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 8
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 8
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" When I was a woman grown and married, with children of my own, my man and daddy took a notion they 'd try Injianny. So we all came, with just one wagon to carry our things and the children, while the rest of us walked, me toting my baby. We didn't seem to do as well here, and by 'n' by daddy wanted to go back and we went with him. Then we seemed to do worse than ever there, and daddy said he'd try Injianny again, and we come. Inji- anny didn't 'pear to be much better than Tennessee, and daddy took a notion again. I was getting despert tired of travel, but daddy coaxed me and mammy coaxed me, and this time they promised they would stay, and seeing they were bent on it I agreed. So five times, I walked back and forth between Tennessee and Injianny, kase I would have followed my daddy and mammy to the ends of the earth." 1
But it was not alone the shiftless ones who changed their abiding-places. "I must be moving on" quoth Daniel Boone, who had come out from the New Carolinas to the wilds of Kentucky. "Why, a man has taken up a farm right over there, not twenty-five miles from my door." He could only breathe freely in vast solitude. These hardy adventurers were not the only emigrants. Some of the best English families, well-to-do where they were, moved forward in each gen- eration. The Lincolns, through which the President's genealogy is traced, were for six generations, with a single exception, pioneers in the settlement of the new
1 Indiana Magazine of History, vol. i., page 107.
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countries. John Richmond left an ancient manor in south England, to establish a sea-coast colony in Massachusetts; his descendants moved to the Berk- shire Hills, in the western part of that State; and their son settled in eastern New York. After John, of the next generation, had seen Fulton take the first steam- boat up the Hudson River, he moved to the West, and was an old settler when he witnessed the first railroad train come into Indianapolis. To take up lands unhampered by the towns, his son Corydon Richmond moved his medical practice to the wilder- ness of Howard County, then still in the possession of the Indians.
Miss Anna Jenners tells of a pioneer woman who it must be admitted, had endured the extreme experiences of this spirit of Westward Ho! She used to recount how her father and mother had been one of the earlier couples to migrate from the East to Ohio, where they settled themselves in the wilds of the forest, and hewed out for themselves a home. In time, they acquired the comforts of home life, including all of the necessary buildings, gardens, and orchards of the most prosperous settlers. Here it would be supposed they would have lived to an old age; but the new lands opened to settle- ment in Indiana attracted the father; and after selling his beautiful homestead, he carried his family to the more fertile banks of the Wabash. In a rude cabin in the woods, where at night they often heard bears scratching on the low roof, they began the task anew. Always prosperous, the father cultivated his virgin acres successfully, until broad fields were added, and a large house was planned. For the new residence he sent all the way back to Ohio and had bricks hauled out, and interior finish and cabinet work made, which it
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was not possible to have manufactured on the frontier. When the comforts and luxuries had become attainable, the daughter married; and soon the broad prairies of Kansas lured her husband toward that new territory; and again she passed through the discomforts and ex- periences of border life. In her old age, though possessed of a good home and vast acres, she was dragged to the new Dakotas by her son, who perpetuated the pioneer's longing for the frontier.
When Marion County was still a . wilderness, one of its young men, feeling crowded by incomers, slung his rifle over his shoulder and disappeared farther west beyond the Mississippi, and was never heard of again by his family, until the Civil War broke out. Then he reappeared as a bugler in an Oregon regiment, old and gray, but still ready for adventure and unafraid of hardships, as long as it was life in the open.
These sketches of family histories are outlined be- cause they are widely typical of many of Anglo-Saxon lineage, who had the love of the soil in their blood.
The same impulse which prompted the Teutonic race to make their incursions on Britain, and led their descendants across the Atlantic, seemed to have possessed each succeeding generation until the Pacific was reached and the western coast was settled. The Middle West was but the Atlantic colonies transferred to a freer life and ideals one more remove from Old- World standards. The opening up of new fields to the race proved a wonderful stimulus to the national life, and the growth of the United States as a world power. When these people settled the western borders they took with them their intelligence, virility, love of country, passion for liberty, and desire for knowledge. Hence, orderly governments, schools,
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courts of justice, and charitable institutions sprang up from their efforts. The wilderness, to such natures, meant opportunity and freedom. As one said, " You do not need to keep on the path for there is no path. Each may mark out a future for himself, nor did we miss the satisfaction that comes from the constant victory over odds."
