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 25
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cleared land, lying in White River Township on the west side of the river. Capt. Big Fire, Little Duck, and Johnny Quack, are remembered, while on the east side, and lower down on the old Morgan, or Denny place, lived Capt. White, another Indian. Here also, was an ancient cleared field. Still below Capt. White's place, on the left bank of the river, was, says Judge Hardin, another Indian location and burial ground, but no cultivation. This encamp- ment was owned by Big Bear. On the old Morgan County part of the old Indian field, Capt. Tunis had his wigwam, and just ad- joining in Marion, Old Solomon, his. The wigwams were situated on the right bank of the river, at the southeast corner of the farm, near the middle of Section 31. Here seems to have been, once, a stone wall thirty or forty feet long and five or six feet high, built of portable undressed stones, and laid parallel with the river, and a hundred feet distant. The Indians said this wall was built for defensive purposes against the Kentuckians; that they had seen a bloody battle fought there once, between them and the whites. be- ginning on the east bank of the river, where they were surprised, and that they were forced over the river, assaulted in the town, and finally driven out. " That thereafter the farm had never been occu- pied, except by a few returning families. The size of the brush growing on and about the once cleared land at that date, 1820, showed that it had but recently been abandoned. An old Ken- tuckian of great reliability, Stephen Watkins, on a visit to White River Township, twenty-five years ago, repeated precisely the same history of this town, and the battle and all the circumstances of the fight. He went so far as to point to the near battlefield; he said he had the particulars from one of the actors, and knew them to be true. Does history give any account of this battle? In Dillon's History of Indiana, it is shown that the Pigeon Roost Massacre took place in the north part of Scott County, about eighty miles south of this Indian town, on the 3d day of Septem- ber, 1812. The next evening, 150 mounted riflemen, under com- mand of Col. John McCoy. followed the trail twenty miles. On the 6th, the militia of Clark County (no number given) was re-en- forced by sixty mounted volunteers from Jefferson County, and, on the evening of the 7th, 350 volunteers from Kentucky were ready to unite with the Indiana militia of Clark and Jefferson, for the pur- pose of making an attack on the Delaware Indians, some of whom were suspected of having been engaged in the destruction of the Pigeon Roost settlement. * But, it is said, a spirit of rivalry which prevailed among some of the officers defeated the intention of those, who, at the time proposed to destroy the towns of the friendly Delawares who lived on the western branch of White
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River. Now hear what Maj. John Tipton says about these ' friendly Indians' on White River: 'In their way out, they (the escaping Indians) passed the Saline or Salt Creek, and I there took an old trail leading direct to the Delaware towns, and it is my opinion that while the Government is supporting one part of that tribe (the Delawares), the other part is murdering our citizens.
"It is much to be desired that those rascals of whatever tribe they may be harboring about these ( Delaware) towns, should be routed, which could be done with 100 men in seven days.' With this spirit and purpose openly declared by the whites, how long do we imagine they waited for an opportunity to execute it? Will any one make me believe that 600 armed men at the Pigeon Roost Massacre, after viewing the slaughtered and roasted human bodies and burning houses, quietly dispersed and went home? Col. Joseph Bartholomew raided these towns on White River with 137 men on the 15th day of June, 1813. He found three towns, two of which had been burnt about a month before. (See Dillon, 524.) Who destroyed them? The reason that the battle at the Delaware towns, if a battle did occur, and the breaking them up on White River was never reported, is that the Government during the war with the other Indian tribes in ISII, 1812 and 1813, was supporting and protecting the Delawares who had promised to engage in peaceful pursuits. Gen. Harrison had directed the Delawares to remove to the Shawanee's Reservation in Ohio, and most of them had done so soon after the battle of Mis- sissinewa, December 17, 1812. Those who refused to go received but little mercy. But another proof of this battle is in the fact that on the twenty-acre field, in the southeast corner of northwest quarter, Section 32, Township 14 north, Range 3 east, near Capt. White's old camp, large numbers of leaden bullets of every size, battered and bruised, have been found. I have had at least 100 of them myself, and have picked up at least nine, recently, in a wash of the river, and have been told of hundreds being found by others. I have passed a short distance from this field, on other grounds more suitable for finding them, but never yet found any except in this locality. And about three years since, on John Sut- ton's farm, one mile and a fourth west of the battle-field, and only one mile east of the Indian town, four frames of human bodies were washed out of a low, wet piece of bottom land. The skulls were carried off before I had an opportunity of examining them. No Indian ever buried his dead in a low, wet piece of land. They must have been buried there under pressing circumstances, and by white men."
