USA > Indiana > Grant County > Centennial history of Grant County, Indiana, 1812 to 1912 : compiled from records of the Grant county historical society, archives of the county, data of personal interviews, and other authentic sources of local information > Part 8
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IHISTORY OF GRANT COUNTY
and importance to all, but of infinitely more value to the young than to the old.
Other important matters for consideration in papers and addresses, and, in certain instances practical illustration, are the local connection with and services in the several wars in which the country has been engaged, and most especially the war for the Union, the stories of the soldiers and their biographies, the carly and later industries and the progressive steps therein, the beginning and progress of the churches and religious movements, benevolence, charity, temperance and polit- ieal movements and their histories and a hundred connected and kin- dred themes appeal to us. The story of the earlier and later schools and the progress of education with the growth of the community offers a large and inviting field for papers, discussions and illustra- tions. Such graphie pictures of the old-time schools as drawn by one of your local authors, Mr. Whitson, in his story " Rolinda" have a very practicable value in the preservation of the memory of past condition by the public. To these things may be added the character, the his tory, stories and anecdotes of carly professional life, and its progress to the present time. In this branch of the work the teacher, the law- yer, the minister, the doctor, the civil engineer, the editor, the author, in short, the men and women of all professions should be actively inter- ested, and no single branch of the work is more entertaining or leads to better results. But it is, perhaps, true that the preparation and preservation of biographies of the representative men and women of the local community or communities covered by the society's work is the most important of all, because it imst, necessarily, inelude much of the story of the times and conditions in which they lived and by which they were surrounded. All written contributions to the society, papers, letters, addresses, biographies and so on, should be written upon one side only of paper of uniform size, for preservation in the archives of the society, and their preservation should be seured, other- wise their future value may be lost. If the local newspapers may be induced to publish the more important of the papers and addresses, it will be a great help in stimulating popular interest in the work. All such publications should be pasted into strong scrapbooks devoted to that purpose and preserved by the society.
A few words relative to the making and preservation of historical collections minst bring this overly-long dissertation to a close.
The things that should enter into such a collection have been very fully indicated already and it may all be summed up by a single state- ment. The collection should be made up of whatever things will serve to illustrate the history of the county or district, or incidents in the careers and struggles of the people, and also the native timber, vegeta- tion, animal and bird life, mineral wealth and geologieal and surface formations and soils.
This must include implements of agriculture and other industries from the beginning of the first settlements and forward, implements of the chase, household utensils and furniture, home-made fabries and clothing and the products of the varions industries and so on.
One of the things of first importance always must be to secure files of the local newspapers as complete and far-reaching into the past as may be obtainable.
In no other way may so much valuable historical matter be obtained at so small an outlay of money and effort. Then all books and pamphlets written by citizens of the county, or about the county or its towns, cities, schools of churches. All histories of the county and adjoining counties, for even the poorest and cheapest of them contain something worth keeping, the portraits of representative men and women, old
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land titles, land warrants and old notes of hand, tax receipts and other legal papers and doenments of historical value. But the list of things that must be preserved to set the history of our progress clearly before the eye and the understanding is too long to repeat here. The members of each local society must determine for themselves the nature and classes of things which they will undertake to collect, taking the amount of storage room at the society's command into consideration. Where the local society has not scoured a home the best thing to do is to go on with the meetings, the preparation and reading of papers, reports of researches-such researches, for instance, as the examina- tion of mounds and other studies in aboriginal history, and indeed all literary and record work and studies of the local life-until such times as rooms for a collection may be seenred. But in any event don't pile up "old junk." Because you need one, two, or three wooden mould- board plows of various patterns, or old eranes, or Dutch ovens, or reap hooks to illustrate the pioneer methods of doing things, don't mean that you need a dozen or a score of each. The object of an his- torical collection is educational, not to make a show of old relies, heir- looms and curios. Everything so brought together should first have an historical or epochal valuie to illustrate some part or period of the local life and progress. It should be so arranged, labeled and regis- tered as not only to make it easy of access, but also with regard to the date of its use, growth, manufacture or discovery.
