USA > Indiana > Contributions to the early history of the Presbyterian Church in Indiana : together with biographical notices of the pioneer ministers > Part 2
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EARLY INDIANA PRESBYTERIANISM.
exile, memory lingered with fond regret upon the lost pleasures of the sanctuary and the voice of joy and praise. Mr. Rice was warmly pressed to give them the benefit of his pastoral services ; but he hesitated to take so important a step on a mere verbal invitation. He promised, however, that if a written invitation were drawn up, signed by such only as were permanent' settlers and really desirous of constituting themselves into a church, he would take it into consideration. . He removed to Kentucky in October; but owing to the impassable state of the roads, he was unable to travel, during the winter, beyond the neighborhood of Danville, and preached in private houses as he was invited. On the opening of spring (1784) Mr. Rice extended the sphere of his labors, and gathered three large congregations near Harrod's Station as a central point, Danville, Cane Run, and the Salt River settlement. Houses of worship were put up without delay, and the year following churches were regularly organized in them all.1
DAVID RICE, the father of Kentucky Presbyterianism, born in Hanover County, Va., December 20, 1733, ordained by Hanover Presbytery December, 1763, first taking charge of three congregations at the foot of the Blue Ridge, but finally confining his labors to the one at the Peaks of Otter, reached Kentucky in 1783.2 For fifteen years Dan- ville was his home. His later life was spent in Green County, where he fell asleep, June 18, 1816, in the eighty- third year of his age. 3
As Makemie had drawn from the old country reënforce- ments to form the first Presbytery, and as Davies had assembled about him the little band that constituted "old Hanover," so did David Rice attract from Virginia a nota- ble company of ministers. Adam Rankin came from Augusta County in 1784, and James Crawford arrived the same year. Terah Templin, ordained in 1785, though he had reached Kentucky three or four years earlier, had
1 Davidson's " Kentucky," pp. 64-6.
2 Bishop's " Memoir of Rice," pp. 13-64. This rare old book contains the only con- temporary accounts of several other Kentucky pioneers.
3 A suitable monument to Rice was erected, 1892, by Kentucky Presbyterians in McDowell Park, Danville.
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SPREAD OF PRESBYTERIANISM IN AMERICA.
been a member of Father Rice's congregation at the Peaks of Otter. Thomas Craighead and Andrew McClure reënforced the struggling missionaries in 1786.
On the 17th of October of that year, according to the direction of Synod, the Presbytery of Transylvania was organized.1
Tuesday, October 17, 1786. The Rev. David Rice, Adam Ran- kin, Andrew McClure, and James Crawford met in the Court House at Danville, on the day and year above written, by an appointment of the Synod of New York and Philadelphia ; which appointment Mr. Rice read from the extract of the proceedings of the Synod, dated May 17th, 1786, the substance of which is as follows: The Synod divided Abingdon Presbytery into two Pres- byteries, the one by the name of the Presbytery of Abingdon, the other by the name of the Presbytery of Transylvania, compre- hending the district of Kentucky from the settlements upon Cum- berland River, consisting of the Rev. David Rice, Thomas Craig- head, Adam Rankin, Andrew McClure, James Crawford, and appointed the Presbytery of Transylvania to meet at Danville, in the district of Kentucke (sic), on the third Tuesday of October, 1786, the Rev. David Rice to be moderator or in his absence the senior minister present .. Ubi post preces sederunt qui supra, except Rev. Thomas Craighead.2
Craighead's distant settlement was the occasion of his frequent absence. It will be observed that all the original members of the new Presbytery were from Virginia.
Thus, from Scotland's sufferings under Charles, and from Scotland's scattered sons, through Makemie, a pio- neer of the American Presbyterian Church, through Samuel Davies of Hanover and Princeton, and through David Rice, Davies's son in the gospel and the founder of the Kentucky Church, is to be traced the establishment of Transylvania Presbytery, which Indiana Presbyterians ven- erate as the mother of us all.
1 This " backwoods " Presbytery had very indefinite boundaries. Besides Kentucky, Indiana, and the settlements on the Cumberland River in what is now the state of Tenn- essee, it also subsequently included the churches along the Miami in Ohio. "It had no definite limits in a southern direction."
2 " Minutes Transylvania Presbytery," Vol. 1., p. 1.
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CHAPTER II.
THE SETTLEMENT OF INDIANA.