Judge Hardin is a close and accurate observer. Ile has studied
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the subject conscientiously, and his proofs are entitled to full "faith and credit" in all the courts of history. But I cannot agree with his conclusions as to the time when the battle he records was fought. I think it ante-dates by many years the campaigns of 1812.
In October, ISIS, the Delaware Indians ceded their lands on the White River to the United States, reserving the possession thereof for a term of three years. But before their time was up they left their White River homes for a country beyond the Mis- sissippi. They numbered, according to John Johnson, an Indian Agent residing in Ohio, but who seems to have been well ac- quainted with them, 2,300 .* In the fall of 1820, a part of them were removed to Arkansas.+ In the spring of 1821. the remainder were removed .¿ The county disagreeing with them, they were soon after given lands in Kansas, where a remnant vet remains to draw a yearly stipend from the United States. Parkman thus photographs the Delaware brave of the far west: " At the present day, the small remnant settled beyond the Mississippi, are among the bravest marauders of the west. Their war parties pierce the farthest wilds of the Rocky Mountains: and the prairie traveler may sometimes meet the Delaware warrior returning from a suc- cessful foray, a gaudy handkerchief bound about his brows, his snake locks fluttering in the wind, and his rifle resting across his saddle, bow while the tarnished and begrimed equipments of his half wild horse, bear witness that the rider has waylaid and plundered some Mexican cavalier." The cession of their country and final aban- ment by the Delawares, seems to have been the signal for the hunters of other tribes to rush in. For a period of five or six years, following 1820, numerous bands of Indians visited the county in the sugar-making season, and again in the fall-hunting season. Some families wintered here. It would be difficult and perhaps serve no good purpose, to give in this place an enumeration of the camping grounds occupied by the Indians, subsequent to the settlement of the county. It will be enough to refer to a few of the more noticeable places. The highlands of Sugar Creek were a favorite Indian camping ground. The Indian name of this stream was Then-a-me- say. In the falls of 1824 and 1825, the Indians camped on the creek bluff not far from the "Sugar Creek Bridge." They are supposed to have been Wyandotts and were professors of the Chris- tian faith. It is related that they had killed a bear and one Sunday morning some of the white men of the vicinity visited their camp to purchase bear meat. They found the Indians sitting quietly in
* See Historical Collections of Ohio, published by Henry Howe, in IS48, p. 146.
t Niles Register, vol. 19, p. 191.
# Fourteenth Geological Report of Indiana, p. 31.
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their camp. " What do you want?" asked one of them who could talk English. "Bear meat," was the answer. "Come to-morrow, Indians do not sell to-day." The next year, or the year after, a band were encamped near the headwaters of Young's Creek. One Sun- day morning Daniel Covert heard a strange noise in the distance and went to investigate. It led him into an Indian camp. They were at their devotions, and motioning him to a seat, he heard them sing hymns and utter prayers in their own tongue. They are sup- posed to have been the same Indians who had before that camped on Sugar Creek. A young Indian hunter, belonging to the same band, was accidently killed on Sugar Creek, and buried at the roots of an oak, still standing on the bluff, between John Owens' house and the bridge. While " fire hunting" on the creek one night, he was shot by one of his own band by mistake. His comrades made a trough of an ash tree into which they put his body and covered it with a slab. Over his grave they set a post, as tall as a man, which they painted red, with a cross-piece painted black. The grave was enclosed with ash palings, driven into the earth.
