History of Indianapolis and Marion County, Indiana, Part 3

Author: Sulgrove, Berry R. (Berry Robinson), 1828-1890
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Philadelphia : L.H. Everts & Co.
Number of Pages: 942

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By the treaty of cession of 1818 the Indians re- served the occupaney of the ceded territory, or " New Purchase," till 1821; but a few lingered about the streams, trapping and fishing, till the spring of 1824,

HISTORY OF INDIANAPOLIS AND MARION COUNTY.

when a company of freebooting whites, remnants of the old days of incessant Indian warfare, consist- ing of a leader named Harper, Hudson, Sawyer and son, and Bridge and son, killed two families of Shawanese, consisting of nine persons,-two men, three women, two boys, and two girls,-to rob them of their winter's collection of skins. The mas- saere was on Fall Creek, where the Indians had been trapping through the winter, a few miles above the present county line. It alarmed the early settlers of the county greatly, for such murders had made local Indian wars, and brought bloody reprisals often, just as they do to-day. All but Harper were caught, the older murderers hung, young Sawyer convicted of manslaughter, and young Bridge of murder, but par- doned by Governor Ray on the seatfold under the rope that had killed his father. These are said to have been the first men executed in the United States by due process of law for killing Indians. The paci- fication of the irritated tribes was complete, and this is about the last ever seen or known of Indians in or about Marion County, except the passage of the migrating tribes through the town in 1832. For many years there was visible a trace of Indian occu- pancy in a deep " cut" made in the bluff bank of the old " Graveyard Pond," near where Merrill Street abuts upon the Vincennes Railroad. It was believed to have been made by a military expedition from Kentucky, on its way to the Wabash or the Wea settlements, for the convenience of getting baggage- or ammunition-wagons up the precipitous bluff, but nobody appears to have been sure of either its pur- pose or its constructors.

Though not particularly relevant to the matter of this history, it will not be uninteresting to its readers to know, as very few do know, that the celebrated speech of Logan, the Cayuga (sometimes called the Mingo) chief, which has been admired in all lands for its manly and pathetic eloquence, beginning, “ I ap- peal to any white man to say if he ever entered Logan's cabin and he gave him not meat, etc.," was made to John Gibson, the Secretary of State of In- diana Territory with Governor Harrison, and the second Governor. In his deposition on the subject, quoted in Dillon's " History of Indiana," he says

that when Lord Dunmore, of Virginia, was approach- ing the Shawanese towns on the Scioto in 1774, the chief sent out a message, requesting some one to be sent to them who understood their language. He went, and on his arrival Logan sought him out, where he was "talking with Cornstalk and other chiefs of the Shawanese, and asked him to walk out with him. They went into a copse of wood, where they sat down, and Logan, after shedding abundance of tears, delivered to him the speech nearly as re- lated by Mr. Jefferson in his 'Notes on Virginia.'" It may be remarked, in conclusion of this episode, that Logan, in consequence of the cruelty practiced upon him, joined Cornstalk and Red Hawk in lead- ing the warriors in the battle at the mouth of the Big Kanawha, in September, 1774, which was a bloodier battle to the whites, though a less decisive victory, than the much more celebrated battle of Tippecanoe.

CHAPTER II.

Special Features of the City of Indianapolis-Area and Present Condition-General View and IJistorical Outline.

Special Features of the City .- The general contour of the surface of the city site and vicinity in Centre township is iu no way different from that of the other parts of the county. It is level or gently undulating, except where the bluffs bordering the " bottoms" of streams make more abrupt eleva- tions, and none of these are considerable. Following the eastern border of the valley of Pogue's Run, which divides the city from northeast to southwest, is a ridge, or range of swells rather than hills, from the extreme southwest corner to near the northeast corner, where it leaves the present city limits, and these are the only " high grounds" in the city. In improving the streets these little elevations have been cut down and the hollows filled, till in hardly any street can be discerned any change from a level, except a slight slope or depression. For the past thirty years or so, before any considerable improvements had been made on the natural condition of the site, several

SPECIAL FEATURES OF INDIANAPOLIS.

