USA > Indiana > Johnson County > History of Johnston County, Indiana. From the earliest time to the present, with biographical sketches, notes, etc., together with a short history of the Northwest, the Indiana territory, and the state of Indiana > Part 24
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Mr. Sandford C. Cox quaintly describes some of the happy fcat- tures of frontier life in this manner:
We cleared land, rolled logs, burned brush, blazed out paths from one neighbor's cabin to another and from one settlement to another, made and used hand-mills and hominy mortars, hunted decr, turkey, otter, and raccoons, caught fish, dug ginseng, hunted bees and the like, and-lived on the fat of the land. We read of a land of " corn and wine," and another "flowing with milk and honey;" but I rather think, in a temporal point of view, taking into account the richness of the soil, timber, stone, wild game and otlier advantages, that the Sugar creek country would come up to any of them, if not surpass them.
I once cut cord-wood, continues Mr. Cox, at 31} cents per cord, and walked a mile and a half night and morning, where the first frame college was built northwest of town (Crawfordsville). Prof. Curry, the lawyer, would sometimes come down and help for an hour or two at a time, by way of amusement, as there was little or no law business in the town or country at that time. Reader, what would you think of going six to eight miles to help roll logs, or raise a cabin? or ten to thirteen miles to mill, and wait three or four days and nights for your grist? as many had to do in the first settlement of this country. Such things were of frequent oc- currence then, and there was but little grumbling about it. It was a grand sight to see the log heaps and brush piles burning in the night on a clearing of 10 or 15 acres. A Democratic torchlight procession, or a midnight march of the Sons of Malta with their grand Gyasticutus in the center bearing the grand jewel of the order, would be nowhere in comparison with the log-heaps and brush piles in a blaze.
But it may be asked, Had you any social amusements, or manly pastimes, to recreate and enliven the dwellers in the wilderness ? We had. In the social line we had our meetings and our singing- schools, sugar-boilings and weddings, which were as good as ever
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what would you think of going six to eight miles to help roll logs, or raise a cabin ? or ten to thirteen miles to mill, and wait three or four days and nights for your grist? as many had to do in the first settlement of this country. Such things were of frequent occurrence then, and there was but little grumbling about it. It was a grand sight to see the log heaps and brush piles burning in the night on a clearing of 10 or 15 acres. A Democratic torchlight procession, or a midnight march of the Sons of Malta with their grand Gyasticutus in the center bearing the grand jewel of the order, would be nowhere in comparison with the log-heaps and brush-piles in a blaze.
But it may be asked, Had you any social amusements, or manly pastimes, to recreate and enliven the dwellers in the wilderness ? We had. In the social line we had our meetings and our singing- schools, sugar-boilings and weddings, which were as good as ever came off in any country, new or old; and if our youngsters did not " trip the light fantastic toe" under a professor of the Terp- sichorean art or expert French dancing master, they had many & good " hoe-down" on puncheon floors, and were not annoyed by bad whisky. And as for manly sports, requiring mettle and muscle, there were lots of wild hogs running in the cat-tail swamps on Lye creek, and Mill creek, and among them many large boars that Ossian's heroes and Homer's model soldiers, such as Achilles, Hec- tor and Ajax would have delighted to give chase to. The boys and men of those days had quite as much sport, and made more money and health by their hunting excursions than our city gents nowa- days playing chess by telegraph where the players are more than 70 miles apart.
WHAT THE PIONEERS HAVE DONE.