NOT until nearly two hundred years after the discovery of America by Columbus, and fully half a century later than the landing of the Pilgrims from the Mayflower, is it probable that the first white man touched the present boundary of Indiana. As early as June, 1541, De Soto had reached the Mississippi with his Spanish explorers, but no other Europeans appear to have looked upon the Father of Waters until 1673,1 when Marquette descended the river nearly to the Gulf. During the years 1665-73 another French Jesuit was engaged in exploring the Lake Superior region and the territory near the southern ex- tremity of Lake Michigan,? in which labors he was most of the time assisted by Marquette and Claude Dablon. They must have found the portage from the St. Joseph to the Kankakee.3 There is an Indian tradition that Catholic missionaries were at Kekionga (Fort Wayne) about this
1 Cf. Parkman's "Discovery of the Great West," introduction, p. xx.
2 "In the year 1665 the resolute ardor of Father Allouez, a Jesuit missionary, prompted him to undertake the hazardous experiment of executing his mission in these remote and unknown countries. Arrived at the Falls of St. Mary he threw himself boldly among the savages, relying on his powers of persuasion to win their confidence, and the purity of his motives to secure success. His hopes were not disappointed. He visited the tribes on the southern borders of Lake Superior and was everywhere re- ceived with kindness. Three years afterward he was joined by Marquette and Dablon, and during the five succeeding years these courageous missionaries explored the terri- tory between Lake Superior and the southern extremity of Lake Michigan, fulfilling their vocation as messengers of Christianity with a devotedness and self-sacrifice rarely surpassed, preaching to numerous tribes and subduing their wild hearts by gentleness of manners and by inculcating the mild precepts of the gospel. They likewise established the posts of Macinac, St. Mary's, and Green Bay, which soon became the first rallying points of civilization on the upper lakes."-Sparks's " La Salle," p. 2.
3 They " probably visited that part of Indiana which lies north of the river Kanka- kee."-Dillon's " History," p. 2.
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2I
THE SETTLEMENT OF INDIANA.
time.1 In December, 1679, La Salle went down the Kan- kakee from its mouth,2 and his own report to the governor- general of Canada leaves no doubt that on his perilous re- turn in the following year he passed through Fort Wayne. It was in 1682 that La Salle, passing down the Illinois into the Mississippi, discovered the mouth of that river on the 9th of April, and in the name of Louis XIV. took posses- sion of the country.3 The survivors of La Salle's second and fatal expedition, on the 19th of August, 1687, a few months after their leader's assassination, "came to the Mouth of the River call'd Houabache, said to come from the country of the Iroquois, toward New England." "That is a very fine River," proceeds the description, "its Water extraordinary clear, and the Current of it gen- tle. Our Indians offer'd up to it, by way of Sacrifice, some Tobacco and Beef Steaks, which they fixed on Forks, and left them on the Bank, to be disposed of as the River thought fit.''4 The Houabache was no doubt the Ohio,
1 " England permitted the French to establish their influence along the banks of the Allegany to the Ohio. They had already quietly possessed themselves of the three other great avenues from the St. Lawrence to the Mississippi ; for the route by way of the Fox and Wisconsin they had no opponents but in the Sacs and Foxes ; that by way of Chicago had been safely pursued since the days of Marquette ; and a report on Indian affairs, written by Logan in 1718, proves that they very early made use of the Miami of the lakes, and after crossing the carrying-place of about three leagues, floated down the shallow branch into the Wabash and the Ohio."-Bancroft's " History," Centenary Edition, Vol. II., p. 481.
2 Sparks's "La Salle," pp. 45, 46. "On the 3d of December the party reembarked, thirty-three in all, in eight canoes, and ascended the chill current of the St. Joseph, bordered with dreary meadows and bare gray forests. When they approached the site of the present village of South Bend they looked anxiously along the shore on their right to find the portage or path leading to the headwaters of the Illinois."-Parkman's " Discovery of the Great West," p. 151.
3 Father Hennepin, in his "Description de la Louisiane," gives an account of this tour; but according to Joutel (p. 185) "the Truth of his Relations is much contro- verted," and according to Bancroft (Vol. II., p. 366) he is "a boastful liar." See Charlevoix's " New France," Sparks's " La Salle," and Parkman's "Discovery of the Great West," for authentic details.
4 " A Journal of the Last Voyage Performed by Monsr. de la Sale, to the Gulph of Mexico, to find out the Mouth of the Mississippi River." Written in French by Mon- sieur Joutel, a commander in that expedition, and translated from the edition just published at Paris. London, 1714, p. 163. (The original French edition appeared in Paris the previous year.)
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EARLY INDIANA PRESBYTERIANISM.
but Monsieur Joutel's narrative is accompanied by a map which with. tolerable accuracy suggests the course of a tributary of that stream, the present river Wabash, which now at last was known to French explorers.'