bayous, or " ravines," as they were generally called, traversed it through a greater or less extent, two being especially noticeable for volume and occasional mischief. They drained into the river the overflow of Fall Creek into a large tract of swampy ground northeast of the city, from which, at a very carly period, a ditch was made by the State into Fall Creek at a point a mile or two farther down. The smaller or shorter of these ran through the eastern side, in a slightly southwesterly direction, crossing Washington Street at New Jersey, where the former, a part of the National road, crossed on a brick cul- vert, and terminating at Pogue's Creek. The other passed nearer the centre of the city, turning west a little above the State-House Square, and passing along the line of Missouri Street, afterwards the line of the Central Canal, from near Market to Mary- land, and thence curving southward and again west- ward and northward, entered the river at the site of the water-works, where some indications of its exist- euce can still be seen, and about the only place where there is a relic of this once prominent and very troublesome feature of the city's topography. In several low places, mainly north and east of the centre, there were considerable ponds, the drainage of heavy rainfalls, and in the south was one or two, but these have all been improved out of existence many a year. The only one of these that was perennial and distinguished by a name was the Graveyard Pond, near the old cemetery, formed by the retention of overflows of the river in a bayou following the bluff of the river bottom. The whole site of the city, both the original mile square and all the outlying "donations" and all the " additions," were at first densely covered with woods and weeds and underbrush, of which there remain only one or two trees in Pogue's Creek Valley in the east, and a few sycamores and elms near the creek mouth at the southwest corner. Fall Creek and Pleasant Run may be regarded as the northern and southern limits of the city now.

Divisions .- Pogue's Creek divides the city, leaving one-third or more on the southeast side, the remainder on the northwest side. The latter contains the bulk of the business and population. A small tract west

of the river was added to the site selected on the east to compensate for a part of one of the four sec- tions cut off by a bend of the river. This, called Indianola, forms part of one of the city wards. A still smaller area south of this, on the west side, has been added to the city, but the greater part of the tract west of the river and south of Oliver Avenue has been organized into an independent town gov- ernment by the name of West Indianapolis. North- west is another suburb, but not attached to the city, called Haughsville. Farther to the north is North Indianapolis, also independent, while northeast is Brightwood, unattached ; and east, nearly five miles, is the handsome little town of Irvington, mainly oc- cupied by residents whose business is in the city, and by the faculty and students of Butler University. Southeast is the little suburb of Stratford. A num- ber of city additions have separate names, as Oak Hill, Brookside, Woodlawn, Woodruff Place, but none, except the last, is in any way distinguishable from the city adjacent to it.

The Creek .- More pertinently here than elsewhere may be noticed the connection of the two streams that enter the city, Pogue's Creek and the river, with its history. The former was named for the traditional but disputed first settler on the city site, George Pogue. It rises about a mile east of the northeast corner of Centre township, flows south- westerly through almost the whole diagonal length of the city, and enters the river at the angle formed by the southern city boundary and the river. Until street improvements turned a large part of the town drainage into it the water was clear, well stocked with the same sort of fish as other streams, and a favorite swimming resort for school-boys. The bottom was heavily wooded, subject to frequent overflows, and often swampy. Gradually, as the town grew, and manufactures and general business followed railroad enterprises, the vicinity of the creek became the site of foundries, machine-shops, mills, and other indus- trial establishments, and a little later of the gas- works, and these, with the flow of street gutters, turned the clear little woods stream into an open sewer. Worse still, the rapid inflow of street drain- age, with other less artificial iufluences, made it sub-

HISTORY OF INDIANAPOLIS AND MARION COUNTY.

ject to violent and sudden overflows, which in the last twenty years have done so much mischief that snits have been repeatedly brought against the city for indemnity. Very recently a judgment for ten thousand dollars was obtained on one of these suits by a large wholesale house. The current has been obstructed and diverted by the piers and abutments of street and railway bridges, by culverts and the arches of the foundations of large buildings, and in some places " washes" have cut away the banks so as to seriously impair the value of adjacent lots, and even to imperil houses, and the result of all these co-operating evils has been the recent appointment of a committee of the City Council and Board of Alder- men, in conjunction with several prominent private citizens, to devise a complete and uniform system of protection from overflows, washes, and all forms of damage. As it follows the line of lowest level in the city, draining the site from both sides, it has sometimes been proposed to deepen its bed, wall and arch it in, and make a main sewer of it. A very large portion of it on both banks has been walled in, and many hundreds of feet arched in by street cul- verts and other works, and it is not improbable that it will sooner or later be covered throughout, and made to carry off the whole natural flow as well as the street drainage not diverted to other sewers. But very little of it is left in its old bed, its crooks having been straightened into angles and right lines. Occa- sionally it runs dry in long droughts.

