, was a captain of militia in that state and died in 1822. The son, then twelve years of age, made his home with the family of James Lloyd, and in 1827 they moved to Decatur County, Indiana.
In February, 1834, James Hill made an exploring expedition into the new Indian purchase of Northwestern Indiana. He found a few white families therein, saw many Indians in their wigwams and, coming into what became Lake County, he discovered just one settled family- that of William Ross, who had established a home in the woodlands west of Deep River, southwest of the present Village of Hobart. He had known the Rosses in Decatur County, but not finding the leafless oaks, the snow-covered prairies and the Indian wigwams sufficiently inviting to induce a lon'e young man to settle then and there, Mr. Hill returned to Decatur County, married, commenced farm life and deferred his actual settlement in Lake County until 1853. During that year he bought a half section of land in Cedar Creek Township near what afterward became Creston. There he lived for many years, a good, patient, kindly man and the father of such sons as William J. Hill, a successful and forceful character of the Far West, and Dr. Jesse L. Hill, a well-known practitioner in the earlier days of Creston.
When young Mr. Hill met his older friend, Mr. Ross, at that cabin home on the banks of Deep River, the family had been residing in that locality for about a year. The year of the Ross settlement was there- fore 1833.
INNKEEPERS ALONG THE BEACH -
Prior to that year, no whites with white wives, and possessed with the Anglo-Saxon ideas of family life, had made their homes within the present limts of Lake County, with the possible exception of a Bennett family who, in 1832, opened a tavern on the beach of Lake Michigan "near the mouth of the old Calumie." Their little wayside inn stood upon the site of Calumet City of the old paper town of Indiana City, near the mouth of the Calumet.
Soon after the coming of the Ross family, another log-eabin stage hotel was opened on the lake-shore road by the Berry family. The house was afterward kept by Hannah Berry, and the name is preserved in Berry Lake.
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LAKE COUNTY AND THE CALUMET REGION
ROSS, THE FIRST SUBSTANTIAL PIONEER
It is William Ross, therefore, who is generally honored as the first substantial pioneer of Lake County. His family were not all with him, as he was a man of middle age with sons and daughters of mature years. Mr. Ross raised a crop of corn on Terra Coupee Prairie in the summer of 1833-the first in the county. His death, some years afterwards, was occasioned by injuries received by the falling of a bee tree.
JAMES ADAMS, NOTED GOVERNMENT MESSENGER
Another early traveler who passed through Lake County was James Adams, who afterward became a resident of Ross Township. He was a New York stage driver on the road opened in 1833 from Detroit to Chicago. The most exciting trip which he recorded was that of January, 1837, when he was sent from Detroit to Fort Dearborn by Governor Mason of Michigan and General Brady of the United States army as a messenger bearing the order for the transfer of the soldiers stationed at the latter post to the Detroit garrison. It was at the time of the Patriots' war in Canada. The sleighing was good and the young man (he was then about twenty-three years old) determined to make a record; as he did. General Brady had furnished him with good fur gloves and other specially warm clothing, as well as with pressing instructions to have the best horse furnished him at each stage house. The stopping places where he could change horses were from twelve to fourteen miles apart; the entire distance was 284 miles, which, if possible, he was to make in twenty-four hours.
Mr. Adams left Detroit at 4 o'clock in the afternoon and reached the fort at 8 o'clock the next morning. Allowing for the delay in changing horses, his record of ten miles an hour was quite remarkable, and made Adams considerable of a hero in the Calumet region. In 1842 the famous horseman, while still a young man, left the road in favor of a good farm in Ross Township, but although faithful and useful for more than half a century thereafter, his life run along smoothly and evenly. He had a schoolhouse named after him, just east of Merrillville, and was accorded other local marks of respect.
PUBLIC LANDS SURVEYED 1159706
In the summer of 1834 several United States surveyors ran their lines through what is now Lake County (then unorganized as a civil body), blocking out congressional townships and sections, and making
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LAKE COUNTY AND THE CALUMET REGION
it possible for white emigrants seeking locations to fix them definitely and get them recorded legally. In 1828 the Government had purchased from the Pottawatomies the ten-mile strip on the north line of the State of Indiana which extended to the extreme south bend of Lake Michigan-which is on section 35, township 37, range 8 (Calumet Town- ship). By the treaty of 1832 the remainder of the land held by the Indians in Northern Indiana was acquired and, as stated, the land surveys were prosecuted in 1834.
SETTLERS OF 1834
In June, 1834, William B. Crooks and Samuel Miller came from Montgomery County and selected a timber and mill claim near the home of William Ross not far from the mouth of Turkey Creek. They appear to have dissolved business partnership, and more than half a century afterward the foundation timber of Miller's Mill could be seen in the clear water of Deep River. Mr. Crooks became somewhat prominent in public matters, serving as one of the first associate judges of Lake County, elected in 1837.
In October, 1834, Thomas Childers filed a claim on Deep River ; Solon Robinson, Luman A. Fowler and Robert Wilkinson took up land on the banks of the same stream, in November of that year, and in December, Jesse Pierce and David Pierce filed their claims on both Deep River and Turkey Creek.
SOLON ROBINSON AND CROWN POINT
Of the foregoing Solon Robinson was by far the most important character in connection with the early development of Lake County, being in many respects its strongest citizen. IIe was of an old Connect- icut family, but left his native state early in life, married in Ohio and while still a young man became a resident of Indiana. In October, 1834, he loaded his wife, two young children and his household goods into an ox-cart and an extra wagon, and, with two other young men who had probably been neighbors in Jennings County, started for Northwestern Indiana. The roadway, except Indian trails, ended in Porter County, but he found there Jacob Hurlburt to guide him to the newly-surveyed land lying yet further west.
Just before sunset on October 31, 1834, the leader of the party having crossed a beautiful belt of prairie, reached some skirting wood- land. The next morning he decided to make that locality his future home, and from that November morning until 1850 his name is closely
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LAKE COUNTY AND THE CALUMET REGION
interwoven with the founding of many Lake County institutions which have materially contributed to its growth. So fully was he concerned with the land affairs of the central portions of the county that he was called the Squatter King of Lake. In company with Luman A. Fowler and a few others he founded the Town of Crown Point and did more than anybody else to obtain for it the county seat in 1840. He made the first map of the county which was at all reliable, showing, besides the usual features, what portions were prairie and what woodland, and on July 4, 1836, organized the Squatters' Union, of which he was elected the first register of claims. Mr. Robinson was an early justice of the peace, the first postmaster in the county and, with his brother, Milo Robinson, opened the first store for settlers. Although very practical, he was fond of writing, and had quite an agricultural turn of mind. As early as 1837 he commenced contributing to the Cultivator, an agri- cultural journal of prominence, and in 1838 proposed the organization of the American Society of Agriculture. For years he continued the work of organization, both through the press and extended travel, and it is believed that his efforts had a direct bearing on the inauguration of the Grange movement. He also wrote a number of stories and was at one time connected with the New York Tribune, having spent many of the late years of his life in the metropolis. When quite advanced in years he went to Florida, where he died in 1880 in his seventy- eighth year.
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