When Judge Franklin Hardin, a lad of sixteen, first visited the country in 1825, riding double with his mother, they traveled along the Whetzel Trace, through what is now known as Clark Township. " Added to the gloom of this dismal place (the Grand Gulf), away to the northwest," says the Judge, " was an Indian encamp- ment, making the most of their privilege to hunt here. They seemed to be making a drive of the game southward, the direction we were traveling to Loper's, on Camp Creek. The constant crack of the rifle, the crash of the brushwood, caused by the troops of the flying, frightened deer, as they rushed thundering on with branching horns and tails erect, widespread, grandly leaping high above the shrubbery, with heads averted, as if to see the dis- tant foe, and the widely scattered flock of wild turkeys as they sped on with long outstretched necks, half on foot, half on wing, far as the eye could reach, was altogether a sight -one never to be for- gotten by an old lady and a boy unused to such a wild scene." The Indian hunters who were making such a wild display at that time, belonged to a Pottawattamie band that were encamped on Section 36, Township 14, Range 4 east. James Kinnick moved to his place in 1832, and found thereon the remains of their camp. One of the wigwams was in a good state of preservation.
On a little creek which empties into Young's Creek from the northeast, in Section 16, Township 12, Range 4 east (it runs about a mile northwest of Franklin), the Indians were in the habit of camping early in the year, trapping and making sugar. The little creek bears the name of Indian Creek, which was given it by Levi
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Moore, who settled on Young's Creek. close to its union with that creek. Moore was charged by the Indians with stealing their furs. But no harm ever came to him on account of it. At Henry Byers' place (near Mount Pleasant Church ), was a noted camping ground. On one occasion the Indians left that camp for a few days, first tying their peltries in a bundle and springing it into a sapling be- yond the reach of any prowling beast. On their return, their bundle was gone. It had evidently been stolen, but by whom, was never known. Not long after, William and David Burkhart, two brothers, living at no great distance from Byers', each had a horse stolen in one night. Like the furs, the horses were never heard of. It was thought by many of the pioneer settlers, that the Indians believing the Burkharts had stolen their furs, had taken their horses in retaliation.
In 1825 or IS26, a band of Wyandotts from Bellefontaine, camped " up the Hurricane " a short distance from Franklin. Samuel Herriott who was living in the town at the time, had a field of corn, and sold occasionally to the Indians, corn for their ponies. Fre- quently, when they would come after corn, Mr. Herriott would not be at home, when Mrs. Herriott, would see that they got their corn. She was, however, afraid of them, and always gave them something to eat, which kindness the Indians highly appreciated. There was a squaw belonging to the party by the name of Matilda, who had a pappoose, and Mrs. Herriott having heard of it, and her fear of the Indians having abated, she invited Matilda to come and see her and bring her pappoose. One evening at dusk, three In- dian men, Matilda and a boy, walked unannounced into the Her- riott home. After seeing that her company was seated around the fire and duly inquiring after their health, she turned to Matilda and asked, " Where is your baby?" "O, sitting up to the outside of the house!" was the mother's answer, and sure enough, on going out, there in the gathering gloom of the night, was the baby strapped firmly to a board.
During that evening's visit, an incident occurred that greatly frightened Mrs. Herriott. The baby had been brought in out of the night air and leaned up against the wall on the inside, and host and hostess and their guests were sitting around the blazing fire engaged in conversation. Mrs. Herriott and Matilda were at one side, and Mr. Herriott next to them, and after him came Dr. Grey Eyes, and then Jocko, and last of all an "ill-looking Indian" whose name has been forgotten. During the conversation, Jocko arose to his feet and presented Mr. Herriott a paper, which, on reading, he found to be a certificate from Gen. Cass, showing that Jocko had rendered important services to the United States in the War of ISI2. Ma-
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tilda had become interested in the matter by this time, and as some- thing had been said about Pittsburg, she said to Mr. Herriott to ask Jocko if he had ever been there; and in response to the question, Jocko took a coal and making a map on the floor, pointed out the place where Pitsburg should be, and said " Yes." "Ever been to Philadelphia?" "Yes." "To Baltimore?" "Yes." "To Wash- ington?" "Yes." And to other questions as to what places he had been in and persons seen in Washington, prompt answers came. After that Matilda and Mr. Herriott became engaged in conver- sation and during its progress Mr. Herriott noticed a pallor over- spread his wife's face, followed by a visible trembling. Becoming alarmed, he was in the act of going to her relief, when he felt a clutch at his hair, and on turning around encountered Jocko, who had his knife out and was going through the motions of taking his scalp. This was Jocko's joke.