The Canal .- Although no natural feature of the city's topography, and a considerable portion of it is effaced, the canal is still conspicuous enough both in its topographical and economical relations to require notice. The section from the feeder-dam in the river at Broad Ripple, some eight or nine miles north, to the city is all that was ever completed of the " Cen- tral Canal," which was one of the system of public improvements begun by the State in 1836. In places it was almost completed for twenty-five or thirty miles south of the city, and nearly as far north, but nothing was ever done with it but to leave it to be overgrown with weeds and underbrush, except a short stretch three miles south, where its bed was very level, and the country people used it for a race-

course. Until within ten years or so the completed section from Broad Ripple passed clear through the city, mainly along the line of Missouri Street to Merrill Street, and in early times was used for fishing, swimming, skating, ice-packing, occasional baptisms by churches, and semi-occasional cargoes of wood in flat-boats. The State sold it a few years after its completion to the "Central Canal Hydraulic and Water-Works Company," and that sold to others till it came into the hands of the company which established the water-works, and used it as a motive- power, some dozen years ago. Then the portion south of Market Street was deepened, and a sewer built in it, connecting with the Kentucky Avenne trunk sewer, and it was filled up, graded, and partially improved, and is now a street. Above Market Street it continues in its former condition, used for boating and ice-packing by permission of the proprietary company, and for bathing without it. Below the line of Merrill Street to the city limits the canal passed through private property, which has reverted to the original owners or their assigns, who have left hardly a visible trace of it. When first completed, an enlargement or basin was made on the site of the present steel-rail mill, and a culvert was made over the creek that occasionally broke and made trouble. The culvert is almost the only relic of the lower end of the city section. On each side of Washington Street, on the east bank of the canal, a square basin opening into it was made, each about two hundred feet square. These have long disap- peared, and with them a ditch along the south side of Washington Street, extending cast to within a short distance of Mississippi, then turning directly south to Maryland Street, and there turning west entered the canal at the Maryland Street bridge. The bridges were all made with " tow-paths" beneath them on the west side. These disappeared with the basins and ditches. A couple of wooden locks were built at the south line of the " donation," but never finished. They became a favorite fishing-place, as did the place where the water, while it lasted, emptied into Pleasant Run, near the river. Water never passed farther south. A stone lock was built at Market Street, and used a few times. From this

GENERAL FEATURES OF INDIANAPOLIS.

loek an arm of the canal ran west two bloeks or so, a few feet north of Market Street, where it entered a basin some four or five hundred feet long, extend- ing north into the "Military Ground." From the north end of this basin a " tumble" let the water down a dozen feet into a race-way that turned south, erossed Washington Street, and entered a sort of natural basin, formerly one of the old " ravines," whence the water fell by another tumble into the river at the site of the present water-works. The water was let into the canal at tbe feeder-dam in the spring or early summer of 1839, and the State im- mediately leased water-power to one woolen- and one oil-mill, and to two each of grist-, saw-, cotton-, and paper-mills. These were located at the Market Street lock, on the river bank, where the race-way fell into the river, and at the south end of the basin in the Military Ground. Some years later a grist- mill south of the donation obtained its power from the canal. The water-works company now owning it have recently replaced the deeayed aqueduet over Fall Creek with one of the most substantial charac- ter, and have at one time or another greatly im- proved the feeder-dam. Its present use is mainly to supply power to the pumping-engines of the water- works.

