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 23
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 23
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The war was prosecuted to its close beyond the borders of the State. The remainder of the struggle meant a consuming anxiety on the part of those who awaited tidings of battle, the sorrow for lost ones, the prayers for the absent, and the joys of victory. When peace was declared in June, 1865, the Indiana boys in blue began returning to Indianapolis to be mustered out of service. Loving parents and wives came up to the capital to welcome them home. The clouds of war were lifted and bells rang out in jubilee over the return of peace. As the long lines of soldiers marched up the streets, tears of joy and shouts of pride greeted the battered battle flags; but always, among the throng, silent and pathetic in their black robes of woe, were they who mourned for their loved ones who never would return. "Deaf to the welcoming shouts, blind to the rejoicing crowd, they saw shad- owy figures following the flag, and dim faces that would smile no more." The living were welcomed home with universal joy, the dead were remembered with unspeakable sorrow. But the sorrow was in- dividual; the joy was general, for the country was saved !- the country that above all others was the hope, and is the hope, of the world. No more South, no more North, no more bickering about slavery. An undivided country, and in time a united country. In a third of a century the scars of dissension had healed even in Indiana.
CHAPTER XV
PICTURESQUE INDIANA
T O the traveller who sees Indiana from the car window only, the State may seem uninteresting. Railways run along the lines of least resistance and through the most productive but not the most picturesque regions, and the endless stretches of wav- ing corn grow monotonous to the tourist; but there is another point of view. Should you journey about the state with a naturalist, in each neighborhood you would find attractive places worthy of a special excur- sion. There is natural beauty of scenery hidden away in many sequestered spots only short drives from the main line of travel. There is hardly a spot in the State, says Mr. Nicholson, that touches the imagi- nation with a sense of power or grandeur, and yet there are countless scenes of quiet beauty. The early writers of Indiana all sang of the beauty of forest and stream, of the birds and flowers that surrounded them.
In the northern tier of counties, toward Lake Mich- igan, or bordering on the sinuous Kankakee, over a thousand little lakes are nestled among the farms of that region. For many years sportsmen and summer tourists, from far and near, have frequented these waters for pleasure and sport. Vast herds of wild
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game and birds, and shoals of fish, have been taken from these haunts.
The topography of the middle and southern coun- ties differs from the lake districts, and there are many picturesque places along the watercourses of these sections. The rivers of Indiana have ceased to be used for commerce, since railroads usurped trans- portation, but a boating trip on any of the beautiful streams repays one during a summer holiday. Along their banks the enormous soft maples, elms, and sycamores stand like giant sentinels white and far reaching, casting long afternoon shadows over the shal- low waters. In no other way can one realize the wild beauty of the Tippecanoe, the Mississinewa, the Whitewater, the Wabash, or the countless small creeks and streams which flow into that river and the Ohio. The English cover the placid Thames with pleasure craft, and write verses to the gentle stream that they prize so dearly; but the Hoosiers have a world of sylvan beauty lying within their domain unexplored, save by the immediate neighborhood people. There are no less than a hundred and thirty named creeks flowing into the twelve rivers of Indi- ana; besides many smaller streams which feed these creeks. All of these waters, somewhere in their course, flow through picturesque ravines, and gorges hung with vines and ferns. Wild flowers cluster along the banks and, as has been pictured, all about the splen- did elm trees stand, and stately green thorn trees fling their delicate fern-like foliage athwart the gray and white spotted boles of the tall leaning sycamores. Many of these streams rush along stony rapids, and plunge over cliffs, making waterfalls imposing in their grandeur. The banks are miniature canyons, which
A View on One of the Beautiful River Roads of Indiana.
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astonish one who approaches them from the level farms above.
"A hidden host of chiming springs Like countless harps with silver strings Are singing songs eternal.