There are few of these old pioneers living as connecting links of the past with the present. What must their thoughts beas with their dim eyes they view the scenes that surround them ? We often hear people talk about the old-fogy ideas and fogy ways, and want of enterprise on the part of the old men who have gone through the experiences of pioneer life. Sometimes, perhaps, such remarks are just, but, considering the experiences, education ' and entire life of such men, such remarks are better unsaid. They have had their trials, misfortunes, hardships and adventures,
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and shall we now, as they are passing far down the western decliv- ity of life, and many of them gone, point to them the finger of derision, and laugh and sneer at the simplicity of their ways? Let us rather cheer them up, revere and respect them, for beneath those rough exteriors beat hearts as noble as ever throbbed in the human breast. These veterans have been compelled to live for weeks upon hominy and, if bread at all, it was bread made from corn ground in hand-mills, or pounded np with mortors. Their children have been destitute of shoes during the winter; their families had no clothes except what was carded, spun, wove and made into garments by their own hands; schools they had none; churches they had none; afflicted with sickness incident to all new countries, sometimes the entire family at once; luxuries of life they had none; the auxiliaries, improvements, inventions and labor-saving machinery of to-day they had not; and what they possessed they obtained by the hardest of labor and individual ex- ertion, yet they bore these hardships and privations without mur- muring, hoping for better times to come, and often, too, with but little prospect of realization.
As before mentioned, the changes written on every hand are most wonderful. It has been but three-score years since the white inan began to exercise dominion over this region, erst the liome of the red men, yet the visitor of to-day, ignorant of the past of the country, could scarcely be made to realize that within these years there has grown up a population of 2,000,000 people, who in all the accomplishments of life are as far advanced as are the inhab- itants of the older States. Schools, churches, colleges, palatial dwellings, beautiful grounds, large, well-cultivated and produc- tive farms, as well as cities, towns and busy manufactories, have grown up, and occupy the hunting grounds and camping places of the Indians, and in every direction there are evidences of wealth, comfort and luxury. There is but little left of the old landmarks. Advanced civilization and the progressive demands of revolving years have obliterated all traces of Indian occupancy, until they are only remembered in name.
PART II.
HISTORY OF JOHNSON COUNTY.
HISTORY OF JOHNSON COUNTY.
CHAPTER I.
BY D. D. BANTA.
INDIAN HISTORY - PRE-HISTORIC RACES - EARLY INDIAN OCCU- PANTS - THIE MIAMIS, THEIR HABITS AND CHARACTERISTICS - INDIAN RELICS - THIE DELAWARES -- THEIR RESIDENCE IN INDIANA - REMNANTS FROM OTHER TRIBES - LAST OF TIIE RED MEN.
+ HE history of the Indian occupation of a county situ- ated as Johnson County is, prior to its colonization by the white man, must necessarily be meager and unsatisfactory. Occupying the level lands lying between the White and Blue rivers -lands covered by a rank and gloomy forest, and predominated by marshes and sluggish streams, it is no cause for wonder if neither that vanished race we call the Mound Builders, nor that vanishing one we call the Indians, found much encouragement to establish, within the region, permanent homes. While the surround- ing counties are said to abound in the remains of the handiwork of the people who built the mounds, in all of Johnson County only the feeblest evidence of their occupation remains. On Sugar Creek, two miles above its confluence with Blue River, two mounds are to be seen which have never been examined by digging, but which appear to have had an artificial origin. In White River Township, on the farm of Levi Guseclore are two low mounds which have yielded ashes, which seems to settle the question of their artificial origin. The land between the rivers was, unques- tionably, in the remote past, under the dominion of, and parts of it no doubt, actually occupied as places of residence by, the Mound Builders. But the prints of their occupation are far more numer- ous in Shelby County on the east, and Morgan on the west. The river hills in these counties afforded them both dry home sites, and dry fields for tilling maize. Trails leading from river to river con- nected the east and west communities, and the territory since framed
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into Johnson County, was thus, no doubt, as well known to them as if they had made their homes on its every knoll. Besides, the Mound Builders were hunters as well as agriculturists, and the for- ests of the unoccupied country, we may well suppose, teemed with game.
