USA > Indiana > Vermillion County > Biographical and historical record of Vermillion County, Indiana : containing portraits of all the presidents of the United States from Washington to Cleveland, with accompanying biographies of each; a condensed history of the state of Indiana; portraits and biographies of some of the prominent men of the state; engravings of prominent citizens in Vermillion county, with personal histories of many of the leading families, and a concise history of the county and its villages > Part 16
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The sandy iron-stones are interesting to the fossil hunter, as they contain numerous frag- mentary remains of fishes, insects, etc. Fos- siliferons strata of an interesting eharaeter continue exposed along the Little Vermillion to its mouth and down the Wabash. Ont- crops of the above mentioned strata are found along the principal streams throughout the county.
In ascending the Big Vermillion we find on its south bank, a mile below Eugene, a bluff of banks of from twenty-five to thirty feet of irregularly bedded, highly ferruginous, coarse-grained sandstone, often containing comminuted plant remains, with some large fragments of trees, ete. Some of the beds are sufficiently solid to make good building stone. In quarrying them many fine trunks and branches of Lepidodendron and Sigillaria have been found, with a few fruits of Trig- onoearpum. In the vicinity are some fine large stems of Syringodendron Porteri.
Wells sunk below the limestone at Perrys-
ville, to a reported depth of ninety feet, are said to have encountered no coal; but coal may be found in the vicinity, in consequence of the irregular dip of the strata.
Good coal underlies most of the surface of Vermillion County, and is now mined abun- dantly at various points. A total thickness of eight feet would probably be a small enough estimate for the coal underlying every square mile of the county. Since the advent of railroads many large coal mines have been opened and worked, although some have been wholly or in part abandoned, either on account of competition in other parts of the country or of finding better mines in the vieinity.
The principal iron ore found in the county is an impure carbonate, occurring in nodules and irregular layers or bands. These nodules onee were supplied to a furnace on Brouillet's Creek, where they yielded thirty-three per cent. of iron. The ore in the county varies from twenty-five to forty-five per cent. of iron. Along the bottoms of Norton's Creek, near the head of Helt's Prairie, a bed of bog iron ore, said to be three feet thiek and cov- ering six to eight acres, has been discovered.
Zinc blende (sulphide of zine), frequently oceurs, in small quantities, in the eracks and cavities of some of the iron-stone nodules. Its appearance at one place on the Little Vermillion gave rise to the so-called " Silver Mine."
The second bottoms, or terrace prairies, in Vermillion County, in order from the north, are named Walnut Mound, Engene or Sand, Newport and Helt's. The soil is a black, sandy loam, producing the richest crops. These terraees comprise about three-tenths of the county, and are from thirty-five to sixty- five feet above low-water mark, while the higher portions of the county are from 250 to 270 feet above low-water.
Says Professor Collett, in his Geological
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Report for 1880: " Remains of the mammoth have been discovered in nearly all sections of of Indiana. They have consisted, as a rule, of the most compact bones of these animals, as the teeth, tusks, jaws and thigh-bones. Some of the best preserved teeth of the mam- moth were found in the counties of Vigo, Parke, Vermillion, Wayne, Pntnam and Van- derburg. Thirty individual specimens of the remains of the mastodon have been found in this State," etc.
Reading the above report inspired a wag- gish son of the Muse, Judge Buskirk, formerly Attorney-General of the State, to indict the following warning:
It thus appears that Professor Collett, Our State geologist And palæontologist, Is digging up for his learned wallet Every colossal Dirty old fossil In the shape of jaw-bones, tusk and tecth, He is able to find our swamps beneath, Handed down from the old heroic Ages, named the Palæozoic.
When he strikes a huge nasty one Named Giganteus Mastodon,
Or in the beds of ancient ponds Digs up big Bison latifrons, Or an Elephas Americanus,
And others the name of which, Preserving the fame of which,
To pronounce is enough to cause tetanus,
It seems that at once, with his fossil-stuffed wallet,
Out marches the palæontologist Collett, And with his little hammer And scientific grammar
First knocks a mammoth tooth, To put into his grip-sack ;
Then constructs an awful name By means of which to skip back
With a great rhonchisouant fury, on The epochs carboniferous and Silurian.