In addition to this love of space and freedom, many frontiersmen had a perception of the picturesque and the poetic. Their letters were full of the beauties of river, woodland, and flowers. The verse of the day was largely descriptive of the ocean-like prairies, the brook that runs murmuring by, the arching sky and flowering earth, and "The Bonnie Brown Bird in the Mulberry Tree."
On the frontier, equality of circumstances, common dangers, hopes, privations, and mutual interests created a homely tie of brotherhood and true democ- racy, dear to the Anglo-Saxon nature. As time passed in their forest isolation, intermarriages of the families strengthened the bonds of union.
Of the character of these first pioneers, no better portrayal could be made, than in the eloquent tribute of Reverend Jenkin Lloyd Jones to the father of Abraham Lincoln.
"Only he who knows what it means to hew a home out of the forest; of what is involved in the task of re- placing mighty trees with corn; only he who has watched the log house rising in the clearing and has witnessed the devotedness that gathers around the old log school house and the pathos of a grave in the wilderness can under- stand how sobriety, decency, aye, devoutness, beauty, and power belong to the story of those who began the mighty task of changing the wild west into the heart of a teeming
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continent. In pleading for a more just estimate of Thomas Lincoln, I do but plead for a higher appreciation of that stalwart race who pre-empted the Mississippi Valley to civilization, who planted the seed that has since grown school houses and churches innumerable. They were men not only of great hearts, but of great heads, aye, women, too, with laughing eyes, willing hands, and humble spirits." 1
1 Address at Lincoln Centre, 1906.
CHAPTER VII
INDIANA TERRITORY
1763-1816
I SHALL stand 'til morning in the path you are walking," said the Chief Pontiac to Major Rogers, who, with his English forces, was sent out from Montreal to take possession of the western posts, after the French had surrendered Canada. To a council of Indians the same Chief said: "The Great Spirit has appeared and spoken,-why do you suffer these dogs in red clothing to enter your country and take the land I gave you." 1
Such was the first effect of English victories and the withdrawal of the French authority.
From the earliest landing of the first Europeans in America, there had been innumerable and contin- uous conflicts between the races. Although not ap- pearing in this conflict so early as the Atlantic colonies, the Northwest Territory, of which Indiana formed a part, suffered in consequence of the war of races, from the time La Salle first explored her forests to within the memory of persons now living. And the history of Indiana's Territorial period is the story of that encounter.
After Pontiac's War in the autumn of 1764, when 1 Dillon, J. B., History of Indiana, page 68. Indianapolis, 1859.
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peace with the Indians was declared, the British again assumed control of all the western posts and held them, until, as we have recorded, fourteen years later, when General George Rogers Clark captured the forts for the American colonies. One of the pioneers has left an interesting account of the mode of savage warfare which prevailed through all the years of settlement. He says that the Indians in attacking a place are seldom seen in force upon any quarter, but dispersed, and acting individually or in small parties; they always conceal themselves in the bushes or weeds, or behind trees or stumps, or waylay the path or field where the settlers are obliged to work, and when one or more can be taken down, they fire the gun or let fly the arrow. If they dare they advance upon this killed or crippled victim and take his scalp or make him prisoner. They cut off the garrison by killing the cattle and watch the watering-places and pick off the inhabitants in detail. They crawl towards a fort until within gunshot and wait, and whoever appears gets the first shot. They often make feints to draw out the garrison on one side of the fort, while some of their numbers surprise another entrance. In combat they were brave, in defeat they were dextrous, in victory they were cruel. Neither sex nor age nor the prisoners were exempt from their tomahawk or scalping-knife. When the Indians went off for game or into camp, the white man would plough his corn, or gather his crop, or hunt deer, or get up his cattle for his own food. Often the women would keep watch with rifle in hand while the father or husband drove the plough.
