USA > Indiana > Historic Indiana : being chapters in the story of the Hoosier state from the romantic period of foreign exploration and dominion through pioneer days, stirring war times, and periods of peaceful progress, to the present time > Part 2
USA > Indiana > Historic Indiana : being chapters in the story of the Hoosier state from the romantic period of foreign exploration and dominion through pioneer days, stirring war times, and periods of peaceful progress, to the present time, centennial ed. > Part 2
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37
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Historic Indiana
entered and disappeared from the rivers and woods of the Wabash, and whose history reads like a legend.
When the first white explorers came down the Indiana rivers, they found few settled tribes of Indians. This was on account of the recent Iroquois war. But later, numerous Indian tribes, of many different names, roamed the territory, and all belonged to the great Algonquin race, which occupied the whole of the middle West, and the New England coast. These allied families of Algonquins, while often warring among themselves, united their strength in terror of their bitter foes located on either side of them. The cruel Iroquois separated the Eastern forces by occupying the region now known as New York and southward; while the bloodthirsty Siouan tribes held the country west of the Mississippi. The Miami con- federacy, whose barbarian villages dotted the central and northern part of Indiana, included the Weas, the Foxes, the Piankeshaws, the Pottawattomies, the Shaw- nees, the Ouiatanons, and the Kickapoos, with whose barbarous names the early settlers, alas! were to become so familiar, and who were all branches of the Algonquin race.
The regions now called Indiana and Kentucky were reserved as hunting-ground, but they were also per- petual battle-fields. Across this expanse surged these countless allied tribes and their hereditary enemies. Back and forth from east to west, from north to south, from Florida to the Dakotas, they fought in endless warfare against each other and against their foes. To and fro, defeating or defeated, seldom utterly vanquished, unless exterminated, they came and went on the war-path, always planning to return to the fray, if checkmated in their savage raids, when
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La Salle and the Exploration
new combinations with more tribes should render them strong enough for a fresh attack.
All of the tribes were passionately fond of the ex- citement of games of chance, and sat about the fires and gambled until their last possessions were gone; staking clothing, weapons, pipes, ornaments, or wife on the last throw of the dice. It is said that if invited to "come cat" it was unheard of to refuse; the per- son invited took his dish and spoon and went; grunted "Ho!" upon entering, and to every remark that interested him.
Many of the wigwams or huts of the Indians were fashioned of bark or of skins and were covered on the inside with rude sketches of scenes from the chase and battle, commemorating their deeds of valor. Most of the aborigines painted their faces and bodies with soot, ashes, and the juice of plants. Very often they were cruelly tattooed. They were naturally very fond of ornaments, and were easily beguiled by gifts of finery. One possession all Indians valued above any other, was the belt of wampum. This con- sisted of beads, white and purple, made from the inner part of certain shells. They were made at the expenditure of great care and labor. The wampum was at once their currency, ornament, pen, ink, and parchment. It is affirmed that no compact, no speech, or clause of a speech, to the representatives of an- other nation, had any force unless confirmed by the delivery of a string or belt of wampum. It was the task of certain braves, detailed for that duty, to remember and reproduce what each bead recorded. The Indian's idea of music was crude, discordant, and unpleasant sounds, a drum or tom-tom being the most universal instrument of tone. His perceptions
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Historic Indiana
of good and evil were shadowy, and belief in a future state of reward and punishment was by no means universal. He thanked the Good Spirit for blessings and prayed to the Evil Spirit, whom he re- garded as the agent of disease, death, and mischance.