Now allow me as a friend, Professor Collett, To advise you to put up your learned wallet, Until the present Legislature has adjourned ; Or else by misadventure it might come to pass Some day you'd strike the bones of a mammothi ancient ass ;
And when by the Legislature the circumstance was learned,
At once you'd feel the tempest of their ire
Roused by your sacrilege upon their ancient sire,
And straight they'd have your salary in no fix,- Worse than you ever knocked a tooth from a Jeffersoni Megalonyx.
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HISTORY OF VERMILLION COUNTY.
ABORIGINAL.
MOUND-BUILDERS.
IIE following sketehes of the Mound-Builders, Indians, etc., are com- piled from data furnishı- ed by Hon. John Collett. When first explored by the white race, this county was occupied by savage Indians, without fixed habitation, averse to labor and delighting only in war and the chase. Their misty traditions did not reach back to any previous people or age, but numerous earth- works are found in this region of such extent as to require for their construction much time and the per- sistent labor of many people. Situated on river bluff's, their location combines pictur- esque scenery, adaptability for defense, con- venience for transportation by water, and productive lands. These are not requisites in the nomadic life of red men, and identifies the Mound-Builders as a partially eivilized people. Their mounds and other works are of such extent that it required years of labor,
with basket and shovel, to erect, and such co- ordination of labor as to indicate the rule of priestly government or regal authority; they were certainly to that extent civilized. The vastness of their work indicates a large com- munity of people, so that governments were necessary, which must have had civil power to request and require the necessary labor. The implements found in the graves, mounds and tombs, were more often domestic and agricultural, and indicate a peaceful, obedient race. Their temples were defended by bul- warks of loving hearts rather than by warrior braves. Many of the religious emblems and articles of utility made of stone, point back to the earliest forms of sentiment represented by the fire and sun worshipers of Central Asia, and give a clue to the reason why their favorite habitations and mounds were as a rule never placed beneath the eastern bluff's of streams, but on the other hand were so located in elevated positions or on the west- ern bluffs, that when the timber was cleared away and the land reduced to cultivation, a long outlook was given to the east and to the sunrise, from which direction their expected
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ABORIGINAL.
Messiah or ruler was to come. Similar ens- toms still prevail in Mexico.
Traditions intimate that the tribes were driven southward from the northern portion of the continent, and these traditions are cor- roborated by the discovery of relics in this region made from material found only far to the north.
Clusters of mounds are found in Vermill- ion County on Mound Prairie, near the Shelby battle-ground, and nearly all along the tract between Eugene and Newport, many of them twenty to forty feet in diameter, fonr, five or six feet high, and the clusters containing from ten to eighty mounds. One memorable mound is situated in the northern part of the town of Clinton, from which earth was removed for road building about 1830. In it were found stone implements of the Mound-Builders, accompanied with copper beads, five copper rods, half an inch in diame- ter and eighteen inches long, showing that it .was one of the earliest of the Mound-Builder's works, whilst they were also accompanied with other implements imported from the north.
Another, on the Head farm near Newport, had copper rods or spear heads and smaller stone implements. These were probably burial monnds. A majority of them con- tained no relics, but were simply abandoned mounds . of habitation. Mr. Pigeon in his volume called " Dacoudah," says he noticed figured mounds of men and beasts on the south bank of the Little Vermillion, three or four miles from its mouth. A burial mound near the northeast corner contains a chief in a sitting position at the center. Radiating from his body like the spokes of a wheel were five persons, slaves or wives, to wait upon him in the other world. Ilis useful implements for the other world were a great number of copper beads, from a half inch to
an inch and a quarter in diameter, seven copper axes, one of which contained unmelted virgin silver as it occurs at Lake Superior, varying in weight from two to eight pounds, and seven copper rods, (spear-heads), with pots and crocks containing black mold as if it were food. The streams near their homes afforded fish for food, and the implements found indicated that they were skilled in handling fish spears and gigs. The soil sur -* rounding their homes was always the choicest, with the addition of beautiful and engaging scenery. The relies found in their monnds show that in their more northern homes in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Michigan, the common northern material, the striped slate and copper, was abundant. In Vermillion County relics of this character, were scarce and precious, if not holy. At more southern points striped-slate implements of northern stone are very rare, while the precious copper could no longer be used in implement-making, but was beaten into the finest of sheets and bent over ornamental pendants. All these, and the customs of their burial, indicate an Asiatic origin, and prove conclusively that in their migration to this region they pass by more northern regions, including Lake Su- perior.