An old settler tells us of the manner in which he used to work in those perilous times :
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"On all occasions I carried my rifle, tomahawk, and hunting-knife, with a loaded pistol in my belt. When I went to plough, I laid my gun on the ploughed ground and stuck a stick by it for a mark, so that I could get it quickly in case it was needed. I had two good dogs. At night I took one into the house, leaving the other out. The one outside was expected to give the alarm, which would cause the one inside to bark, by which I would be awak- ened, having my fire-arms always loaded. During the two years I never went from home with any certainty of returning. " 1
Neither was there any certainty of finding his family unmolested upon his return. Many times children were sent for wood or water and were captured or scalped within sight of the home, and boys were mur- dered at the wood-pile. So harassed were the settlers that in one of the records of those times we find that in 1794 a reward of one hundred and thirty-six dollars was offered on the Kentucky shore for every Indian scalp having the right ear appended. An old army officer of the time has left a graphic de- scription of one of the many councils when General Clark was trying to negotiate a treaty with the tribes in 1785.
"Three hundred of their finest warriors set off in all their paint and feathers, filed into the council houses; their number and demeanor was altogether unexpected and suspicious. The United States stockade mustered only seventy men as against their three hundred. In the centre of the hall at a little table sat the commissioners, and General Clark, the indefatigable scourge of those very marauders. On the part of the Indians an old council sachem and a war chief took the lead; the latter a tall, raw-boned fellow with a bold, villainous look, made a
1 Conversational Reminiscences.
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boisterous speech, which operated effectually on the passions of the Indians, who set up a prodigious whoop at every pause. He concluded by presenting a black and white wampum, to signify that they were prepared for either event, peace or war. General Clark exhibited the same unalterable and careless countenance he had shown during the whole scene, his head leaning on his left hand and his elbow resting on the table, with very little cere- mony. Every Indian immediately started from his seat with one of those sudden, simultaneous, and peculiar savage sounds, which startle and disconcert the stoutest heart, and can neither be described nor forgotten. At this juncture Clark rose and the scrutinizing eyes cowed at his glance. He stamped his foot on the prostrate and insulted symbol of wampum and ordered them to leave the hall. They did so involuntarily. They were heard all that night debating in the bushes near the fort. The chief was for war, the old sachems for peace; the latter prevailed, and the next morning they came back and sued for peace." 1
When General Clark made the conquest of the Northwest, it was the fourth white man's government the natives had encountered claiming rule over that region. With their limited knowledge of the Old World and their confused ideas of what Europe really was, what wonder that their minds were befogged and perplexed over the changes from French King to Spanish and from English Monarch to American Congress. First one "Big Knife," would solicit them as an ally to kill off the other nation, and then the next power to gain authority would announce that their chief was the "Great Father," and they in turn would use the savages against the settlers.
In recalling the intercourse between the natives and
1 Vincennes, Western Sun, Oct. 21, 1820.
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the white man, it is interesting to look over the articles for which the Indians bartered with the Europeans, and the following is the price received in 1775 in ex- change for a great tract of land on the Ouabache River, well and truly delivered for the use of the several tribes: "Four hundred blankets, twenty-two pieces of stroud, two hundred and fifty shirts, twelve gross of star gartering, one hundred and fifty pieces of ribbon, twenty-four pounds of vermilion, eighteen pairs of velvet-laced housings, one piece of malton, fifty-two fusils, thirty-five dozen large buck-horn handle knives, forty dozen couteau knives, five hundred pounds of brass kettles, ten thousand gun flints, six hundred pounds of gunpowder, two thousand pounds of lead, five hundred pounds of tobacco, forty bushels of salt, three thousand pounds of flour, three horses; also the following quantities of silverware, viz .: Eleven very large arm bands, forty wristbands, six whole moons, six half moons, nine ear-wheels, forty-six large crosses, twenty-nine hairpins, sixty pair of ear bobs, twenty dozen small crosses, twenty dozen nose- crosses, and one hundred and ten dozen brooches; wherefore we have granted, bargained, sold, altered, released, enfeoffed, ratified, and fully confirmed unto the said gentlemen, etc."