The Indian had a very material notion of the happy hunting-grounds, and his idea of the fate of the wicked was that he should be doomed to eat ashes in cold dreary regions where there was always snow. All tribes were the dupes of their medicine-men, sorcerers, and witches. As a matter of course, so limited an intelligence believed in magic, in the realities of dreams, and in signs and tokens. Their limited knowledge of the laws of nature kept them in perpetual thraldom to fears of which civilized man knows nothing. Although inhabiting the most desirable area, and living in the most favorable climate on the continent they had attained little intellectual or material advancement and gave no promise of any. Their life was a round of hunting, eating, and fighting. In summer the braves were hunting and fishing when not on the war-path, but with little thought of the future, they stored up meagrely for the needs of the long and cruel winter. The men condescended to build wigwams, fashion the weapons, make their wonderful pipes, and shape their marvellous canoes, but to the women fell all the drudgery. They gathered the fire-wood, dressed the skins, made the cordage and cloth, and prepared the food. In addition they tilled the land for the scanty crops of corn and beans and pumpkins. They planted, hoed, and harvested laboriously with the little stone tools. On the march it was the squaws that bore the burdens and slaughtered the game. In
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battle they often bore a part. In consequence of their hard life they changed early from comely girls to hideously repulsive hags, many of them more fierce, cruel, and vindictive in war than the men. The children showed no advancement beyond the : generation before and were trained in the grim lessons of savage stolidity, superstition, and endurance shown by their ancestors. When food was plenty they all gorged to repletion, and when there was no provender they lived on the roots, bark, and buds of trees.
Indians showed no tenderness or consideration towards the sick or disabled. Each shared with all, in weal or woe. Upbraiding or complaints were unheard.
The Miami tribes of Indians that were living in Indiana were of a degraded type, who practised cannibalism in its most revolting forms, and con- tinued the practice for a hundred years after La Salle's appearance in the West. They had great dread of the evil spirits, whom they tried to propitiate, charm, and cajole. A description of these natives by an explorer characterizes the roving Indians as possess- ing the sagacity of a hound, the penetrating sight of a lynx, the cunning of a fox, the agility of a bound- ing roe, and the unconquerable fierceness of a tiger.
There have been many romantic notions of the Indian, and the early settlers were often pressed to the opposite sentiment of vindictive hate. To un- prejudiced persons the native was recognized as full of contradictions. The same man who would give way to demoniacal fury, at other times held himself in the most taciturn self-restraint. His pride would sustain him at the stake but did not prevent his beg- ging for whiskey or cast-off food. His skill at hunting
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Historic Indiana
and trapping showed him full of perception of nature and his resources in constructing boats, traps, pits, and spears gave evidence of his cunning, but he had little power of reasoning. They had their own form of humor and were fond of telling tales of their prowess by the camp-fire. A practical joke, or the awkwardness of a white man would move them to roars of laughter, and like the white man they were fond of a joke at the expense of the weaker sex. Such were the natives of the Indiana region when the white man came in, and with whom the coming settlers must be brought into close contact. From the mis- takes of governments, and the impossibility of the two civilizations mingling peaceably, both races suf- fered untold misery. No imaginary tale could be more harassing. Their woes appear on each succeed- ing page of history, insuring them the sympathy of posterity. After the natives acquired from the white man the use of whiskey and firearms, they became what Mr. Roosevelt terms the most formidable savage foes ever encountered by colonists of European stock.
CHAPTER II
FRENCH DOMINION
A CENTURY and a half between La Salle and the beginning of history in the Indiana ter- ritory! Truly the new domain waits for its settlement. Silent as the records are of any account of life in the wilderness, we know that the hardy coureurs de bois came down the rivers and sojourned among the Indians, trapping and trading for pelts. "For a century and a half fur was king."
A few fugitive voyageurs among the more adven- turous probably tarried, but the first French colo- nists, or rather the first inhabitants who made their homes at the posts and brought their families out with them, were the soldiers. The wandering boatmen came and went singly and in pairs without intention of remaining. It was their route for barter, the Indi- ana rivers being a part of the marvellous continuous waterway from the Lakes to the Mississippi.
"In the opening of the North American Continent," says Mr. Ogg, "the Frenchman had this great advantage over some of his rivals-that he entered the land from the right direction, and at a very strategic point. The St. Lawrence set them on the most inviting path to the vast interior, through the Great Lakes and into the eastern tributaries of the Mississippi, finally down . that noble
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Historic Indiana
stream to the Gulf. As a consequence of this, and to the further fact that by nature the Frenchmen who came to America were of a more roving disposition than the Eng- lish, their explorations moved much more rapidly. They had ranged and mapped the country continuously from Labrador to the Gulf of Mexico, before the English yet knew the upper courses of even the James, the Hudson, and the Connecticut." 1
And yet, if their exploration and trade were more sweeping, their colonization was far less effective and permanent in that far West.