Afterward the northern barbarian came, of an intermediate race between the Mound- Builder and the red man. The Mound- Builders were driven away by this irruption, their property seized, many of their wives made captive and adopted by the new people, Many of the customs of the old people conse- quently remained with the new comers, and the latter also deposited their dead in the old mounds, over the remains of the more ancient people. The number of individuals thus found buried together number from five to 2,000 or 3,000. Their graves and relics from the tombs are the only story of their lives.
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HISTORY OF VERMILLION COUNTY.
Throughont all these a deep spirit of religious devotion is indieated, as well as a belief in the existence of another world, and that im- plements of a domestic nature were necessary to the comfort of the departed.
On the Moore farm, three miles northwest of Eugene, Mr. Zeke Sheward, in making an underground " dug-out," for the storing of vegetables, on a sinall mound surrounded by giants of the original forest, found at a depth of three feet, and at least one foot below the surface of the surrounding soil, some pieces of metal about the size of a teaspoon handle, and one coin. On analysis they were found to be made of lead, antimony and tin. The eoin had in relief easily identified figures of a worshiped eroeodile of Egypt or a holy water-dog of America, and word characters much resembling those of China or Iindo- stan. Prof. W. D. Whitney, of Yale College, one of the most thorough linguists of America, believed the characters to be Arabie, but of so aneient a date that the Oriental Society was unable to read them. The director of the British Museum in London determined them to be aneient Hindostanee, but of so ancient a date that no scholar in England could read the inscription. Trees and their remains indieate an age of over 2,000 years for these mounds.
In March, 1880, while a company of gravel- road workers were exeavating gravel from the bank on the ridge at the southwest corner of the Newport fair-ground, five human skeletons were found, supposed to be the remains of Indians buried at that point in an early day. In the gravel bank along the railroad, at the southeast corner of the fair- ground, another skeleton was found. No implements of war were found with the bones, but ashes were perceivable, which would indi- eate that they were the remains of Indians. After burying the dead it was their enstom,
in some parts of the country, to build a fire over the corpse. Many of the skeletons thus discovered, as well as a large portion of the bones of the lower animals, on exposure to the air crumble away so easily that it becomes impossible to preserve them for exhibition.
A collection of a dozen skeletons shows, by measurements of the thigh bones found, that the warriors, including a few women, average over six feet and two inehes in height. Without animals for transportation, their bones were made wonderfully strong by the constant carrying of heavy burdens, and their joints heavily artieulated, and the trochanters forming the attachments of museles show that they were a race not only of giant stature but also of more than giant strength.
Many relics from these mounds, as well as from the surface of the earth elsewhere, have been collected by old resident physicians and others, especially Professor John Collett, late State Geologist, and Josephus Collett; and an interesting museum may here and there be found presenting great variety of arrow points, spear-heads, stone axes, tomahawks, pestles, mortars, aboriginal pottery, pipes, ornaments, bones of Indian skeletons, ete. These collections also generally include an odd variety of geological and anatomieal speeimens.
INDIANS.
At the advent of the white man to the Wabash Valley, the Indians had ceased from their long warfare and were living in a state of quietude. They had no fixed villages or places of residence. For a few months their homes were at some point for summer, and at another location for winter; and their wigwams, made of deer-skins and buffalo hides, could be easily removed, or be substi- tuted by others made from the bark of trees. Many of the older settlers can remember
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ABORIGINAL.
seeing trees the bark of which had been torn off in zigzag fashion seven or eight feet from the ground for the construction of wigwams. All along the banks of creeks and rivers were circular fire holes in which they cooked their food, and at night would sleep upon the ground with their feet hanging down in the warm places thus made.
The Wabash River was by them called Wahbahshikka; by the French, Onabache; the Vermillion was called Osanamon, but by the French a name which signifies Yellow, Red or Vermillion afterward translated into English as Yellow River.
The Miamis occupied a portion of the county, but their general territory was east of the Wabash. They were a tall straight race, of handsome countenance,-especially the girls-brave and terrible as enemies, kind and faithful as friends, and chivalrons in disposition.