The River (the Wa-me-ca-me-ca) .- From the upper to the lower bridge of the Belt Railroad the river may be considered a part of the eity site, though but a small portion bounds the site on the west, and a smaller portion divides it from the In- dianola suburb. This section is pretty nearly three miles long in a straight line, and nearly four following the banks. Originally it was a stream of considera- ble volume, averaging probably four hundred feet in width, and, except upon a few shoal spots, too deep to be fordable. There was a ford a little way below the " Old Graveyard," near the present site of the Vincennes Railroad bridge, and in use till some dozen or fifteen years ago, when an iron bridge was built a few hundred feet above it. Another ford on the Lafayette wagon-road was a good deal used later, and known as " Crowder's" and "Garner's Ford." Another iron bridge has superseded it. In the town communication was kept up with the west side by a

ferry a little below the National road bridge. Di- reetly west of the "Old Graveyard," and three or four hundred feet above the site of the present iron bridge, was a low sandy island, containing a couple or three acres, and covered with large syeamores and elms, called " Governor's Island." At the head of it, where a narrow " chute" separated it from the high and heavily-wooded ground of the cemetery, was a huge drift that was for many years a favorite fishing-place of the towns-people. A little above this, on the west side, a considerable " bayou" ran out, cireling irregularly around an extensive traet, a perfeet wilderness of woods and weeds, spiee-bush and papaw, and re-entered the river a half-mile or so lower. A wing-dam at the upper mouth con- verted it into a race-way for a grist-mill erected on the south bank, near the present line of the Belt Railroad, in the year 1823. This was one of the first mills built in the county. A little way east of it, nearer the river, the first distillery in the county was established near the same time, turning out for several years a small quantity of " forty-rod" whiskey that was known as " Bayou Blue." Some remains of the mill were discernible a dozen years ago, but all are gone now, and the bayou itself is measura- bly effaced by plowing and naturally drying out. " Governor's Island" has entirely disappeared too. The river, during the freshets that have almost an- nually occurred ever since the first settlement was made, has eut away the eastern bank along the " Old Graveyard" line until its entire volume is now east of the site of the island, and that onee con- spicuous feature is merged in the broad low sand-bar that fills the old bed. The channel has shifted at this point, as may be seen by the west bank, four hundred feet or more. A like change, and even greater, has taken place below, where the current has eut the west bank, and filled in on the east side a wide swampy traet of several aeres below and along the Graveyard Pond site, and at the foot of what used to be called the High Banks. Within a few years freshets have eut through a sharp elbow on the west side at this same place, and instead of whittling away the point piecemeal as before, the future action of the water seems likely to take the main volume

HISTORY OF INDIANAPOLIS AND MARION COUNTY.

bodily some hundreds of feet inland. The same agencies have cut a number of small channels through the " bottom" a little lower, and threaten to make a tolerably straight course from near the old ford down to a point a little below the lower mouth of the old bayou. These are the most notable changes in the river-bed in or near the city.

hauling along with ropes, in canal-boat fashion. Not much of either was ever done, however, the new settlement depending mainly on land transportation from the White Water and on its own products.

The prominent event in the history of the city's connection with the river is the attempt to make it or prove it what Congress had declared it to be, a navi- gable stream. A full account will be given in another place, but it may be noted here that a survey was made in 1825 which maintained the practicability of navigation three months in the year for a distance of four hundred and fifteen miles at an annual expense of fifteen hundred dollars. A reward of two hundred dollars was offered to the first steamer's captain who should bring his boat to the town, and in 1830 one came as far as Spencer, Owen Co., and another came up about the same distance or a little nearer, but in the spring of 1831 the " Robert Hanna," bought for the purpose, it was said, of carrying stone from the Bluffs of the river for the piers and abut- ments of the National road bridge, came clear up to the town, raising a great excitement and high antici- pations of river commerce. She remained a couple of days, ran upon a bar going back, and stuck a month or two, and finally got into safe water some time during the fall. This was the last of the navi- gation of White River, except by the flat-hoats re- ferred to and a little pleasure steamer in 1865, that made a few trips during the year and was wrecked the next summer. Within the present year a little picnic steamer has been built at Broad Ripple, but it can hardly be deemed an exception to the universal failure of White River navigation.