The possession of the vast territory thus acquired by France was for many years only nominal. Early in the eighteenth century, however, the ambitious scheme was accomplished of connecting the French settlements in Can- ada with the northern lakes, the valley of the Mississippi, and the Gulf, by a line of military and trading-posts and Jesuit mission stations. It was this design that led to the first actual occupancy of Indiana by Europeans, a fort having been located on the Wabash in 17102 by Captain Morgan de Vincennes at the point which has since borne his name. Subsequently settlements were made by the French at Fort Ouiatenon (La Fayette) and at the Twightwee village (Fort Wayne), near the junction of the St. Joseph and St. Mary Rivers.3
The war which deprived the French of their possessions in Canada also secured to Great Britain the "country of the Illinois,"' and the posts on the Wabash were occupied by the latter power. The English dominion was soon dis-
1 Joutel's description of the region near the mouth of the Houabache might certainly have been written for the Wabash country. "The country about was full of Hillocks," he says, " cover'd with Oaks and Wallnut-Trees, Abundance of Plum Trees, almost all the Plums red and pretty good, besides great Store of other Sorts of Fruits, whose Names we know not, and among them one shap'd like a middling Pear, with Stones in it as big as large Beans. When ripe it peels like a Peach, the Taste is indifferent good, but rather of the Sweetest."-" Journal of La Sale's Last Voyage," p. 164.
? This is the date fixed by Judge Law ("Colonial History of Vincennes," p. 12), who finds a reference to "the Post," as already established, in a letter written by Father Marest, from Kaskaskias, November 9, 1712. (See " Lettres edifiant et curieuse," p. 333.) Volney, who was at the Post in 1796 and fixed upon 1735 as the year of its estab- lishment, seems to have given the date of a subsequent arrival of French emigrants there. (Cf. Volney's " View of the Climate and Soil of the United States," London, 1804, p. 373.)
3 Not more than three or four hundred whites were settled within the present limits of Indiana when the French domination ceased. Cf. Dillon, p. 84.
4 Treaty of Paris, February 10, 1763.
23
THE SETTLEMENT OF INDIANA.
turbed, however, by the colonial struggle for independ- ence, and in the expedition of 1779 under the gallant Virginian, General George Rogers Clark, it was finally terminated. Post Vincennes was surrendered by Hamilton on the 24th of February. Upon the conclusion of the rev- olutionary contest the country northwest of the Ohio, ! which since Clark's conquest of it had been nominally under the jurisdiction of Virginia, was, by a formal deed of cession, transferred? to the United States. By the Ordi- nance of 1787 the Northwestern Territory was organized, including what now comprises the states of Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and much of Ohio.3 From this vast tract Ohio was set off as a distinct territory May 7, 1800, when the residue of the original Northwestern Territory became the territory of Indiana, with William Henry Harrison as its first governor. In 1805 Michigan was erected into a separate territory, and in ISog Illinois was placed under its own government, leaving Indiana with its present limits. The state was constituted Decem- ber 11, 1816.
Though the authority of the United States had been extended over the region northwest of the Ohio by the Ordinance of 1787, the Indians for years afterward re- mained substantially in possession of the country. St. Clair's expedition against the savages reached its disas- trous termination in 1791. The frontier was in a state of
1 It is startling to observe how narrowly the United States escaped the loss of the whole Northwestern Territory, when negotiating the treaty of 1782. "Great Britain insisted on making the Ohio River a boundary of the United States. .
. The perti- nacity with which the claim was insisted on induced Dr. Franklin to suggest to his col- leagues, Mr. Adams and Mr. Jay, whether it would not be better to yield that point than to fail in the main object, it being understood that the French government was favorable to the claim. Mr. Adams very promptly answered, No. . . Mr. Jay was equally determined and Dr. Franklin concurred." See Burnet's " Notes on the North- western Territory," p. 315, foot-note. Cf. Law's " Vincennes," p. 131.
2 March 1, 1784.
3 Major-General Arthur St. Clair, first governor of the Northwestern Territory, was appointed by Congress October 5. 1787.