During the past two years I have made such collection of John- son County "Indian Relics," as time and opportunity permitted, and of the stone implements in my possession, or that I have seen, that were found in the county, quite a number are identical in pat- tern with implements that have been found in mounds. None of the implements referred to, were taken from mounds, but all are what is known as "Surface Finds," and were, of course, once lost by owners. It does not follow, however, that the losing owners were Mound Builders. Some stone implements taken from mounds, and which the Mound Builders had in common use, notably, the flints and axes, it is well known the Indians manufactured, and for aught we know, they made about every thing out of stone that the Mound Builders themselves made. Furthermore, it may readily be seen that the stone implements found in Johnson County, while not manufactured by the Indians, may have come into their possession by finding elsewhere, and been lost again. It is a curious fact that many of the best specimens, and those most nearly allied to the mound-implement forms, have been found in places where there never could have been habitations, snch as marsh lands. The losers must have been traveling at the time their loss occurred; and while this fact exists, another is equally prominent. On the knolls and high banks near the " Deer Licks," the places where we would expect the Indian encampments to have been, and where they were, judging from the great abun- dance of implements found, many implements are picked up be- longing to the Mound Builders' patterns. No doubt, the Mound Builder hunters encamped at, and watched, the deer licks, and they may have lost the implements in question. And so, too, may the Indian. The only conclusive evidence after all, that the county was ever occupied by the people called the Mound Builders, must be found in the mounds themselves.
Of the Indian occupancy we know more, and yet how little of that! When the Ohio Valley first became known to Europeans, the Miami Indians were found occupying all the country from the Wabash to the Muskingum, and from the Ohio well up toward the lakes. They had no traditions of former migrations, but declared they had occupied the country from time immemorial. "The Miamis," says Bancroft, " were the most powerful confederacy in the West." When the country was first discovered their seat of
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empire was on the Wabash, but for the sake of trading with the English " they moved their chief towns eastward." Their town of Piequa contained about 400 families, and was one of the strongest in that part of the continent." Of their occupancy we know little more than in a territory large enough for an empire they had few centers ot permanent settlement, and their entire population must have been considerably less than the population of Johnson County at the present time. Bancroft says: " On the discovery of Amer- ica, the number of scattered tenants of the territory which now forms the States of Ohio and Michigan, of Indiana and Illinois and Kentucky, could hardly have exceeded 18,000." * In 1760, accord- ing to Parkman, the same sparseness of population continued. " So thin and scattered was the native population, that even in those parts which were thought well peopled, one might sometimes journey for days together through the twilight forests and meet no human form. Broad tracts were left in solitude. All Kentucky was a vacant waste, a mere skirmishing ground for the hostile parties of the north and south. A great part of Upper Canada, of Michigan and of Illinois, besides often portions of the west, were tenanted by wild beasts alone. To form a close estimate of the number of erratic bands who roamed this wilderness would be im- possible; but it may be affirmed, that between the Mississippi on the west and the ocean on the east, between the Ohio on the south and Lake Superior on the north, the whole Indian population at the close of the French War, did not greatly exceed 10,000 fighting men. Depending on the chase as the Miamis did for a livelihood, it is a most reasonable supposition that the wild animals found on their river, Waupe Kom-i ( White River) and its tributaries, con- tributed to their support. From time immemorial their trails led from the Wabash across the Ohio into the Kentucky canebreaks, one of which passed through this county. Bands of Miami hunters could not fail to pursue the game inhabiting the White River coun- try, and that meant the migration of families and the establishment of camps, and probably of villages, which were occupied during the hunting season. When the red man went to war he left his family behind, but when he went on an extended hunting excursion he took his family and all his personal belongings with him. His abiding place depended in the main, on the means of securing live- lihood close at hand. Whenever, for any cause, the game migrated, he followed it. That every high and dry creek bank; and every dry knoll near living water in the county, has been occupied as a camping site, if not a village site, in the remote past, we have indu- bitable proof in the skeletons and other Indian remains found in
" The author evidently refers to the number of warriors.
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JOHNSON COUNTY.
the gravel pits and other excavations made. One of these places is in the northern part of White River Township. A line of broken ridges extends through parts of Sections 33, 34 and 35, in Congressional Township 14. Springs were within convenient dis- tance, and excellent deer licks were found in the vicinity by the pioneer settlers. All the conditions were favorable to the occu- pancy of the knolls and ridges by an aboriginal population, and the remains found prove they took advantage of it. In the excava- tions made for gravel, human skeletons, stone implements, earthern pots, deer horns and bones, and in one place a buffalo's head and feet have been found, and that in such numbers as to lead to the conclusion that the occupancy was long continued.