Like clustered chords of sweeping sound Adown the pebbly ledges
The loosened waters laugh and bound To splash the swaying sedges." 1
These living springs were known and frequented by the Indians, when the wilderness was theirs. Around the sparkling pools were the trading-points where groups of red men and white traders met to barter skins of fur-bearing animals for ammunition and trinkets. The aborigines are gone from their old haunts, but the beautiful springs of water still flow for the traveller. An old settler revisits his native State and rejoices that now as of old the banks of the Wabash are lined with the richest verdure, wild flowers intermingle with the tall grass. Blossoms of wild plum, hawthorn, dogwood, and red-bud make the air redolent with their familiar perfume. The prairies, rich beyond belief, for which the speech of England has no name-gardens of the desert-the unshorn fields, are still boundless and beautiful.
Some of the beauty of southern Indiana clusters about the entrances to numerous caves, to be found in a half-dozen counties in the limestone area. Here numberless sink-holes occur; through the fissures of many of them, adventurers have penetrated into the underground caverns beneath. Doubtless there are undiscovered caves throughout that region; some that
Stein, Evaleen, Fugitive Pieces.
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are known are unexplored. The entrances to some of the larger caves are wildly beautiful. The rugged vine-wreathed approaches to their mysterious cav- ernous depths are framed in a jungle of evergreens and ferns. Of the picturesque opening into Porter's cave in Owen County, which makes it, alone, reason for a pilgrimage to the place, the State geologist says that it is the most beautiful of any that he has visited in his journeys through the State. It is in the side of a hill at the head of a narrow canyon, which has been eroded by the stream which flows from the cavern. This stream falls perpendicularly thirty feet from the floor of the cave to the bottom of the gulch. "The rock down which the water flows is covered with moss, and in the early morn, when the sunbeams light up the interior of the cave for a distance of seventy-five or more feet and the waters glisten and sparkle from the background, the scene is a most entrancing one." 1 This cave may be traversed eight or nine hundred feet. The entrance to Shawnee cave, located in Lawrence County, is also surrounded by scenery of marvellous beauty. In Crawford County, among the rugged hills between the Ohio and Blue rivers, are Marengo and Wyandotte caves, which are natural caverns of immense dimensions; the latter second only to Mammoth cave in extent and beauty. Marengo was discovered in 1883, is nearly four thou- sand feet in extent, and is noted, as also is Shiloh cave, for the number and brilliancy of the interior chambers, glittering with myriads of beautiful stalac- tites. Wyandotte may have been the resort of the natives during the stone age, and was well known
1 Blatchley, W. S., Gleanings from Nature, page 105. Indianap- olis, 1899.
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The Mouth of Donnehue's Cave in Lawrence County, Southern Indiana. From a photograph loaned by W. S Blatchly.
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to the later Indians, who used some of the large dry chambers in which to store their seed corn. The vaulted domes and great apartments, vast in size and colossal in height, its fluted columns supporting the arched roof, give the interior the appearance of an immense cathedral. It contains large deposits of satin-spar, nitre, epsom salts, and plaster of paris. The running streams and dry tortuous paths, the enormous stalactites and stalagmites, crystal and glittering, sometimes reaching seventy feet in cir- cumference, make scenes of wondrous beauty quite unsuspected from the surface above. A description of one of the Indiana caves would not answer for all. They vary in extent, in the loftiness of their interiors, and in brilliancy; but in most of them, we are told, the roof and sides of the chambers are studded with pendants of glittering water-tipped carbonate of lime, that flash in the light of a torch like jewels of crystal. As with many other things in Indiana the caves have not been exploited and advertised to attract tourists.
The mineral springs of Orange, Martin, Morgan, Warren, Owen, and other counties of Indiana are well worth a journey for the enjoyment of their environ- ment. These "licks " were well known to the Indians, and the waters have long been regarded as valuable for their medicinal qualities. Indeed, as cures, the Indiana springs are only on the threshold of their history; they are steadily becoming celebrated spas.
The Switzerland of Indiana is in the country along the Ohio River. In that part of the State the scenery is, in many localities, wildly beautiful. The drives and walks about Madison, Hanover College, Vevay, and other southern towns are unsurpassed in the
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Middle West. In all of these counties, there are picturesque retreats worth a journey to see them.