Following La Salle's constant urging of the impor- tance of establishing military posts from Quebec to New Orleans, for the purpose of maintaining the sovereignty of France, against the Spanish and the English, the government of Louis XIV. made some weak establishments on the Lakes and the Mississippi; but they were barely a roof for the wandering mis- sionaries to the savage nations, or a trading station. No posts were established on the Wabash until 1720, and the visitations of the zealous priests to the In- dians were the only means of control which France maintained over the wilds of Indiana until that time. During all this period the missionaries were always followed, and sometimes preceded, by a class of traders who gave intoxicating liquors to the Indians in exchange for furs and pelts. "The drink among the Indians is the greatest obstacle to Christianity," wrote the good friars; "they never purchase it, but to plunge into the most furious orgies of riot and bloodshed." For all their despair of the savage char- acter, the Jesuit fathers and the holy friars persisted in their labors, growing old and perishing in their
1 Ogg, Fredk., Opening of the Mississippi.
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French Dominion
attempts. Younger ones stepped into their vacant places, and took passage with the voyageurs whose little barks penetrated every wilderness.
The gradual movement westward by the British, from the Atlantic Coast, was what prompted the French to establish new posts, and strengthen old ones, along the water-routes from Canada to Louis- iana. Several prominent points along the courses were selected and fortified, in the rude frontier fashion of palisades and blockhouses. In these primitive stockades were installed a handful of French soldiers and their families, the priest who guided their very wandering footsteps back to religion, an occasional slave, some half-breed Indians, and a few domestic animals-all of whom were a part of the French system of trade and religion. In a short while each had a plot of garden cultivated by the women, and fruit soon hung on their trees. The posts were not powerful enough for conquest, but they were sufficient to protect the trade with the natives, and to that industry the activities of the lazy little colonies were mainly limited. The post was a convenient rendez- vous for the trapper and hunter, and the voyageurs; and a point from which the priest reached out to convert the Indians to his faith.
As time went on and trade increased, it came about that, beside the commandants, the most prominent individuals at the trading-posts were the French merchants. The old French merchant, at his post, was the head man of the settlement. Careful, frugal, without much enterprise, judgment, or rigid virtue, he was employed in procuring skins from the Indians or traders, in exchange for manufactured goods. He kept on good terms with the Indians, and frequently
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Historic Indiana
fostered a large number of half-breed children. The intermittent traffic on the rivers formed the means of communication between these solitary posts and the outside world. Post Quiatanon, the first estab- lished on the Ouabache, was near the site of the present city of La Fayette, and opposite a group of Indian villages of the Ouiatanon tribes. This post and Fort Miamis, now Fort Wayne, were under the rule of the Canadian Governor and reported to the commandant at Detroit; while the post of Vincennes, established in 1731, belonged to the Louisiana dominion-Terre Haute forming the dividing line between the two dis- tricts. Of the Quiatanon post, so beautifully located, and connected with so many traditions of the past, few traces remain. Its location and career are part of the history of the aboriginal time. The city of La Fayette, which later was founded in that beautiful environment, is located on the hills north of the Indian hamlet. Ouiatanon was the head of navigation on the Wabash for the larger pirogues, on account of the shallow rapids below the present city. All peltries destined for Canada must here be trans- ferred to canoes, and this made the post a natural resting place and point for barter. Twenty thousand skins a year were shipped from Fort Quiatanon during 1720 and the decade following.
"To watch the English and expel them in case they approach" were the directions to the commandant who established the post at Fort Miamis, now Fort Wayne. The point was an important one as it was near the head of the Maumee River, where the voya- geurs from over the Lakes re-embarked their canoes for the long river journey. Unlike Ouiatanon, it con- tinued through many vicissitudes and much warlike
Redrawn from an old print. " The Missionaries Came from Afar."
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French Dominion
history, to be the nucleus of a town, and in the present. day has grown into one of the important cities of the State.
