USA > Indiana > Marshall County > A twentieth century history of Marshall County, Indiana, Volume I > Part 20
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The furniture was scanty and was of the most primitive kind. Bed- steads, tables, stands, benches, chairs, shelves, etc., were made by hand "on the spot," by the man of the house. Bed clothing, cooking utensils and dishes had mostly been brought with the emigrants. In case of a young married couple, the parents of the bride and groom usually set them up in housekeeping by dividing with them their household goods.
A few years later, after the boys and girls grew up, and the "courting" had been gone through with and the marriage ceremony had been performed, the young people moved into and began housekeeping in apartments very similar to the one above described.
The household furniture and equipments, except such as the pioneers had brought with them, were primitive and rude in the extreme. The following is one among many plans for constructing beds which was common in those days: "Holes were bored in a log of the wall at the proper. height from the floor, and into these sticks were driven horizontally, the other ends being supported by upright stakes or posts. Upon the framework thus provided was woven a bottom of withes or bark or deerskin thongs, which formed a support for the bedding. Privacy was sometimes secured
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by making the outer supporting posts high enough to be furnished with a concealing curtain.
Hooks on which to hang clothes or other articles were fashioned from the forked or crooked branches of trees, and forked sticks with the addition of pins inserted in the longer arm made pothooks which were caught over a pole or crosstree that was fixed in the fireplace a safe distance above the fire, the pots being hung on the pins. An improvement on these was the "trammel hook," formed of a flat bar of iron hooked at one end, while at the other an adjustable hook could be raised or lowered as desired and secured by means of an iron pin inserted in the holes that were drilled along the bar. With the advent of brick chimneys came swinging cranes of iron. These set in iron eyes imbedded in the masonry, could be turned freely, the long arm carrying the pots out over the hearth when desired.
The common cooking utensils were first of all the rotund, bulbous iron pot constructed with a flare at the top so the lid would sit in safely. And then there was the iron oven for baking pone, not forgetting the long- handled frying pan. The baking oven was a vessel of perhaps three or four inches deep set on legs and provided with an iron lid turned up around the edge. In it the thick loaf of corn bread was baked by setting it on a bed of coals with more coals piled upon the lid. Many who read this will call to mind the long thin slices of corn pone, heavy and clammy, and the bowl of sweet milk which was frequently all one had for the "frugal meal."
In this same iron kettle was also stirred up and cooked the pot of corn- meal mush, which with the fresh milk from the family cow was made to satisfy the evening repast.
The "jonnycake" board was also one of the most important cooking utensils belonging to the kitchen department of the old log cabin. It was usually made out of an oak clapboard, the sides dressed smooth with a drawing knife and the ends rounded. Cornmeal was made into dough and spread on one side of the board and smoothed along the sides and ends. It was then set up before the log fire close enough so the heat would gradually bake but not burn it. It was allowed to remain there until it was browned and cooked through. Sometimes it was turned over and both sides browned. When eaten warm with nice fresh butter and sweet milk it was a dish that a king might relish.
As time wore on other devices were invented, among which the "re- flector" oven was considered among the greatest. This utensil consisted of a light iron frame, two or three feet in length, mounted upon short legs, to hold the baking and roasting pans. To the back part of this frame a flaring top was attached by hinges, so that it might be turned back when the cooking needed attention. The sides were also enclosed. This flaring top and sides, made of bright tin, presented a large opening toward the open fire which was supplemented by a bed of live coals drawn out upon the hearth and from the hood, sides and back of tin the heat was reflected down upon the cook- ing. It served its purpose well, and surely no better light biscuits, bread, cakes or pies have ever been eaten anywhere than those our mothers used to bake in the old "reflectors" upon the hearth of the old log cabin.
When the cook stove made its way into the early homes of the pioneers it was hailed with delight by a majority of the housewives because it af- forded such great relief to their faces, hands and arms, that had been so
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continually blistered by the great open fires, but some adhered to the fireplace, the old utensils and the old cooking methods as long as they lived.