The high and dry lands bordering upon Indian Creek, in Hens- ley Township, afforded inviting camping grounds to the Indians. From this circumstance came the name. In the fall of 1824, the largest number of Indians ever known to enter the county, camped on Indian Creek. The number was estimated by the settlers at 100, consisting mainly of Miamis, with a few Pottawattmies. After a short time there the last, numbering about twelve, withdrew from the Miami camp, and made another on the south fork of the creek, in the southeast quarter of Section 27. After the fall hunt was over, about half of the entire number went elsewhere, and those left behind staid there all through the winter and until late in the fall of 1825. These Indians seem to have behaved them- selves quite well. Among so many, it would be strange if there were not some who would steal. Richardson Hensley had cause to complain of the squaws in green corn time. Under pretense of buying his roasting ears, they would steal them before his eyes. " In spite of me," he said to the writer, " they would pull the ears and hide them in their blankets. Often I have jerked at one cor- ner of the blanket and scattered the stolen corn on the ground." They also stole a dog belonging to John Stevens. His boys, Alex- ander and Gideon, and a foster son, Ephraim Hareell, went to their camp on Sunday in search of the dog, which they found tied securely, and took him home with them. The camp was deserted save an old man and his squaw. Their wigwam was made by stretching skins over a pole frame. In the center of the ground floor was a fire over which they had hung a brass pot, in which they were cooking an unwashed and unskinned bear's head, together with a quantity of black beans.
It seems that no Indian ever seriously violated the civil laws in
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Johnson County. If the Burkhart horses were stolen by the Indians, it was never known. On one occasion a riot was threatened by the In- dians in Franklin, which at the time, foreboded evil. It was in 1825, and most likely the Indians from Indian Creek were the chief actors. It was on the occasion of the fall muster, and Bartholo- mew Carroll, of Union Township, came, provided with whisky and honey, to sell to all who would buy. The Indians present were among his best patrons. Toward evening they became somewhat boisterous and some of them insisted on having whisky and honey free. This being refused, they mounted the wagon and proceeded to help themselves. With the aid of the cooler heads of the band. they were induced to desist. Mounting their ponies, however, they galloped around the public square whooping and screeching at the top of their voices, and finally left town. The militia present were armed and it required all the persuasive influence of the leading citizens, to hold the more hot-headed in check and prevent a collis- ion. After 1826, but few, if any, Indians ever returned to the county to engage in any of their pursuits.
CHAPTER II.
BY D. D. BANTA.
EARLY SETTLEMENTS- TERRITORIAL TIMES -TRACES AND EARLY ROADS - THE WHETZELS- THE BLUFFS -STRUG- GLE FOR THE STATE CAPITOL - FIRST PERMANENT SETTLE- MENT -STORY OF THE SETTLEMENT BY TOWNSHIPS-THIE WHITE AND BLUE RIVER SETTLEMENTS - FOUNDING FRANK- LIN - REMINISCENCES.
NDIANA was admitted as a State of the Union in 1816. Delegates from thirteen counties framed the new State's constitution. The population at the time of ad- mission was 63,897. The settled parts constituted a nar- row fringe, extending from Wayne County, down the Ohio State line, to the Ohio River, thence down that to the Wabash, and thence up that to Fort Harrison, now Terre Haute. Throughout the entire region north of the border, savage Indiansroamed. The White River, and its numerous tributaries, were owned and occupied mainly by the Delawares. The region was no less remarkable for the great abundance of game found in its forests, and of fish in its waters, than for the fertility of
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its soil. The Indians were loth to part with their possessions, and the white people eagerly desirous of having them do so. After one or two abortive attempts to procure a cession, in October, ISIS, a treaty was made, under which the Delawares surrendered their claim, and consented to their removal to a new home beyond the Mississippi, which was effected in the spring of 1821. Thereafter, their old possessions were known far and wide as the " New Pur- chase." Bands of Weas, Potawattamies and Miamis claimed small parts of this territory, and ceded the same, as did the Delawares, but the latter held undivided claim to all of Johnson County.
Before the time of their going, the smoke from white men's cabins was seen in many places throughout their domains. Bloom- ington, on the border, was settled in the early part of 1819. The same year, three permanent settlements were planted in Barthol- omew County, one in Morgan and one in Marion, where Indianapolis was subsequently located. In ISIS, James Wilson settled on the Blue River banks, four miles north of the present site of Shelby- ville, and in the following year, a number of other pioneers, with their families, moved into Shelby County.