Many stories are told of children who were stolen by the Indians in Territorial days and carried off, sometimes never heard of again. None of these tales has a more romantic interest than the well-known one of Frances Slocum, who lived as the wife of a Miami chief on the Mississinewa River near Peru, Indiana, until 1847. In the far-off country near Wilkesbarre, in the month of July and the year 1778, a tribe of Delaware Indians, incited by the British troops, swooped down
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on the Wyoming Valley, made a sudden attack upon the little settlement, killed the boys that were out of doors, and every one rushed for protection. In the stampede, little five-year-old Frances was forgotten, and knowing there was danger she crawled under the stairway to hide from the savages who were ransacking the house. Unfortunately they spied her little feet stick- ing out and pulling her out one of them swung her over his shoulders and they carried her and a neighbor boy away. Although pursued by soldiers sent out to the res- cue, the Indians circumvented the troops, and the child disappeared from their ken. Within a month her father was murdered by the savages. She was taken to New York State near the falls of Niagara and was adopted by the chief; dressed out in blanket and gay wampum she grew up among the savages, and the Indians were good to her. In time there was only a hazy memory of her origin. She was called the White Rose and had been married to a Delaware Indian who proved unworthy of her and later she was wed by her adopted father to a Miami chief, She-buck-o-nah, who was deaf. After the death of her adopted father she and her husband left New York State and went to the home of his tribe in Indi- ana. She had three daughters. Frances's Indian name was Ma-con-a-quah. In the year 1839, Mr. George Winters, an Indiana artist, went to Deaf Man's Village, on the Mississinewa River, near Peru, and painted a portrait from life, of Frances Slocum; and he describes her as she appeared in her old age, arrayed as she wished to be painted. She was dressed in a red calico "pes-mokin" or skirt, figured with large yellow and green figures. Her nether limbs were clothed with red leggings winged with green ribbon, her feet were
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bare and moccasinless. Her forehead was singularly interlaced with angular lines, and the muscles of her cheeks were ridgy and corded. There were no indi- cations of unwonted cares upon her countenance, beyond time's influence. Her hair, originally brown, was now frosted. The ornamentation of her person was very limited. In her ears she wore small silver ear bobs.
Colonel Ewing, a successful trader, who knew the Indian language, and had known Frances Slocum by her Indian name for many years, was called in one day when she was so ill that they thought death was near. The nameless longing, of which she had never spoken, came over her, and she revealed her life's story to Colonel Ewing. She told him she had been carried away, and had never heard of her people again; that it was far back "before the last two wars." She remembered her family name of Slocum, but had forgotten her own given name. After recovery from this illness, she relapsed into her Indian reserve, and told no one of her history.
Colonel Ewing wrote an account of the revelation made to him by this aged white woman, who was known as an Indian; and in 1837 it was published in a Lancaster, Pennsylvania, newspaper, with an appeal for news of the family. The story became widely circulated throughout the State, and finally reached the ears of her two brothers and a sister. The mother had died thirty years before, grieving to the last for the loss of her baby girl. She had spent thou- sands of dollars in searching and advertising for the child. A purse of five hundred guineas had been offered for her restoration. Eleven years after Frances was kidnapped an exchange of prisoners was arranged
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on the frontier, and Mrs. Slocum journeyed thither to see if her child was among the little ones, but she had to return home saddened by disappointment. She was not among the white prisoners. For thirty years more the sorrowing mother waited and watched for some tidings of the lost daughter and died without the sight. Her brothers and sister grew to be pros- perous citizens and were past middle life before this published account of the confession of the aged white woman, out among the Miamis, was brought to their notice. With impatient speed they arranged to journey westward for an interview. It was in the month of September, 1837, fifty-nine years after the abduction, that the sister and brothers reached the Indian village on the Mississinewa. They had to communicate with her through an interpreter, for she had entirely lost her mother tongue. Her older brother identified her beyond doubt by the nail being gone from her left front finger, as it had been when she was lost, and she recalled her name of Frances when it was spoken to her. They learned that she had always been kindly treated by the Indians, and universally respected by the savages and white settlers. They begged her to return with them, if only for a sight of old home sur- roundings, but she resisted their pleadings. She said, "I am an old tree and cannot be transplanted." By long habit she had become an Indian with precisely their manners and customs. It is interesting to learn that her changed environment at such an early age caused her to grow so exactly like the savage people with whom she was thrown. We are told by all that she looked entirely like an Indian, talked like one, slept, ate, and reasoned like them, and was as stoical and reserved. The only difference seemed to be in 8