Among the pleasures of driving in different parts of the State, is the coming upon the old mills which were such an essential feature of the early settlement. Many of these old buildings still stand between the placid mill-race and the necessary stream, which winds about through the hills, and is crossed by the pictur- esque bridges. These old mills are tucked away in the valleys, or hang over the falls, where one comes upon them unexpectedly at a turn in the road. They are set amidst the most charming scenery, making one long to stop and stay through the golden October days. Nowhere else may the beauty and gorgeousness of the forest trees in their autumn foliage be so in- timately known and enjoyed, as around these old mill sites. Here the stream makes its tortuous wind- ings, past steep bluffs and sloping banks, covered with primeval oaks, maples, and walnut trees, clothed in their scarlet and gold. To the busy man who has known these nooks in childhood days, there is no greater joy than to return from life's round of cares and renew his youth in the old valley. The mystical haze of autumn mellows the brilliant sunshine and gaudy coloring of the foliage. The squirrel still scolds him, as in days of yore, for gathering the nuts on his preserves. He browses on the wild grapes and black haws, and thinks with Mr. Howells who recalled years afterward in historic old Venice, when he heard the market boy cry his wares 'neath the Rialto Bridge,
" 'Mulberries! fine mulberries here.'"
Though I hardly should count these mulberries dear If I paid three times the price for my pleasure.
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The Clifty Falls, near Madison, Indiana.
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For you know, old friend, I haven't eaten A mulberry, since the ignorant joy Of anything sweet in the mouth could sweeten All this bitter world for a boy." 1
Native Hoosiers love their woods and wild flowers and gentle streams, as the old salt loves the sea. None of Whitcomb Riley's poems express the feelings of his people more truly than do the verses about the banks of the creeks, the fields and farms, and the old swimming-hole. Evaleen Stein-who is pre- eminently the Hoosier poet of the green meadows, the grassy road-sides, the shimmering streams, the mys- terious marshes, the beautiful birds and the dim forests which she claims as "the sweet familiar things of the ever dearest home-lands," voices the feelings of the true Indianian, in the next line, "I think those fields are fairer than any anywhere." 2
From any one of the towns it is not far to the woods, and it has always been part of the life of the children to wander forth on holdiays and get into the real country; gathering wild flowers or nuts, as the season happens to afford; exploring the old rail fence corners, where the wild cherry and the elder bushes grow, where the ground-cherries and the sassafras are found, under the wild-rose tangle; and a boy may be sure of arousing a rabbit or a Bob-white. Sitting on the old worm-fence, watching the wrens and thrushes flitting in and out, intent on family cares, many a Hoosier youth has planned the career that he determined, then, should be his. Many a comely maiden has dreamed of the future awaiting her, as she filled her basket with blackberries, where the vines had clam-
Howells, Wm. D., Poems.
2 Stein, Evaleen, Among the Trees Again. Indianapolis, 1902.
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bered over the old "stake and riders." This home of the golden-rod and sumach is fast passing from the roadsides; but the picturesque fences, with their neglected corners of lovely wild things, will live in the memory of the native of the West. It is the same with the great forests, and the love they inspire in the Hoosier breast: as Miss Dunn felt marooned in a bleak prairie town she fell to dreaming of an Indiana woodland, musical with birds and the singing of a peb- bly brook; arrow-grass edged the bank; yellow, waxen buttercups gleamed near. A great mottled sycamore leaned over a deep pool splendid with shiners. Some frogs croaked farther down the bank, and opposite, a billow of ferns were reflected daintily on the surface. Some magnificent beeches and splendid oaks, on a little knoll beyond, threw deep shadows that called to comfort on the mossy beds and leafy carpets of the natural groves of old Indiana. It is the beauty of these woodland scenes that looks forth from the canvases of artists like Bundy, and there is little wonder that the impression of the forests and fields is present in the writings of Hoosiers. Surely nowhere outside of the tropics was there a greater profusion of wild flowers, ferns, and trees than on the hills and valleys and over the plains of this State. The mag- nificence of the primeval forests of Indiana is a matter of history. The present "dweller in the land " cannot fully realize their vastness, well wooded as it still may seem to them.
As the State slopes toward Lake Michigan the forests grow light, until there are only straggling oaks, and undergrowth; but other beauties of nature compensate here for the products of a more fertile soil. It is a peculiar country,-a succession of shel-
One of the Gorges of Montgomery County.