There has come, with the clearing of the country, the drainage of swamps, and disappearance of little springs and rivulets, the same change that has come upon all the streams of the country and of the world under the same conditions. The volume of water is smaller, low-water mark is lower, the freshets more sudden and evanescent. It happens frequently now that in protracted droughts the volume of water is reduced to that of a very moderate creek, not ex- ceeding fifty or sixty feet in width in very shoal places, and the tributary streams, Eagle and Pleasant Run, go dry altogether near their mouths. Fall Creek, however, is not known to have ever been so greatly reduced. Before settlement and cultivation had changed the face of the country so greatly the an- nual freshets,-sometimes semi-annual,-usually in the latter part of winter or spring, were used to carry some of the country's products to market down on the lower Ohio and Mississippi. This was done in flat-boats, measuring fifty or sixty feet long by twelve to fifteen wide, covered in with a sort of house, the roof of which was the deck, where long, heavy side-oars and still longer and heavier steering oars were managed. The current, however, was the motive-power. In this floating house was stored, ac- cording to the business or fancy of the shipper, baled hay, corn, wheat, or oats, whiskey, pork, poultry, There have been a few freshets in the river so high and disastrous that they deserve special notice. The first was in 1828, following an unusually wet spring. During that rise an old hunter paddled his eance through the fork of a large tree on Governor's Island, a height of overflow that has probably never been equaled since. The " bottom" lands for many miles were seriously damaged, fences washed away, stock drowned, crops in store injured, though, as suggested by Mr. Ignatius Brown, less damage was done than by smaller floods following when the country was these chiefly. They were run out at the height of a freshet, so as to pass over a few dams that stood in the way, and were the source of the greatest peril to these self-insured shippers. This sort of commerce was maintained at intervals for probably twenty years, but most largely from about 1835 till the Madison Railroad offered a better way out, in the fall of 1847. During the first few years of the city's existence occasional cargoes of corn and game were brought down the river by the Indians, and up the river in keel-boats by poling and " cordelling," or | better settled. The Legislature made some relief

GENERAL FEATURES OF INDIANAPOLIS.

provision for the sufferers by remitting taxes. The next great flood was early in January, 1847. The water then for a time threatened the National road bridge. It broke through the little suburb of In- dianola, or "Stringtown", as it was then called, from its being strung out along the National road, and cut two deep gullies through the solidly-graded and heavily-macadamized pike, churning out on the south side in the soft, loose soil of the river bottom huge holes nearly a hundred feet in diameter and twenty or more deep. Several houses were washed away, and one was left on the slope of one of the big holes, where it remained tilted over and apparently ready to fall for several months. The third big flood was in 1858. In 1875 came two nearly equal to that of 1847, the first in May, the next in August, both reaching about the same height. But for the levees then built along the west bank for a mile and more the whole of the country west of the river to the bluff of the " bottom" would have been drowned. In the early part of February of this year (1883) the highest flood ever known, except possibly that of 1847 and that of 1828, occurred, filled a large num- ber of houses in Indianola, driving out the occupants and damaging walls and furniture, and sweeping clear over the National road for the first time since 1847. It was more than a foot higher than either flood of 1875. Levees now protect the west side-the only one endangered by floods to any extent within the limits of costly improvements-for nearly three miles south of the Vaudalia Railroad to a point opposite the mouth of Pleasant Run. These will be extended in time parallel with the levces on the east side below Pleasant Run. These are the chief levees on the river. Some small ones have been made along the south bank of Fall Creek at the northern limit of the city site.

Until 1852 the only bridge over White River in or near the town was that built by the national govern- ment for the great national highway, the " Cumber- land road." This was finished in 1833, and is still in constant use, considerably dilapidated through cul- pable neglect, but still solid in its arches and service- able. In 1852 the Vandalia Railroad Company put up a bridge for their line a quarter of a mile south of the old one. Since then there have been built for

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History of Indianapolis and Marion County, Indiana, Part 3

Author: Sulgrove, Berry R. (Berry Robinson), 1828-1890 Publication date: 1884 Publisher: Philadelphia : L.H. Everts & Co. Number of Pages: 942

Author: Sulgrove, Berry R. (Berry Robinson), 1828-1890
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Philadelphia : L.H. Everts & Co.
Number of Pages: 942