Trappers' and hunters' camps were to be met with along the streams, and in other favored places, all through the ceded region. It was not only celebrated for its great abundance of game, but also for its fur bearing animals, the most valuable of which was the beaver. Their dams and ponds were everywhere to be seen in the level lands of the country. Long anterior to the time of the treaty, the White River country had been the scene of the trappers' exploits. The Canadian voyageurs came as early as in the latter half of the seventeenth century. A hundred years afterward they were followed by the agents of the Northwest Company, and of the Mackinaw Company, which were British corporations. The American Fur Company, with John Jacob Astor at its head, fol- lowed about the beginning of the present century. All these drew large supplies of furs from the White River country.
The territory framed into Johnson County, lay along the line of an ancient Indian highway. Geologists tell us that in the night of time there flowed a glacial river southward through Johnson County toward the Falls of the Ohio, at Louisville. The print of its bed remains to this day. That ancient river bed presents a comparatively smooth and even surface, nearly or quite all the way to the Falls. The buffalo that once traveled in herds from their winter feeding grounds in the Kentucky canebrakes to their sum- mer pastures, on the Wabash, doubtless traveled over that smooth and level, ancient river bed. Certain it is the Indians did, and after
19
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the day of civilization had come, the engineers laid out the line of railroad'from Jeffersonville to Indianapolis upon it.
The Falls was a celebrated Indian crossing place. At the mouth of the Kentucky River was another. Thence, bearing northwesterly, a trail ran till it united with the Ancient River trail, not far from the upper rapids of the Inquah sahquah, the Indian name for the Driftwood River. At the mouth of the Kentucky, Brig. Gen. Charles Scott, with Soo mounted men, crossed the Ohio, on the 23d.of May, 1791, on the march to the Wea village, eight miles below the present site of Lafayette. The route he took was, according to his report, "the most direct," and this would be along the line of the Kentucky River trail to the Driftwood, and thence along the Ancient River trail, through the territory of Johnson County. Not many years ago a broken sword blade and hilt with a pistol attached, was found in a running stream four miles south of Franklin. It be- longed to a pattern of cavalryman's weapon that has long been out of vogue, but was to be met with a hundred years ago, and the in- ference seems reasonable that it was cast aside or lost by one of Gen. Scott's troopers on that march. All through the period of border warfare, the Indians living upon the Wabash and upon the upper waters of the White River, made frequent forays along these trails to the Kentucky settlements. Many a pale face's scalp has, no doubt, been carried at the belt of a brave, and many a white prisoner, foot sore and weary, has been driven by his savage cap- tors, through the gloomy forests of this county. Later, in the con- tests between civilization and savagery, the yeomen sokliery from the settlements in the river counties, not infrequently followed the Ancient River trail in pursuit of their savage foes. Maj. Tipton, Col. Bartholomew, and others, were leaders in these expeditions, but there came a day when the wars were ended, and the trails be- came highways of peace. In the settlement of central Indiana the Kentucky River trail and the Ancient River trail were for a time important highways. Some of the first settlers found their way to the White River wilderness by them. Some time in 1819, Capt. Richard Berry, following the Kentucky River trail out to the Blue River crossing, built a cabin and established a ferry. North and south of his new home he blazed the old trail, and thereafter it came to be known as "Berry's trail." From the crossing at Blue River (a mile below the present site of Edinburg), it ran in a general northwest direction till it crossed Burkhart's Creek, in Sec- tion 20, Township 12 north, Range + east. Thence it kept a gen- eral north course, passing the Big Spring at Hopewell, and entering Marion County territory near the northwest corner of Pleasant Township.
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Long after the settlement of the county, and the abandonment of the trail, evidences of it could be seen in the notches and blazes on the trees along its course. Two miles north of the Big Spring, at Hopewell, near the late residence of Daniel Covert, and in the near vicinity of a deer lick, in addition to axe marks on the trees, inscriptions cut in the bark were long to be seen. On one were the letters : IBMAL ISI2. On another : E. MAXWELL 1814 .* Still another was the legend, " FORTY RODS TO WATER A never-failing spring burst from the banks of the creek at the place indicated.
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