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EARLY INDIANA PRESBYTERIANISM.
constant alarm until "Mad Anthony" Wayne's decisive victory of August 15, 1794, and his treaty with the Indians at Greenville, August 3, 1795. Thereafter, as confidence increased, settlers began to venture toward the rich bottom lands along the Wabash. But it must be remembered that as late as October 3, 1818, when by the treaty at St. › Mary's the territory was yielded to the United States by the Delawares, Miamis, and Pottawottamies, the red men had still claimed the greater part of Indiana as their own. Even then they expressly reserved the right of occupying their former hunting grounds for three years longer.1 It was not until a much more recent period that they entirely withdrew from the forests whose abundant game fed their hunger and whose thick shadows concealed their crimes.2
Transient fur-traders knew the region well and had been drawing immense profit from it for nearly a century before the quiet pursuit of agriculture was possible.3 It was not to be expected that the most enticing reports of the fertility of Indiana's soil would be able to attract any large number
1 " The Indians settled on White River, about twelve miles above Indianapolis, be- tween the years 1790 and 1795, and built several towns a short distance above that. There now lives twelve miles above here a white woman who was with them when they first settled there, having been taken prisoner when Morgan's Station was overpowered, and all those who were in it either slaughtered or captured. She was nine years old when taken, and has lived among the Indians ever since, until the late purchase made by the United States brought the white people into the neighborhood."-Indianapolis Gazette, June 11, 1823.
2 " One cold cloudy day in January, 1831, setting out to ride ten miles in the wilder- ness to acquaint a family with the appointment to form a church, I mistook the trail of an Indian hunting party, which led me to their encampment. Retracing my way by night I became bewildered in the woods and snow, and sat down by a burning log till morning, and at noon, twenty-four hours after leaving, emerged at Logansport."- " Retrospect after Thirty Years' Ministry at Logansport," by the Rev. Martin M. Post, D. D., p. 11.
3 " The Miami villages, which stood at the head of the river Maumee, the Wea villages, which were situated about Quiatneon on the Wabash River, and the Pianke- shaw villages, which stood on and about the site of Vincennes, were, it seems, regarded by the early French fur-traders as suitable places for the establishing of trading.posts. It is probable that before the close of the year 1719, temporary trading. posts were erected at the sites of Fort Wayne, Quiatneon, and Vincennes. These points had, it is be- lieved, been often visited by traders before the year 1700."-Dillon, p. 54.
25
THE SETTLEMENT OF INDIANA.
of immigrants with their families to the haunts of savages.1 In 1800 the white population of the territory, which still included Illinois and Michigan, was only four thousand eight hundred and seventy-five. Eight years afterward, within the present boundaries of Indiana, there were only about seventeen thousand inhabitants, a number which had increased to about sixty-four thousand when in 1816 the territory became a state.
Of the character of the original population of Indiana Volney gives a striking and evidently correct representa- tion. He reached Vincennes on the 2d of August, 1796. He says :
The day after my arrival there, was a sitting of the judges of the district, to which I repaired to make my observations on the nat- ural and moral state of the inhabitants collectively. As soon as I entered I was struck at seeing the audience divided into two races of men, totally different in feature and in person. One had a fair or light brown hair, ruddy complexions, full faces, and a plump- ness of body that announced health and ease; the other, very meager countenances, a sallow tawny skin, and the whole body as if emaciated with fasting, not to speak of their clothes, which suf- ficiently denoted their poverty. I presently discovered that the latter were the French settlers, who had been about sixty years in the place ; while the former were Americans, who cultivated the land they had bought only five or six years before. The French, three or four excepted, knew nothing of English, and almost all the Americans were nearly as ignorant of French, but as I had learned English enough in the course of a year to converse with them I had the advantage during my stay of hearing the stories of both parties.2
Still further to diversify this scene there were no doubt occasional representatives of Spain and Germany, and sometimes the Indians, taking possession of the little town,
1 For a trustworthy and minute account of the perils of pioneer life see " Reminis- cences of Col. John Ketcham," by the Rev. T. M. Hopkins, Bloomington, 1866. For abstract of treaties by which Indian rights to lands lying within the present limits of Indiana have been extinguished see Dillon, p. 578.
2 "Climate and Soil of the United States," pp. 369, 370.
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EARLY INDIANA PRESBYTERIANISM.