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tered prairies, rounded sand hills and reedy marshes, interspersed with quiet lakes and by a net-work of sluggish streams. The lakes in northern Indiana, writes Mr. Blatchley, are the brightest gems in the corona of the State. They are the most beautiful and expressive features of the landscape, in the region wherein they abound. Numbered by hundreds, they range in size from an area of half an acre up to five and a half square miles. The whole number of these pretty lakes cannot be less than one thousand. They were caused by glacial action and are scattered over the fourteen or fifteen northern counties. Their depth varies in different localities from five to one hun- dred and twenty feet. Many of these charming lakes have groups of cottages, hotels, and club-houses around their shores. Some are still without settlements. On their banks, adds Mr. Blatchley, one can pitch his tent with no fear of invading the privacy of some cottage. Over its deeper pools he can troll or cast for black bass, with the assurance that he will cause that gamy denizen to rise and strike, or alongside the weed-covered bars he can at times pull in blue- gill, catfish, ringed perch, and warmouth as fast as he can bait his hooks. Still farther in the northwestern part of the State, the swamps that are tributary to the Kankakee River, covered half a million acres before the modern scheme of drainage was begun. These swamps have been the paradise of the sports- man, and are still visited by hundreds of hunters in the duck-shooting season. Most of the hunting is done in boats poled along in the current, or pushed about among the reeds. If approached from the plain, the huntsman is in danger of losing his way in the interminable swamp, or of getting in beyond
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his depth, in the soft ooze of the marsh. It is a weird landscape of vast stretches of land, covered with tall grass and prairie flowers, almost impenetrable because the soil is like a sponge. Through this great area of lowland the beautiful little river bends about as it winds its slender way through the wide marsh. A river is known to be there, writes Mr. Ball-the blue lines of trees marking its course can be discerned from the prairie heights; but only occasionally in mid-winter or in a time of great drought can one come near its water channel. So far as any ordinary access to it from Lake County is concerned, it is like a fab- ulous river, or one the existence of which we take on trust.
"Ah, surely one would never guess That through that tangled wilderness, Through those far forest depths remote, Lay any smallest path, much less A way wherein to guide a boat." 1
The banks of the river itself are bordered by beautiful trees, hung with vines and filled with singing birds. Floating dreamily down the sluggish stream, under the depths of its summer shade the idle angler looks through the trees and across the marsh, and recalls Evaleen Stein's beautiful description of the scene:
"And now and then a wild bird flies From hidden haunts among the reeds; Or, faintly heard, a bittern cries Across the tasselled water-weeds; Or floating upward from the green Young willow wands, with sunny sheen On pearly breast, and wings outspread, A white crane journeys overhead.
1 Stein, Evaleen, One Way to the Woods, page 21. Boston, 1898.
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An Old Mill. One comes upon these old mills unexpectedly at a turn of the road, set amidst the most charming seenery. From a photograph.
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For leagues on leagues no sign is there Of any snare
For human toil, nor grief nor care; The fields for bread lie other-where.
Only the wild rice, straight and tall, The wild race waving over all." 1
The lover of solitude and sylvan joys may set his canoe on the shaded waters of the Mississinewa, or drop down the shallow sparkling Tippecanoe, or hunt the course of Lost River, for pleasures unalloyed by sound of trade. He may take a tramp over the rugged hills of Brown, or ramble along the route of the old canal, ยท the while he recalls the vanished travellers who once glided past the woodland beauty that still borders the old towpath. If in search of the grandeur of nature, he may rove through the stretches of primeval forest in Montgomery County, misnamed the Shades of Death. There naught but a feeling of exultation in the mysterious beauty comes to the beholder; may within the boundaries of his own State enjoy tranquil sojourns made interesting in the exploration of hidden nooks of untold beauty. He may renew his youth by long tramps through the fields of waving grain or under the shadows of great trees, where the singing of innumerable birds invites to joys undreamed of by the tourist who knows Indiana scenery only from the highways of travel.