A good many of the more prosperous families used what was called the "Dutch ovens." These were made of small boulders or bricks and mortar, or else of tough clay, wrought and beaten into shape and burned by slow fires built within. They were usually set upon wooden platforms away from the house by reason of danger from fire, and were protected by a shed. They were principally used in the summertime. In appearance they were rounded domes, not unlike the old-fashioned beehive. The fire was built in them and then raked out, and the baking set upon the floor, the body of the oven retaining enough heat to do the cooking.
The woodenware of the household was often made by the pioneer him- self. Trays, large and small, were made from the soft poplar, buckeye and basswood, and these took the place of most of the present-day tin and crockery ware. The churn was sometimes a mere trough and paddle.
The hominy pestle was a solid beech or maple stump with a bowl-shaped cavity burned in the top to hold the grain while being pounded, and a similar stump cut as smooth as possible made the chopping block for meat. The rude trough hollowed out from a short log split in half, that was used to catch sap from the sugar trees, is still a familiar relic from the olden time.
"For drinking and dipping vessels," it has been well said, "the common article was the gourd-one of the most adaptable and convenient gifts of nature to man. In an age when manufactured conveniences were hard to get the gourd was a boon, and in every cabin home it played a conspicuous part. Of many sizes and shapes, it served, when properly scraped out and cleaned, a variety of purposes. It hung as a dipper beside the spring or the well with its long sweep, and in the same capacity it was a companion to the cider barrel and whisky jug; it was used at the table, at the lye kettle or at the sugar camp, for soup, soap or sap; a large one properly halved made a wash pan or a milk pan, or, cut with an opening, it became a receptacle for the storing of divers things; a small one was used by the grandmother to darn the family socks over; the boy used one to carry his bait in when he went fishing, and the baby used another for a rattle. A veritable treasure was the gourd, and it should be celebrated in song."
There were various curious articles used in the pioneer homes that are now quite obsolete. Among these we find metal warming pans which, filled with live embers, were used to warm the sheets of a cold night ; lanterns of perforated tin ; tinder boxes with their contents of flint, steel, little powder horns and "punk" from rotten logs used to start the fires; candle molds with balls of cotton wicking; long tin horns and conch shells to call the men to dinner, and many other conveniences now considered quaint and sought for relics.
One important piece of pioneer furniture, if so it might be called, unknown to the modern house, was the loom, which in the days of home- made fabrics was almost indispensable. The space this ponderous machine occupied in the small cabin made it a serious incumbrance, and hence a period would be devoted to the family weaving, after which the loom could be taken apart and stowed away, unless, as sometimes happened, one had a separate loom room. The excellence of the work done upon these rude, homemade implements is a matter of wonder now, as one examines preserved specimens.
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Not only have those blankets, jeans and various cloths a surpassing dura- bility, but some fabrics, such as coverlets and curtains, exhibit a remarkable artistic taste and skill, both in the dyeing of the yarns and the weaving of complicated figures.
Complimentary to the loom were the spinning wheels-a big one for the wool and the familiar little one for the flax. The skillful use of these was a part of the education of every girl and some of the boys, and in the ears of many an old man and woman the resonant hum of it still lingers as the sweet music of a day that is past.
XXIII. HOME-MADE GARMENTS-SPINNING AND WEAVING.
In connection with household duties there were things to do that would not now be considered in keeping with the way we manage our home affairs nowadays.
A great deal of the clothing worn by the heads of families and the children was manufactured by and under the supervision of the wife and mother. Almost every family owned a few sheep, and the wool, after it had been sheared in the spring, was thoroughly washed and dried, and picked and carded, and woven, and the cloth cut and made up into garments for the various members of the family by the good wife and mother. It was a long, tedious, laborious road from the wool on the sheep's back to the completion of the "homespun" garment on the person of the wearer. At that time the "the tariff on wool" had not begun to cut any figure, and it did not matter whether there was a high protective tariff on wool or not, as there was no wool imported into the western country at that time, and nobody had any use for imported wool anyhow. All the wool was used at home, and it was many years after the first settlement before there was a surplus to dispose of.