made it as bizarre and miscellaneous as Cairo or Jerusalem. Volney adds :
My stay at Fort Vincents gave me an opportunity of observing the savages, whom I found assembled to sell the produce of their red hunt. There were reckoned to be four or five hundred men, women, and children, of various nations or tribes, as the Weeaws, Payouries, Saukies, Pyankishaws, Miamis, etc., all living toward the head of the Wabash. It was the first time of my observing at leisure these people, already become rare on the east of the Alleghanies. Their appearance was to me a new and whimsical sight. Conceive bodies almost naked, embrowned by exposure to the sun and air, shining with grease and soot ; a head uncovered, hair coarse, black, sleek, straight, and smooth ; a face disguised with black, blue, and red paint, in round, square, and rhomboidal patches ; one nostril bored to admit a large ring of silver or cop- per ; earrings with three rows of drops reaching down to the shoulders and passing through holes that would admit a finger ; a little square apron before and another behind, both fastened by one string or ribband ; the legs and thighs sometimes naked, at others covered with long cloth spatterdashers ; socks of leather dried in the smoke ; on some occasions a shirt with short, wide sleeves, variegated or striped with blue and white, and flowing loose down the thighs, and over this a blanket or square piece of cloth, thrown over one shoulder and tied under the opposite arm or under the chin. On particular occasions, when they dress for war or for a feast, the hair is braided and interwoven with feathers, plants, flowers, and even bones; the warriors wear round their waists broad rings of copper or silver, resembling our dog collars, and round the head a diadem formed of silver buckles and trinkets of glass ; in their hand they have their pipe or their knife or their tomahawk, and the little looking-glass, which every savage uses with more coquetry, to admire so many charms, than the most coquettish belle of Paris.1
No doubt this singular miscellany might also have been found, though upon a smaller pattern, at Fort Ouiatenon and at Kekionga, the aboriginal La Fayette and Fort Wayne.
From this mixed population the savage element was 1 "Climate and Soil of the United States," pp. 392-5.
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THE SETTLEMENT OF INDIANA.
rapidly removed. The French, who had been masters of the soil, gradually yielded to the more hardy and energetic Americans, although Congress in 1792 had given
four hundred acres of land to every one who paid the capita- tion, and a hundred more to every man who served in the militia. These would have been a fortune to an American family [con- tinues the impartial Frenchman whom we have quoted before], but to the French, hunters rather than farmers, they were only a transitory gift, which these ignorant and imprudent men sold to Americans for less than eight guineas the hundred acres, and even this small sum they were paid in clothes and other goods on which a profit of twenty or five and twenty per cent was laid. These lands, which were of excellent quality, sold as early as 1796 at two dollars an acre and I will venture to say that they are now worth ten. Thus reduced for the most part to their gardens, or the land with which they could not dispense, the French settlers had nothing to live on but their fruit, vegetables, potatoes, Indian corn, and once now and then a little game. No wonder therefore they became lean as Arabs.1
As the French degenerated and receded the native im- migration perceptibly increased. Each of the various military expeditions, especially that of Wayne, had left behind the natural deposit of stragglers from the army. Older communities in the East began to think of such in- vestments of capital in the Indiana wilderness as at an earlier day had drawn George Washington, the young diplomatist of the "Ohio Land Company," far into the western woods. The vast "Illinois grants" made by the Virginia legislature in 1784 to General Clark and his vic- torious troops included most of Clark County, Ind., and now were alluring immigrants from beyond the Alle- ghanies. In 1796 Dufour explored the country along the Ohio, and finally secured from Congress three thousand acres of land for a Swiss colony, in what is now Switzerland
1 " Climate and Soil of the United States," pp. 371, 372.
2 See Irving's " Life of Washington," Vol. I.
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EARLY INDIANA PRESBYTERIANISM.
County. It was, however, the hardy woodsmen just be- yond the southern border who most readily yielded to the attractions of the wild region, where the French had been supplanted and from which the savages were now being inevitably forced. At the opening of the present century the settlements were therefore strongly Kentuckian, and for a considerable period afterward it was chiefly by families from Kentucky, with a smaller number from Vir- ginia, Tennessee, and the Carolinas, that the clearings were made and the primitive cabins builded.
It will thus be seen that local chroniclers are not without justification for the pride they take in the early Indiana history. Judge Law writes as follows with especial refer- ence to Vincennes:
I know of no portion of our country richer in historical incident. For surely a town which is one of the oldest on the continent ; one for the possession of which the greatest nations of the earth have contended-France, England, and the United States ; one located upon the beautiful stream which flows before it, the Ouabache, a river known and noted on the maps of the West long before the Ohio was known in the geography of the Mississippi valley, a river which for nearly a century bore upon its waters the bateaux of the three great powers above mentioned, bringing their armed warriors to occupy, and if possible to preserve it; one which has seen within its garrison the mousquitaire of Louis XV., the grenadier of George III., the riflemen of Clark, and the regular troops of Harmar, St. Clair, and Harrison ; one above which has floated the "Fleur de Lis," the "Cross of St. George," and the glorious stars and stripes of our beloved country, is surely worthy of at least a passing notice by those who are now reaping the rich fruits of a conquest made under the most adverse and trying cir- cumstances and with a skill and bravery not unsurpassed in the most glorious triumphs of the Revolution.1
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