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the purity of her life and behavior, and the fact that she acquired property, and provided for the future, in a way unknown among the aborigines. On the day after the surprise of the visit of her family, according to her promise to them, she rode into town to return their visit arrayed in her best barbaric attire and accompanied by her daughter and son-in-law and carrying a quarter of a deer for a present. She seemed to feel that their relations were established and en- joved her visit, but again would not listen to their plans to have her return with them, seeming to feel no longings for home or kindred or race. With tearful adieus on their part and stoical reserve on hers, at- tended by her Indian offspring she mounted her pony and rode back to her forest home. Frances Slocum's history is but one of many tales of Indian kidnapping and reprisals which, if they could be given a place, would be more thrilling than any in fiction.
The story is told of a family near Pendleton, who had one son of the house who was proverbially slow. He was sent by his mother for an armful of fire-wood with the admonition, " Now don't be gone seven years." An Indian lurking in the woods near by seized the boy and carried him off. It was seven years before the lad found an opportunity to steal away from the tribe and return to his home; as he neared the house, the memory of his taking-away came back to him vividly and he gathered up an arm-load of wood and carried it in to his mother, who had long mourned him as dead. A young girl in Ohio County named McClure saw all of her kindred tomahawked before her eyes and then the Indians carried her off and sold her to the British with whom she remained in captivity until recaptured at the battle of the Thames.
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In the earliest settlement of the Whitewater country, one of the Holman families suffered the kidnapping of their son by the Indians, who kept the youth for seven years. Among the thrilling experiences of his captivity was one time when he is said to have refused to carry a heavy burden which he had been ordered to shoulder. A council of savages was held to deter- mine what they should do with him. The usual pun- ishment was decided upon, of running the gauntlet between two files of men and squaws who were to buffet him as he passed or discharge their arrows at him. He was too useful to them to be killed and he finally escaped from the savages and lived to a good old age in southeastern Indiana.
John Conner, the founder of Connersville, was taken by the Shawnee Indians when a mere youth and was brought up and trained in Indian life, language, and manners. He knew their nature so well that in after life he was saved from their treachery while travelling in the northern part of the State, by a feel- ing that they were ill-intentioned and keeping himself awake. His apprehension was justified, for about midnight a friendly Indian came to his tent and warned him not to be there or his life would be forfeited. When dressed in their costume and painted it was difficult to distinguish Conner from a real savage. On one occasion in later years he came to Andersontown, then the lodge of a large band of Indians under Chief Anderson. He was dressed and painted as a Shawnee and his granddaughter says, when he heard Tecumseh was absent, he pretended to be that warrior. As is usual with the Indians, he took his seat on a log in sight of the Indian encampment, quietly smoked his pipe, waiting the action of Anderson and his under
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chiefs. After an hour he saw approaching him the old chief, himself, in full ceremonial dress, smoking his pipe.
"As the old chief walked up to me I rose from my seat, looked him in the eyes, we exchanged pipes, and walked down to the lodge without exchanging a word. I was pointed to a bearskin-took my seat with my back to the chiefs. A few minutes later I noticed an Indian, who knew me well, eying me closely. I tried to evade his glance, when he bawled out in the Indian language, at the top of his voice,-interpreted, 'You great Shawnee Indian, you big John Conner.' The next moment the camp was in a perfect roar of laughter, all yelling over the great joke. Chief Anderson ran up to me, jumping, throwing off his dignity, 'You great representative of Tecumseh,' and burst out in a loud laugh."1
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