1 Stein, Evaleen, One Way to the Woods-poem, "The Marshes." Boston, 1898.
CHAPTER XVI
AN INDIANA TYPE
A BIOGRAPHICAL sketch of a native Indianian, who was representative of a class of citizens in that State, is given here to show another element that entered into the settlement of the com- monwealth. The typical Hoosier of dialect stories is known to all. Among those who were born amid the crude conditions of frontier life, there was another class of men and women. These people maintained the traditions of their ancestry amidst the rude sur- roundings and scarce educational advantages. They grew up in the wilderness, but became the public- spirited citizens who stood not only for law and order on the border, but for the gentle graces of social life, when the neighborhoods developed into villages and cities.
The characteristics of this type of Americans, where- ever found, were the love of country and of religious liberty, a deep pervading sense of the priceless value of education and every means of culture; with the desire to establish equal opportunity for all. There was about them a true knightly quality of noblesse oblige. They were reformers without being visionary, for they were the active men of affairs. The frank manner, erect figure, sterling integrity, betokened the
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high-bred gentleman and decisive man of action. This type had representatives in every section.
The number of these citizens in Indiana was not small, but even smallness of number never deterred such men and women from initiative in movements of progress toward their high ideal for the individual and the country. Unfettered by Old World conditions, they saw the opportunity of the New World, and each bore his personal part of the responsibilities. It was of such that Lowell said in his immortal ode concerning Lincoln :
" For him her Old-World moulds aside she threw, And, choosing sweet clay from the breast Of the unexhausted West,
With stuff untainted shaped a hero new,
Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and true.
The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man, Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame, New birth of our new soil, the first American."
Albert Henderson was one of this class who wrought without thought of rewards or honors. He was born within the territory on the tenth of January, the year before it was admitted into the Union. His father was of Carolina Quaker stock; and his mother came of Southern blood, tracing their ancestry through colonial service back to Scotch-Irish distinction in past history. Albert Henderson embodied the elements of this combination of lineage, and showed it through- out his life. The Quaker grandparents had come to the new territory because of their convictions in opposition to slavery, but they were possessed of lands and chattels as that frugal people is apt to be. His mother's family had always owned slaves, but came
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away from their kindred and people for the same reason. Her forefather, Robert Orr, the founder of the American line, had served as a colonel in the Revolutionary War, with seven sons in the service, and the little grandson, who afterward emigrated to Indiana, was a powder-maker to the Carolina forces.
In 1811, this branch of the family left South Car- olina with a party of relatives and neighbors, who had determined to cast in their lot with a free State. After the long journey over mountains and down the rivers, they settled in the Whitewater Valley. Here they took up tracts of fine forest lands, and here, a little later, one daughter married the Quaker John Hender- son, who had been suspended "from meeting" for serving in the War of 1812, but whose family life, and training, continued in that simple faith.
It was easy to trace the heritage of such antece- dents in the character and bearing of their son, Al- bert. His simple tastes, his courtly old-time manner, his ardent patriotism, his craving for knowledge, his own correct life, with its gentle tolerance of others' shortcomings, all told plainly of the combination of the proud Southern blood with the Quaker strain, and he was as attached to the one family history as to the other.
Mr. Henderson's life may be considered as rep- resentative of the careers of those Western men who were his contemporaries. At sixteen years of age he was apprenticed, and learned to be a "master builder." He built many of the important buildings, and residences, in his part of the State. He drew his own plans and made the specifications. He moulded the brick in his own brick-yards, and burned the lime in his own lime-kilns. His own workmen reared the
Albert Henderson.
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walls, plastered the interior, and put on the carpenter's finish. Complete from "plans to occupancy " was his enterprising announcement. The construction was sound and meant to last. Many of those buildings are still standing, a monument to honest work. In later life he took up the stone and granite business, but at all times he was a farmer. The love of the soil, a passion for seeing things grow, a knowledge of rear- ing live stock, and the Anglo-Saxon wish for lands made him a persistent farmer, although he never lived on a farm after his childhood days. Covington, in Fountain County, was one of the rising river towns, before the railroad innovation, when Mr. Henderson settled there, and his early manhood was identified with that section, and he was a member of the first Town Council of Covington after its incorporation. There he married a wife from the Ristine family, who came into the State with the earliest settlers. Her useful life closed within a few years.
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