Different seetions should be provided for different subjects, as the pioneer section, the agricultural section, the household industries see- tion, the mechanical industries section, the military section, the nat- ural history section and so on, and each object be stored in the section to which it belongs. It is better to make slow progress in gathering up your collection than it is to pile up a great mass of old relies and unarranged and unclassified material which, in that state, will have but small historical value and much of which will likely turn out to be merely old junk and debris; but do not for this or any other reason permit any real historical prize to slip away from you, for once gone such things can seldom be regained.
Whatever else you may do to promote the Jaudable work in which you are engaged, remember that it is more important than all else to keep everlastingly at it, Smallness of numbers must not discourage nor unpaid toil affright. It is the persistent, never-surrendering effort that will win out in the end. Cheap oratory and noisy display count for little in such an undertaking; but persistent effort under the best qualified leadership that may be willing to take hold of the work in an unselfish spirit of devotion to the publie good will succeed, sooner or later, and its worth become apparent to all intelligent persons and. receive its reward in the blessings of the people.
IV. THE MIAMI RESERVE IN EARLY DAYS
By Joaquin Miller
It would be withholding from this centennial history one of its richest chapters not to give place to a word picture painted by Joaquin (('ineinnatus Heine) Miller of his childhood experiences within the county. So many Grant county travelers have visited the poet at his home-The Heights, in California,-and have brought back special messages from him, and there are still a few men and women living who had personal knowledge of the Miller family when they lived in
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HISTORY OF GRANT COUNTY
Pleasant. Almost every post-card collection has something from "The Poet of the Sierras," and perhaps the hills of the Mississinewa never would have inspired him had not the wanderlust possessed the family. It is gratifying, however, to know that the great writer never Forget his life in Grant county. Pioneer life as described by Joaquin Mitler is an excellent feature in local history.
Mr. Miller writes:
"One day, while we lived on the Miami Indian reserve in Grant county. 'Pap ' who always read to us spare times on Sunday and at night when there was no wool to pick, brought home a book from the Indian village which had been loaned to him by the agent and began to read to us the explorations of Captain Fremont. I never was so fascinated. I never grew so fast in my life. Every scene and circuit- stance in the narrative was painted on my mind to the last, and to last forever. 'Pap' saw my intense interest in the story and would stop and explain to the three children at his kne and to mother, who sat busily knitting on the other side of the big. bright fireplace, all the Dames and new things in the book, till the story glowed like the great log fire by which it was read. I liked the bit where Lieutenant Ler. afterward the famous Confederate General Lee, generously gave Fre- mont a little cannon, although against orders, for his 3,000-mile expe- dition. I fancied I could see Fremont's men hauling the camion up the savage battlements of the Rocky mountains, flags in the air, Fre- mont at the head, waving his sword, his horse neighing wildly in the mountain wind, with unknown and mmamed empires in every hand. It touched my heart when he told how a weary little brown bee tried to make its way from a valley of flowers far below across a spur of snow, where he sat resting for a moment with his men; how the bee rested on his knee till it was strong enough to go on to another field of flowers beyond the snow ; he waited a bit for it to go at its will I was no longer a boy, in truth, had never been a boy, like other boys, had never had a ball, marble, top or toy of any sort, but now I began to be inflamed with a love for action, adventure, glory and great deeds away out yonder under the path of the setting sun. Mother, too. took in something of the same enthusiam and once stopped .Pap' to ask what we. the United States, would do with all this land, but he. with his continuat souse of justice, quietly answered that the land belonged to the Indians.
" When the frosts began to whiten the fences and the yellow leaves to fall in banks of gold, as if to pay Mother Earth in the richest our. rency that ever eirenlated for the generosity of the passing year, when baby snows sifted down and made noiseless and velvet ways to walk upon, Billy Fields, the shoemaker of the settlement, came to us with a corneob pipe in his teeth and a flat little board under his arm. 1 was to be measured for my first pair of shoes!