The fleece of wool was sorted, the fine from the coarse, and carded by means of hand cards made of short bent wire thickly fastened into leather, which was in turn fastened to a small board about 3 by 472 inches thick, to which were fastened handles. Two of these cards were used. A small amount of wool was placed on one of the cards, and then the carder would hold one in his left hand and pull with the other in his right hand until the wool had been thoroughly torn to pieces, when it was made into a small roll, say, about half or three-quarters of an inch in diameter and five or six inches in length.
Carding was hard work, but after one got used to it, it became easier, and in time many became experts and could "roll" off a considerable quantity in the course of a day.
But spinning was the most difficult operation of all. The old spinning wheel was an absolutely indispensable piece of furniture in every well- regulated cabin. They were of two kinds: the large wheel with the pro- jecting spindle, which was used only to spin wool, and the small wheel with distaff, which was used mostly for spinning flax, but on which wool was sometimes spun. To draw out the roll and turn the wheel just fast enough to move the spindle with the proper velocity to make the thread the proper
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size and keep it so, was something that not everyone could do. When the spool was filled the thread was run off on a reel until it had so many "cuts," when they were taken off into "hanks," and then into dozens and hung up in bunches for use when needed.
The yarn was colored red, brown, black, yellow and blue, according to the fancy of the manufacturers. This was generally used for "filling." The chain was generally of cotton yarn and was either white or of one color, black, brown or deep red.
The loom was generally of domestic manufacture, except the reed and shuttles, which were purchased from those who made them for the retail trade. The different colored threads were fastened into as many shuttles and passed through the warp from one side to the other as often as was necessary to make the stripe desired, when that particular shuttle would be laid aside and a shuttle containing another color would be taken up and passed through, and so on alternately until all had been used. Some very handsome plaids were made in this way and when worked up into "linsy woolsy" dresses and other garments for the female portion of the household, they were not only handsome, but, for winter wear, warm and comfortable.
When cloth was to be woven for men's wear the yarn was generally colored blue, and to make it variegated, a string would be tied tightly around the hank before it was dipped into the coloring kettle, and this would prevent the color from taking effect, leaving a white spot in the thread which, when woven into cloth, gave it the appearance of "Kentucky jeans." A suit of this kind of cloth, when neatly worked up, made a dress that was not to be sneezed at.
For summer wear linen made of flax was generally used, and so almost every farmer had a flax patch sufficiently large to supply the supposed demand. After the ground was prepared the seed was sown, and nothing more was necessary until the stalks had ripened and it was ready to pull. It was carefully pulled up by the roots and laid down in swaths to cure, after which it was bound in bundles and put under cover for use when wanted. A flax break was made having a lever with grooves in it, so that when the flax was placed on the break and the lever was pressed down on it with sufficient force the straw inside would be broken, leaving the fiber undis- turbed. When the flax was thoroughly broken, in order to get all the pieces of straw out from among the fiber it had to be carefully "scutched" or "wingled." This was done by setting a board upright and rounding off the top, making it even and smooth. An instrument made of hickory wood, say about three feet long, much in the shape of a butcher knife, with a proper handle, with which to do the scutching, was used. Taking a hand full of broken flax in his left hand, close to the lower end, and throwing it over the top of the board, and taking the "scutcher" in his right hand he beat away, turning it in his hand as often as necessary until the broken straw had all been scutched out, and nothing but the fiber, which had been beaten into tow, left. Before it could be spun into thread it was necessary to run it through a hackle for the purpose of separating the coarse part from the fine. When it had been properly hackled it was wound tightly on a distaff, which was a necessary attachment to the old spinning wheel. Starting a thread from the flax on the distaff, setting the wheel in motion and keeping it going by foot power, our ancient and
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amiable mothers would work away from morning until night, day in and day out, spinning thread out of which to make husband and children shirts and other clothing for the summer.