Post Vincennes also has had a continuous existence from the early part of the eighteenth century; which in Indiana seems like ancient history. The story of Vincennes and vicinity is a large part of the history of the French impression on the State. There were a few scattered families identified with the history of other sections, but all that Indiana knew of a com- munity largely French may be claimed by its oldest town. In 1787, an American soldier writing from Vincennes and giving a description of the mixed pop- ulation of nine hundred French and four hundred Americans, said: "This town has been settled longer than Philadelphia, and one half of the houses are yet covered with bark like Indian wigwams."
Life at the different posts at that early time was much alike. We are told that each had its large com- mons for the pasturage of stock, also its common fields, in which each individual's tract was marked off. The houses were grouped about the fort within a stockade as a protection from the savages. After all, the most abiding memory of the influences of the French posts in the early settlements, is that of the brave missionaries, so often spoken of in every record of that remote past. None of the posts contained a large population. The long distances from the coast, either at Quebec or New Orleans, the constant danger of surrounding savages, the rude quarters and great privations, made the interior settlements unattractive to the gregarious French people. Their garden plots were attractive but the agriculture was very shiftless. As the soil was fertile, Indian corn, wheat, tobacco, and
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Historic Indiana
all kinds of fruits and melons were easily produced. In time they possessed swine and black cattle, and brought horses from the Spanish settlements in the Southwest. The only vehicle they ever acquired, in their most luxurious days, was the two-wheeled ca- lèche, which was the only serviceable thing in the wilderness without roads. The rivers were the ar- teries of commerce, and no one could pole a boat like the French Canadian. The priest and chapel held the little isolated communities to something of the old forms and ceremonies of their abandoned civil- ization, kept them to the prayers and sacraments, taught them to transplant some of the arts of living to the frontier.
They had windmills to grind the wheat into flour, when the earliest English settlers, who lived in a more scattered way, had only corn-meal ground by hand. The women did not spin and weave as the English pioneers did, and the family washing was beaten on the banks of the stream, as was the custom in their home country. French cookery, even in those rude surroundings, was superior to that of other fron- tier people. Game was plentiful, and their fare in- cluded fish, prairie chicken, roast duck, venison pasty, and broiled quail. The costume of these people was picturesque and becoming-it consisted of a buck- skin coat, knee breeches, moccasins, and always leg- gins; a tasselled capote, or in summer a peaked hat of straw, braided by the women, as they gossiped on the little front piazzas. They were fond of wearing a bit of bright color around the throat and at the waist, or bedecked themselves with beads in Indian fashion. In cold weather both men and women wore a long cloak with a hood. The women looked much
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French Dominion
like the peasants in the old country, with bodice, short full skirt, and little caps.
With true French vivacity and love for social life and amusement, the inhabitants of each little post celebrated feast days, name days, christenings, and weddings with dancing, songs, processions, and feasts; lasting in the case of weddings for two or three days. Fêtes on the river, a row by moonlight, a Christmas morning carol beneath each window, always the New Year's calls by the gentlemen, and the Mardi Gras celebration before the penances of Lent, were the simple round of frontier festivities. We can imagine the scene. Clustered within a palisaded enclosure, surrounded by the interminable forest, were the rude, little whitewashed cabins, bedecked with vines and flowers, and a tiny garden at the side; in the narrow street the small, wiry, dark-skinned French peasants trooping about, babbling in their strange Canadian jargon, the negro slaves, perchance, answering in creole patois; some neighborhood Indians, clad in gay blankets and wonderful eagle-feather head-dresses, looking on in grave curiosity-silent, as the hab- itants were noisy and chattering. Far from the lands of their ancestry, each nationality lives out its racial traits in the remote wilderness home.
It has always been noted that between wars, there was general friendliness between the French and In- dians, in striking contrast to the enmity among the English and the red men. It was the policy of the English to remove the Indians, and of the French to attract them for purposes of trade. Hence, the natives often gathered in settlements around the French posts. They learned a little agriculture and Romanism, but, alas! they also acquired the taste
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Historic Indiana
for rum, notwithstanding the selling of guns, ammu- nition, and "firewater" was against the mandates of the King, and of prudence.