"I had never, as yet, been a robust hoy, as my brothers were. 1 had never, as yet, been able to eat meat. Mother had always contrived to provide me with a bowl of milk, and this, with a spoon and a big piece of corn bread, caten alone in a fence corner or under a tree wherever I could get away by myself, was my chief and highest desire. And so it was that I was to have the first pair of shoes of the three lit tle boys. 'Pap' had carried me on his back to the school in the sugar eamp country, but now little Jimmy must be carried to school. My sedate black-haired and manly big brother, John D .- - all the Wetts or the De Witts, had a 'D' in the family as a substitute for the De which had been rubbed off, as being too foreign, like the date and name of an old English shilling-the generous older brother, John D. cheer- fully deferred to me because I was not so strong and was the first to
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HISTORY OF GRANT COUNTY
insist that I instead of himself, as was his right, should have the first pair of shoes. he would gladly continue to wear moccasins.
"And, in truth, moccasins are the very best footwear in the world. There is a whole lot of nonsense in the idea that shoes shape the feet best. The Indians have always worn moccasins and they have shapely and perfect feet. The Indian women have really the prettiest, smallest and most perfect and shapely feet in America. And they not only abhor shoes, but carry great loads in the moccasins, some going bare- footed most of the time. Mother washed my feet carefully and then turned me over to Billy Fields, who took the pipe out of his mouth, took the little board from under his arm and, setting my foot on the board, marked out the space on one side with his shoe knife, and I was meas- ured for my first pair of shoes, and felt larger than ever before. And that is saying I felt large, for 1 even then felt that I should some day climb the Rocky mountains and set my feet in the prints of the mighty 'Pathfinder.'
" Pap's' school house this time was away on the farther bank of Pipe creek, reached through the densest woods, by way of the narrow Indian trail.
"We three boys all went to this school from the very first day, 1 in my new shoes, and they hurt like sixty; John D., in moccasins of undressed deerskin, the hairy side out, and dinny on 'Pap's' back. We crossed a great bridge of many spans, and the first i had ever seen, a marvel of tremendous construction to me and a delight every time I passed over it in my hard and heavy new shoes.
"We had a big hewed log school house with a big fireplace at cither end. For the big Hoored room was full. girls and boys, big and lit- tle, white, brown and black.
"And 'Pap' had better, even big pay here, for the first inflowing tide of civilization had touched us at last. and the motley and packed school was paid for, in part, at least, by either the state of county, I do not know which. It was all one to me at the time. I was only con- Perned that 'Pap' had good pay so that we might get on and out the way Fremont had explored. Ii was a noisy but happy school; and 1 was as happy as the happiest.
"A brother of Billy Fields had come up from Tennessee, and . Pap' took him and his wife and their boy. Thomas Jefferson Russell Fields, in with us, they setting up a bed in the other corner of our cabm. Rus- sell Fields was a tailor, and good with a gun. He was nearly always out in the woods, and kept us well supplied with venison, pheasants and wild turkey.
"One Sunday morning a string of turkeys was seen fearing away at the little stack of corn in the dooryard, and .Pap' told John D. to put on his moccasins and to drive them away for there was show on the ground, and then basten back to prayers. But Russell Fields was at the open door with his gun.
" 'Squire, may I shoot ?' " . Shoot, and I will hold the door.'
"As the smoke began to clear we could see a great big gobbler bounding up and down on the show by the corn shock. Then Johu D. rame puffing and blowing as he dragged it through the snow. We all shouted, till suddenly "Pap' remembered it was Sunday. It was an enormous bird and we kept it for Christmas, laughing at .Pap' all the time, and mother telling him he would surely be 'churched' for holding the door and helping to shoot a turkey on Sunday when he should have been at prayers.
"The crowded school was a continual sonree of instruction and de- light to me. The big boys and big girls would stand up and read para-
IHISTORY OF GRANT COUNTY
nothing in the world but my ax, but I know how to use it and will work it out.'
".Go get your ax! Leave your wife here to help mother take care of the baby; you bad better go to school with me; you can chop moru- ings and evenings and Saturdays. If you are good we will see what can be done in the spring.'