The weaving of cloth out of flax was done on the same loom and in the same way as woolen cloth was woven. The main garment made out of flax cloth was men's and boys' shirts. At first, without under- clothing, as may be well imagined, they were a "holy terror" to the skin, and as there were no buttons, and the collars and sleeves had to be fastened with a needle and thread and tied in a hard knot, there was no way of getting them loose so as to relieve one's epidermis by scratching. After they were washed and ironed a few times, however, they became quite smooth and were more or less endurable.
The greatest difficulty the writer had in wearing these primitive shirts was in getting the cuffs and collar unfastened and properly fastened up again when he stole away on Sunday against the express commands of his parents and went in swimming. Some of the wicked boys in the neighborhood, however, generally managed to secretly carry off the family needle and thread, after it had been used for the day, and in that case the collar and cuffs would be fastened, and unless some other evidence of truancy appeared, the beech rod above the fireplace would be permitted to remain in its place; otherwise, otherwise.
XXIV. EARLY ROADS IN MARSHALL COUNTY.
When the first pioneers came there was nothing here but a wilderness. Few evidences of civilization were to be seen anywhere. Telegraphing had not then been discovered, and there was not a railroad within a thousand miles in any direction, and at that time there was not even a stage line within forty miles. With the coming of white people closely followed the "pony express mail carrier," once a month, then weekly and triweekly, and so on.
Those who were here then will remember when an occasional New York, Philadelphia or Baltimore paper strayed out this way, the picture of the pony express would be looked for to see what time the mail was scheduled to leave the east for the west, and what time it would be due at Pittsburg, Cincinnati and Indianapolis, and the probable date of its arrival here. It will be remembered how fast that mail carrier seemed to be going. The pony was running at full speed; the mail carrier was bent forward at an angle of 45 degrees, and was heralding his approach by the blasts from his tin horn. But he did not make half as rapid headway as he appeared to be making. Most of the road he had to travel over was through the wilderness, and before he reached the end of his journey he met with many a mishap that delaved his arrival for hours and days.
The letters he brought were written on blue letter paper with goosequill pens, folded in the form of our present envelopes, envelopes not having been invented then, and sealed with a red wafer or sealing wax, mucilage being a discovery of a later date. Letter postage at that time was rated according to distance, 25 cents being the rate from the eastern cities, payable in coin on
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delivery, postage stamps not having been invented at that time and for many years afterwards. It is easy to be seen that the number of letters that failed to reach the parties to whom they were addressed and consequently sent to the dead letter office without the postage having been collected was an immense loss to the United States.
There were no roads or bridges in those days, and the neighbors in finding their way to the cabins of each other followed the Indian trails, which were the first roads in this part of the country. There is more method and symbolism in laying out an Indian trail than may be imagined. As illustrative of all the Pottawattomie Indian trails in this county and in northern Indiana, the writer avails himself of the following truthful and elegantly worded description of the Pottawattomie trail as given by Charles H. Bartlett in his admirable "Tales of Kankakee Land." The Indian trail, he says, was an Indian path with all the features that the term might indicate. It never crossed over a hill which it might go around; it crept through the hollows, avoiding, however, with greatest care, those conditions in which a moccasin could not be kept dry and clean ; it clung to the shadows of the big timber belts, and when an arm of the prairie intervened sought to traverse such a place of possible danger by the route which was shortest and least exposed. At every step the ancient path tells the story of wilderness fears. Yet the travelers of this venerable avenue of the old life had also their own peculiar delights. A warm and sheltered path in the winter time; its fra- grant airs were cool and soft in summer days. All the woodland flowers crowded to its margin; the blue violets and the water-cress ; yellow honey- suckles ; the fringed gentian ; the roses, the ox-eyed daisies-and where the shades were damp and dark, yellow ladies' slippers and purple ones. When the heavy foliage above parted wide to let the sunshine fall on some gentle slope, there was the strawberry bank all white with promise, or growing with the ruby red of its luscious sweets, or throwing above the tender leaves of its pink stolas to make sure the feasts of coming days. The birds loved the red man's path, stationed their homes in the thickets that bordered its course, sang their morning songs beneath those rifts where the blue sky looked down, and there, while the twilight lingered, warbled their evening hymns.