Another place where the signs point to an ancient place of abor- iginal habitation, is at the headwaters of Young's Creek. When the early settlers came to Johnson County, they found on that creek beginning on Section 31, and extending up through Section 30, in Township 13, an unusual number of deer licks, to which the deers resorted in large numbers during the summer season. In consequence of the sport to be had in that vicinity, it soon became a noted hunters' resort. Since the country has been cleared up, it transpires that the red hunters were in the habit of visiting this region of licks in pre-historic times. So numerous are the flints, stone axes and nondescript stone implements that have been picked up on the plowed fields in that vicinity, and that are yet to be found, that the conclusion cannot be avoided that there was a period when the Indians spent a considerable part of the year there. The knolls which were most used as places of habitation can be found from their relics, and it is even believed that on different knolls, a difference in the pattern of a majority of the flints found can be detected, which, if true, is a fact worthy of note, for it points to occupancy by different tribes, and consequently different periods.
Another place where the aboriginal hunters, with their families, made their abiding place, was on the banks of Young's Creek at Franklin. Over forty years ago while an excavation was being made for the foundation of a county seminary, numerous skele- tons were found which attracted a good deal of attention at the time by reason of their unusually large size. In so many places in Indiana and the adjoining states have skeletons of extraordinary size been found, as to point to the fact of an occupation at one time by a tribe of unusually large men. This does not imply a differ- ent race-only a difference in the conditions of growth of the same race. We are not without an example of a similar development within a limited area since the occupation of the country by the white people. Fifty years after the disastrous defeat of Gen. St.
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Clair, the skeletons of the Kentucky soldiers killed in that battle were exhumed, and out of more than seventy taken from one grave, two only were of men who had been less than six feet in height. In the early days of the country's history a skeleton was exhumed at Edinburg, the lower jaw of which was of such extraor- dinary development that it would readily fit mask-like over the lower jaw of the largest man in the community.
The Franklin skeletons were the theme of the first poetical effusion ever written or printed in Johnson County. On the 13th of December, 1845, the first number of the Franklin Examiner was issued by John R. Kerr, " the blind printer," in which ap- peared the following verses written by himself :
Lines on seeing human bones of extraordinary size taken from an excavation at the Johnson County Seminary.
Thy body for ages in silence hath slept, And moulder'd in darkness, unknown and unwept; For thy tribe and thy kindred have bowed to the ban, Which dooms to the dust all glory of man.
A race though more feeble, more ruthless have come,
Who reck not to scoff as they break up thy tomb; They scatter thy bones with the sands on the street,
To be trodden like dirt by the vilest of feet.
Thy relics, tho' mangled and scatter'd we see,
Vet plead for man's dignity, leaving him free;
His lore from the wide book of nature to draw, Untrammeled by labor, by letters or law.
They carry us back to the records of Time, When nature in majesty wild and sublime, Bade all things of life to perfection expand, And giant with mastodon strove for command.
But destruction did come like a merciless wave, Sweeping widely the land of the mighty and brave; And the tumuli standing in silence, are all That record their existence, their might, or their fall.
Many other places might be pointed out, tending to prove that the country was occupied for centuries before the white men took possession. The vast number of flints and other stone imple- ments that have been sown broadcast over the whole face of the country tends to prove this. The flint, the axe, the celt, all required labor and skill to fashion. With fair usage all would last a life- time, and unless buried with the owner, would at his death descend to someone else, and without accident, last him a lifetime. Practi- cally, the Indian's stone implement was imperishable, and the ones found represent the ones lost. We may well imagine that when- ever a hunter shot an arrow tipped with a flint he did not shut his sharp eyes against the place of its descent. A large per cent. he
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would lose, but he lost no more than he could help. Much less would he be apt to lose his other implements. To him they were expensive; he had few of them to look after, and it is a reasonable supposition that a red man seldom lost an axe, a scraper, a gorget or other like implement. And yet what a harvest of these things have been picked up one time or other in Johnson county! And what a long period of occupancy by men of the stone age, do the great number of implements which have been lost in as circum- scribed a territory as Johnson County, indicate !