The Kickapoos, or Mosquitans, originally from the north and northwest, occupied the regions south and southwest of the Big Ver- million River, but occasionally, by comity of neighbors, camped for a greater or less time north of the Vermillion, on their neighbor's territory. The Pottawatomies, also of northi- ern origin, owned the territory, and their rights were recognized by the Government in treaties. The county was at times the home of each of these tribes, who at the zenith of their power had their headquarters at the Big Springs, a half mile south of Eugene, and the place was known among the whites as Springfield. There the councils of their confederacy were held, decisions as to wars and other difficulties determined, the great treaty with the British merchants made, and the Governor of Virginia took possession of immense tracts of land on the Lower Wabash. Many of the early settlers, as Esquire James Armour. Samnel Groenendyke, Sr., and Irvin
Digby, can recollect meetings held there comprising 800 to 1,000 individuals. The Pottawatomies were of a rather subdued dis- position, somewhat stoop-shouldered and of unpleasant countenance; the Kickapoos, on the other hand, were a warlike race, quarrel- some in disposition, addicted to controversy and happy only in giving and receiving blows.
It is believed that the early explorers and the French missionaries passed down or up the Wabash as early as 1702,-or even as early as 1670. The missionaries, being Jesuits, were very successful by their winning methods in making converts among the say- ages. Near the Indian village on section 16, township 17 north, 9 west, on cutting down a white oak tree, the rings of growth over the scar made by a white man's ax showed that the incision was made not later than 1720.
In 1790, or later, General Hamtramck led an expedition of Indiana volunteers and militia from Vincennes to attack the non- aggressive Indians and their village on the Shelby farm near the mouth of the Vermill- ion. These were the remnants of the now weakened Pottawatomie and Kickapoo tribes. This was their favorite camping ground; the confluence of the rivers gave them opportu- nities for taking fish, which were then very abundant; the adjoining terrace lands were filled with thousands of the greatest variety of plum bushes and grape-vines, and it was known as the great plum patch. The expe- dition, in two columns, crossed the Indian ford at Eugene, just north of the present mill-dam, where stepping stones were placed for crossing the stream at low water. Thence they marched in a circuitous manner to at- tack the village in the rear, when the direct division should attack it at the same time from the south. The warriors and braves were off on a hunting expedition, and there
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HISTORY OF VERMILLION COUNTY.
were none to molest or make afraid these "gallant" soldiers except the broken-down old men, the women and the children, and these were unmereifully slaughtered in the coldest of cold blood! It is not a matter of wonder, therefore, that the Indians of this region subsequently took part in the battles of Fallen Timbers and Tippecanoe.
A portion of the Indians of this county became connected with the confederacy that fought the battle of Fallen Timbers near Fort Recovery, Ohio, and participated in the treaty of Greenville, which they tried to ob- serve; but later a smaller division of them were compelled to join the confederacy of Tecumseh at Tippecanoe.
La Chappelle is the name of the first French trading post established at the Ver- million village, near Hamtramck's battle ground, the northwest quarter of section 33, 18 north, 9 west, by M. Laselle, father of HIon. Charles Laselle, one of the distinguish- ed lawyers of Logansport, this State. Another trading post was subsequently established by an Englishman on the John Collett farm, sections 9 and 16. It was the custom of the French traders here to strike small lead medals, in size a little less than a silver quar- ter of a dollar, with a few figures and initial letters upon them, and tack them upon trees at the mouths of the tributaries claimed, as a sign of possession.
The Indians of the southern end of the county did their trading at stockades in Sul- livan and Knox counties. Among the earliest traders were two brothers, Frenchmen, named Bronillet, which was generally pronounced by the Americans, Bruriet. For some reason the Indians of that region entertained a strong enmity toward one of these brothers. He was captured and brought to their village, near the mouth of a creek south of Clinton, that now bears his name. At once it was
decided to burn him at the stake; and to the stake he was fastened, with buckskin thongs. After the men had ceased talking, the squaws, according to Indian custom, had a right to be heard. An aged squaw, who had had a son killed in warfare, demanded the right to adopt the prisoner as a substitute for her lost son; and, whilst this privilege was generally granted, on this occasion the demand was refused, although she pleaded earnestly and long. In her wild but heroic determination, she seized a butcher-knife, and before any one could interfere, cut the prisoner loose, pointed to a canoe on the sandy shore of the Wabash, and told him to run and save his life if he could. IIe did run. Pushing the canoe ont into the water as far as possible, and giving it directive force toward the middle of the river he sprang aboard, and, lying flat in its bottom, paddled it into the stream beyond the reach of the Indians' rifles and escaped. This incident gave name to Brouillet's Creek.