"Mother fixed up the smokehouse for them with the bed the beastly old elock peddler and his boy had used, and they were both as good as could be. Jacobs gave them both work in the spring and they turned out to be first-class people.
".Pap' taught a spring term also this time for he wanted the money to go to Oregon. There was but one idea in our happy little household and that idea was Oregon. Senator Linn of Missouri. col- league with the great Benton, whose daughter Jessie, Captain Fre- mont had married on his return, had introduced a bill giving each settler with a family a full section of land in that Tar-off and most fertile spot in the world and-well, just think of it! Six hundred and forty acres ready for the plow, and just for measuring it off!
"Why, how hard and how long we had worked to get a single one hundred acres, and all of it brush and mud and malaria!
"Who would not want to go to Oregon?
"Besides that General Joe Lane, who had gone to school to 'Pap' in the sugar camps and then to congress, then to the Mexican war, had been appointed governor of Oregon. All things seemed to point in our favor and to Oregon!
"'Pap' set about to sell the few sheep, the land-everything we did not need-to go to Oregon, and the table was spread with many maps and Fremont's travels were read and reread contimally by the tallow dip till the night oftentimes was far spent. But the winter had been a hard one; all the sheep were out in the woods. One night they did not come up as usual, and we found them next morning, all dead, their throats ent, as if some dogs or wild beasts had killed them, only to suck their blood. The kind and sympathetic Indian agent came over on hearing this and told .Pap' he believed that the dogs of the Indians, very numerous and with predatory habits, had killed his sheep. But .Pap' insisted that it was the big gray wolves that he had encountered the year or so before. For how could the dogs get across the river? But the agent, hearing what 'Pap' had asked for his sheep, went back and laid the case before Shingle-Mas-See, and promptly he came over with the cash. 'Pap' at first refused to take it. Then he consented to take half of it. The good old savage laughed at him, called him a foolish old squaw and then went and counted all the money.
"Let me digress to tell you of the man who gave us the first idea of Oregon, and stood by us so finely. His name was MeCullough. He became famous for his many generous deeds, grew very rich, with banks even in Europe, and was made a cabinet minister under Presi- dent Grant-secretary of the treasury. When I found him in Lon- don, long, long years after, and told him how 'Pap' rovereneed him and talked over the old friends, red and white, he was very, very glad and made me promise that if I ever needed money to be sure and let him known. But I never saw him any more, and have set down this paragraph only to show that there are, or were, not only good Indians, but good agents also.
"The farm was sold to a German family. lately landed, for a good round smm; mother, as usual, taking charge of the money, only now, although there were many pieces of gold-each piece wrapped up care- fully by itself in tissue paper-it took two old mittens to hold it all.
V
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We pushed out with but one span of horses toward Chicago, intend- ing to winter there and equip other teams at that point, and possibly dispose of those old clocks; for the false mahogany was peeling off and they began to look very shabby.
"At Rochester, a town near the Tippecanoe river, we heard a tale of butchery that made the blood stand still. The intrepid teacher and missionary, Dr. Marens P. Whitman, his wife and all his little colony had been butehed by Indians, led by Canada Joe, a cruel and foolish Catholic half-breed.
"The British had been claiming Oregon and this fearless mission- ary Whitman, had in midwinter mounted his horse, and, elad in buek skin and all alone most of the way. reached Washington and declared to congress that the one peaceable and certain way to hold Oregon was to send there a train of a thousand wagons filled with settlers.
"He was encouraged, led a long train, the first across the plains from the Mississippi to Walla Walla on the Columbia, and was going ahead finely with his vast enterprise, when the Indians suddenly rose up, killed him and his brave young wife with all their house, except. one little girl, who got away. was helped along with a few others fur ther down the river and finally got to Oregon City. It is a long story, but not quite out of line with this Family tale; for this little girl grew up, was married, had a little girl who grew to womanhood and then became the wife of my little yellow-headed Jimmy, who refused to sleep in the new coonskin cradle. They have nine beautiful chl dren, and their boys are not only boys, but men, manly and dutiful young men.