The first slaves in Indiana were owned by these early French settlers. Their holding and treatment were regulated by the French government, in elab- orate laws, so that they were not left entirely to the mercy of the owners. The Canadian slaves were gen- erally Indians, called panis; and those of the Louisiana district were mostly negroes, brought from the French West Indies. The two races of slaves frequently inter- married, and the government required all to be bap- tized and instructed in the Roman Catholic faith. The frontier Frenchman was an easy master, lacking thrift and having no pressure of competition.
In trading with the natives for peltries the settlers gave in exchange bright colored cloth, blankets, gunpowder, knives, hatchets, animal traps, kettles, hoes, war paint, ribbons, beads, and rum. By trading and trapping they collected great quantities of furs during the season, which were mostly carried to the Canadian market for European shipments. They raised wheat and ground it into flour at their com- munity windmills. Tobacco was raised and baled. Some pork was cured, then with no undue haste or competition these stores were accumulated, and when a sufficient cargo was secured, a fleet of batteaux would be formed, for mutual protection against the Indians, and the event of the year began; that is the journey thither to Detroit and Montreal, or five hun- dred leagues down the rivers to New Orleans, which they called "going to town to see their friends." This trip down the river was a long, lazy, delightful journey to those pleasure-loving people. They drifted with
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French Dominion
the current, telling endless stories of adventure, while they watched the ever-changing views on either shore. Sometimes convoys came from far-off Montreal, to enjoy the winter season. They stayed in New Orleans as long as they could, ofttimes until their money was gambled away. The more enterprising bartered their produce for merchandise, for the return trip, and carried back sugar, rice, cotton, and manufactured articles from France. After much feasting and many formal congés among acquaintances they departed for their homes, and then began the long, tedious, toilsome ascent of the river.
From the time when France found it necessary to establish outposts, in 1720, to protect her interests, until the day that Quebec fell into the hands of Great Britain, there were struggles innumerable between the two Powers over their claims to the Western ter- ritory. These wars always involved the frontiers- men and the Indians in deadly conflicts, and the blackest pages in American colonial history are the sins of the old world Powers in instigating the natives to massacre the settlers. At length, the English won the great victories at Quebec and along the Lakes. The acquisition of the whole of Canada followed. The Treaty of Peace was concluded in 1763. The English claim included the upper Indiana territory. The in- habitants remained at ease, heeding little of the great change of government and destiny; but the treaties of 1763 closed the brilliant explorations and dreams of American Empire for France. Illustrious ex- plorers, courtly cavaliers, devout priests, reckless voyageurs, skilful trappers, and frugal colonists had crossed the Atlantic and traversed the inland lakes and rivers to found a new French dominion and a
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Historic Indiana
home in the West. "In the laying of the foundations for an abiding political power they failed. They could have maintained themselves as against the Spaniard or any other possible European competitor, except the very one with whom they had to contend. The contest was essentially a conflict of civilization, the results appear no less inevitable, than necessary to the future of the country."
At the time of the cession to Great Britain there were probably north of the Ohio and east of the Mis- sissippi only about twelve hundred adults, eight hun- dred children, and nine hundred negroes who were slaves. Many of the French people retired to the western bank of the Mississippi, to the point now called St. Louis, rather than remain British subjects. The French colonies had always been dependencies. Gradually, as the control of the fur trade passed from France to England, the posts languished when they had to depend upon themselves. After a few years, when the Americans in turn took them from the British, the forts were used by the young republic as outposts to protect the settlers against the Indians. Gradually they fell into desuetude, as the native tribes were sent to the farther frontiers. 1791 is given as the date of the final disappearance of Ouiatanon. Towns arose on the site of the other two French posts in Indiana territory, at Fort Wayne and Fort Vin- cennes. The little French posts of the early half of that century are only a memory. The log chapel where the black-robed priest christened the babe and married the blooming bride, has gone to decay. The vine-covered balcony and its gay peasant family have alike crumbled into dust. There are left no traces of the volatile, pleasure-loving people from
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