The Brouillets took wives from the Miami tribe. The wife of the elder Brouillet be- longed to a family in the line of promotion to the chieftianship. On his death the mother returned to her people, and the children were entitled, according to Indian law, to her proper home and position among her people. IIer eldest son grew up an athletic and vigorous young man, and became one of the chief's of the Miamis. He was equitable in his deal- ings, and energetic in his duties, and chival- rous as a commander. His prudence served to avoid in a great measure any difficulties with his white neighbors, who were constantly encroaching upon his territory and often in- flicting injustice upon his people. Frequently the young men desired to avenge their wrongs, but he was able to prevent the butch- ering episodes of Indian warfare and retalia- tion.
Josephus Collett, Sr., after surveying
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ABORIGINAL.
through the then swampy grounds of Hen- drieks and Montgomery Counties, found that his eamp was without sufficient provisions, and all, including himself, were more or less siek. On the return march of Harrison's army to Fort Harrison, now Terre Haute, he directed the others to go on and seeure food, and leave him on the bank of Raccoon Creek in a little tent. Chief Brouillet eame to him, offered his services to kill game and to dress and cook it for him, and to eare for him, which he did as carefully and gently as could a woman. Fifty years afterward, when an old man of eighty, Mr. Collett only could recall the seene with tears in his eyes, and deelared that Chief Brouillet was the best looking man that ever trod the banks of the Wabash, and was as kind hearted as he was brave.
In the march to Tippecanoe, the confeder- ate Indians had prepared an ambuseade for Harrison's army at the narrow pass between the high rocky bluff's and the Wabash River, at Vicksburg, near Perrysville. The army forded the river near Montezuma and marehed up on the west side of the river and thus avoided that ambuseade. They crossed the Little Vermillion near the present railroad bridge, passed up the hollow just baek of Joe Morehead's residence. Remnants of their corduroy bridge may be seen in the miry bottom of Spring Branch, near the briek house on the Head farm. On that march the useless shooting of a gun was prohibited, and even loud talking, under penalty of death. Judge Naylor, of Crawfordsville, who was one of the volunteers, tells the ineident that on Oak Island, on S. S. Collett's farm, a frightened deer jumped over the outer rank of men, and finding himself hemmed in, ran in various directions over the enelosed space; and, although the soldiers needed fresh meat, they were not permitted to shoot the animal. It was allowed to get away in safety. On
the two spring branches on the John Collett farm, seetions 9 and 16, corduroy roads may be seen to this day.
" The army marched as close to the river bank as possible for the protection of the pirogues and keel-boats, which carried eorn for their horses and provisions for the men. Spies reported that on account of low water, further navigation was impracticable at Coal Creek bar. The boats were landed near where Gardner's old ferry was onee estab- lished, on the John Collett farm, until a reconnoisanee could be made and a site for a stoekade reconnoisanee could be selected. It was determined to build the stoekade on the farm of the late J. W. Porter, at a point known as Porter's eddy, and that it should partially overhang the river so as to protect the boats and their stores. Such a fort could usually have been built in one day, but in the bustle and lirry of handling they lost half their axes in the water. One of these was a long time afterward found, and it was eon- sidered curious that a new axe, unnsed, and monnted with an unused handle, should be found there, until Judge Naylor explained the fact that many axes were there lost on the occasion just referred to, while the men were busily engaged in building the blockade. Persons are now living who remember having seen parts of the stoekade.
The Kentnekians and the mounted rifle- men recruited their horses on the rich blue- grass pastures in the river valley bottoms, on the Porter and Collett farms.
A sergeant and eight men were left to gnard the stoekade. About seven days afterward a wild looking soldier returned, reporting a disastrous battle at Tippecanoe, the defeat and destruction of the whole army, that he alone was left to tell the story, and that they must quickly destroy the post and retreat to a safe place. The sergeant's reply was, " I was
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