"The shocking news of the massacre made my parents call a halt for the winter. The boys were put to school, while 'Pap' went out up the river looking for a place to rest the family till he could hear more from the west."
IF Joaquin Miller never had gained recognition from the workt, then Grant county visitors to the Pacific coast would not have sought him out and told their friends at home of his eccentricities. Huling Miller must have been a unique character-different from most Hloo- siers, and in writing later of the family, the poet told of his father's lack of business qualifications, and it must have been abont 1849 that the western trip was accomplished. There have been other Indiana families in which the mother was a necessary factor, and in writing of his people Mr. Miller says of his Father:
"But his singularly shy and sensitive nature quite unfitted him for commercial intereourse with his fellows. and. giving this up, he retired to the little village or settlement called Liberty, Union county. Indiana, and began life in the wilderness as a school teacher. Here he married. My mother's name was Witt and she is a near relative of the mother of the late General Burnside, as well as Governor Mor ton's. But my quiet. Quaker-like father did not seem destined to prosper in this world's ways, anywhere or in anything at all, and, after vibrating between Cincinnati and the little village on the Ohio and Indiana line for three or four years, during which I and my two brothers were born, he set out, with his wife and three infant chil dren, to push his way still further into the wilderness.
"lle settled in a dense forest in what was then called the Miami Reserve, near the Mississinewa river, Marion, Grant county, Indiana. Here alone and with his own hands, quite unused then to sneh toil, he, with the help of my mother, built a little log cabin and cleared off a little patch of ground. The first recollection of my life is that of wak ing up suddenly one night and looking out of the little open win- dow at the burning brush heaps, where my parents, side by side, were
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still toiling away, while the world rested. And from that time forth I search my memory in vain for one day of rest from hard manual toil for these two patient and uncomplaining people, outside of the Sab- bath, which. of course, was always kept sacred. How snowy white was that cabin floor, hewn out of the forest by my father's hand; how clean and bright the blazing hearth ; how cheery the few flowers that struggled up out of the strange wild soil about this lonely little cabin-door.
"But the fever and agne fell alnost continually upon us all, and we did not get on. My poor parents gradually became discouraged and a gloom and sadness settled down upon them forever; but I never heard one word of impatience or complaint. Never was one unkind word spoken in that little cabin. I never knew that there was such a thing as tobacco, or whiskey, or oaths, or cross words until years after- ward. when we fell in with the great caravans crossing the Plains; but I can see now that my parents were sadly, hopelessly discouraged They never spoke of the past or their people at all ; and, as I grew older. spring tears in their eyes, as Ione day asked them about these things I never asked them any more and to this day I do not even know the Christian name of my father's father.
"As the county slowly settled up about us my father again taught school; but his three little boys be kept quite exclusive and all 10 himself. Sometimes, it is true, we were allowed to go with him to school. along the path through the thick wood: but it was a long walk and we did not go often. He taught us to read by our cabin fire and he read to us all the spare time he had. He never allowed us to mix with other children, and, indeed. I think we did not care for other company than ourselves. He put us to work. as soon as we were able, to pick brush or pall weeds, and we never knew what it was to play. For my own part. I know I never had a top, or marble, or toy of any kind in my life and never know any of the games familiar to children.
"My mother spun and wove our spare clothing out of the flax which she grew in a corner of the little clearing, and I remember it seemed to me the grandest day of my life when the shoemaker came late one fall to measure me for my first, pair of shoes.
"But all of this time my poor father seemed to grow more sad. silent, and thoughtful each year. By and by there was talk of the land coming into market, and, as we had no money yet to pay for it, he went out to work by the day, at a mill which was being built over on the river, three miles away. It was a lonesome trip through the woods, and my father would have to set out before daylight and return from his work after dark. A day's work then meant the whole day. One night, as he neared home, the wolves chased him, and he had to take shelter in a tree. Mother heard his eries for help, and she took a hickory-bark torch and went out to frighten away the wolves and brought him safely to the cabin. His wages were fifty cents a day, a small sim; but he counted it a great favor to get the job, for it en- abled him finally to secure one hundred acres of land.
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