Between 1736 and 1748, according to Schoolcraft, the Dela- ware Indians, who at the time of the discovery of America, pitched their tents in the valleys of the Delaware and Schuylkill, were driven from their ancient home by the six nations, and migrated toward the setting sun, establishing themselves by permission of the Miamis, on the banks of the Muskingum. Here they ultimately joined in the league with the Miamis, Wyandotts and other tribes, against the encroachments of the Big Knife, of the Virginia frontier. " After a few years," continues Schoolcraft, " they took shelter on the White Water " ( White River). This was with the consent of the Miamis. In truth it seems to have been a sort of exchange of territory, for it was not far from this time that the Miamis broke up their settlements on the Wabash, to a considerable extent, and went into the Ohio country to be near to the British in Canada.
By the consent of the Miamis, and their own act, the Delawares became involved with all the lands watered by the White River and its tributaries. Before 1791, there was a Delaware village at the junction of the east and west forks of White River, and it may be assumed in the absence of evidence to the contrary that the first migrations to the White River country, took place about the middle of the last half of the eighteenth century. They were river Indians, and kept to the streams. Their beautiful river they named the Opccomcccah. So says H. W. Beckwith in the Twelfth Indiana Geological Report, 41. On Daniel Hough's map in the same report the name is spelled Wah-me-ca-me-ca. The late John B. Dillon, Esq., gave the writer the following as the Miami name of the river, viz .: Waupckomica. The orthography was his. These are differ- ent spellings, evidently of the same name. The Delawares may have utilized the Miami name. All their villages were on rivers. From the headwaters of the west branch of White River, to its junction with the east fork, Delaware villages were to be met with. The river afforded them an easy means of communication with all the towns. From these centers, hunters went on excursions for game, usually taking their families with them and building their lodges in the woods where the game was to be found. One of
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these villages was in Johnson County. The reader who will ex- amine a map of the county will observe that White River cuts off the northwest corner, a fraction over a 1,000 acres. On the west side of the river was the site of that ancient town. The first knowl- edge we have of it, comes from John Tipton, one of the commis- sioners to locate the State Capital, who visited the spot on two occasions in the spring of 1820. The first notice of the ancient vil- lage is in his " Journal," under date of May 26: " We then returned to our camp and set out to examine the northwest side of the river. Crossed into an overflowed bottom; came to a place where the river turns to the west, making a very short bend; runs hard against the west shore and seems to be a very difficult pass for boats of burthen. At this place the growth is all young timber. Some remains of old cabins. I am told there was an Indian village here. Mr. William Landers, who lives one mile back from the river, told me that an Indian said the French once lived here and that he, the Indian, went to school to a Frenchman in this place; but they left it about the time of Hardin's campaign, which was about thirty-three years ago." On the 5th of the month following, John Tipton again visited the place, and writes in his Journal as follows: " Here I am told was once a French village; then oc- cupied by Delaware Indians, but evacuated by them about thirty- three years ago."
The statements taken together are very interesting. They es- tablish the fact that the French began a settlement at the place in- dicated; that they subsequently abandoned it: that the Delaware Indians then took possession of it, and that, about 1787, they, in turn, abandoned it. Now, if the Delawares migrated to the White River country about 1775, as we may assume they did, the aban- donment of the town by the French was before that time. How long? Not many years. Mr. Landers moved to the country in IS20. and the Indian told him that while the French vet lived there, he "went to school to a Frenchman." They had therefore aban- doned the place within the lifetime of a man who told his story not later than in the spring of 1820. This would put the time some- where between 1760 and 1775; and the first named year was the one in which, by treaty, French Dominion over the West passed to the English. How long before that they founded the town we have no means of conjecturing. Judge Franklin IIardin who has lived for fifty years in the neighborhood of the ancient town site, and who has been much interested in its history, says, that when William Landers came to the country there was a tract of land of 200 acres, and was overgrown with bushes, which had once been farmed by the Indians. Indians still lived on that portion of the once
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