And then, to the Pottawattomie, this above all others was the ancient highway of his people. All the pageant of his life was then in the spring- time and in the moon of falling leaves passing before them in living remembrance. When these scenes were over the old men loved to wander along this path and rehearse the stories of the past and tell the times when they with their people in tumultuous throng hurried home from the chase. With trembling voice and solemn gesture they pointed out the spot where a chief with warriors brave once fell victims to the deadly ambush; or this was the tree where the children had been lured to their death by the mocking wail of a panther; or, in that place the Great Spirit with a countenance of light had spoken of his children in a voice of thunder. Then on the old path they told off, as on a rosary, the sacred traditions of their people.
It was a long time after the first settlers came to the county before any roads were regularly laid out and opened for travel. Indian trails were followed wherever they led in the desired direction. Wherever it was thought that a road should be opened the route would be selected by those
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interested and a man sent over the route with an ax to blaze the way. The brush and logs were cut out, and the man with the ax would cut the bark off of the trees along the line a foot or two long and about five or six feet from the roots, on both sides of the trees, that would be seen by those passing along the road going and coming. One of the first of these roads was from the region of Maxinkuckee lake by way of the Indian trail near Menominee village at Twin lakes, and so on to Plymonth. Another branch was by way of Wolf Creek and from there by the nearest route through the woods to the Michigan road, which had been cleared out and blazed so that it could be used after a fashion, and thence on to Plymouth. A road was also early cleared and blazed from Plymouth to Bourbon by way of what is now Inwood, and on to the Benak Indian village in Tippecanoe township. Short roads were opened in the same way in various parts of the county where most needed, but without any system or legal authority. The lines of these early roads were selected so as to avoid swamps and marshes, and as much as possible to avoid the building of corduroy bridges. In this way they were like the Indian trails-they meandered around over the county without regard to the distance to be traveled and without any regard as to whose lands it was that the road was built upon.
The Michigan road has an interesting history. Several years ago the writer of this history made as thorough investigation of this subject as possible, procuring the data for such investigation from the Interior Department at Washington. The following is the result of that investigation :
Prior to 1826 numerous treaties had been made with the Pottawattomie Indians, the owners and inhabitants of the country embraced in Indiana, southern Michigan and northern Illinois, by which they were to give up most of their lands and hunting grounds to the United States for the benefit of the white population. After these treaties were proclaimed, gangs of govern- ment surveyors were sent out to survey and plat the land, which was done, and the land opened to entry at $1.25 an acre. Through these government surveyors, axmen and chainmen it soon became noised about that a most delightful and productive country had been found, with beautiful lakes and watercourses, and every kind of fish and wild game, wild fruits, etc., in abundance. Many of these surveyors, with Indian traders, land speculators and government agents, entered into a scheme to persuade the Pottawat- tomie Indians to make a treaty giving to the government a strip of land 100 feet wide through the entire state from Lake Michigan to the Ohio river, with a contiguous section of land through which the road should run which should belong to the state of Indiana and by it be given to those who should be awarded the contracts to build the road. It was to be a great national thoroughfare, the northern terminus of which was the mouth of Trail creek at Michigan City, and the southern at Madison, Ind. After the treaty was made the Indiana legislature took the matter up, and among other things named it the "Michigan road." The treaty by which the Pottawattomies granted the land for this road was article 3 of the treaty made October 16, 1826, concluded near the mouth of the Mississinewa, on the Wabash, Indiana, between Lewis Cass of Michigan and James B. Ray and John Tipton of Indiana, commissioners on the part of the United States, and the chiefs and warriors of the Pottawattomie tribe of Indians. This article of the treaty is as follows:
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