USA > Indiana > LaPorte County > Michigan City > History of Michigan City, Indiana > Part 8
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25
59
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN CITY
he soon sold it to George W. and Reuben Allen, the sale being approved by the president June 15, 1834. He was a con- spicuous figure at the Chicago treaty in September, 1833, and was there given substantial recognition, as follows :
"John Bt. Chandonai, ($1,000 of this sum to be paid to Robert Stuart, agent of the American Fur Company, by the particular request of Jno. B. Chan- donai) $2,500"
"John Bt. Chandonai. $1,000
Charles Chandonai) For each of whom R. A.( 400
Mary Chandonai ) Forsyth is Trustee ( 400'
While a resident of this county Chan- donnais was a trader and he did some- thing toward cultivating his land, be- sides giving his support to all public enterprises and seeking to interest the Indians in the policy of settling on farms. If he loved liquor, so did some others about him who had enjoyed more civilized associations than he had had ; and if he was prosecuted for selling spi- rits to Indians, and for affrays, so also were some of the foremost business and professional characters in the communi- ty-some of them for gambling and in- toxication in addition. About 1833 the Indian woman with whom he had been living as his wife died and there soon came to him a French woman whom he had previously married in Detroit and who was the mother of two of his chil- dren. This was the Mary B. Chaudonia (as she wrote it) of the St. Joseph coun- ty records, for to that county the family removed shortly before the death of the
husband in 1837. The widow petitioned congress on behalf of herself and chil- dren to grant her a section of land in remembrance of her husband's services to the country, and after years of delay a report was made May 1I, 1846, a part of which has been quoted above, which closed thus :-
"The committee being well satisfied of the truth of all the facts above stated- regretting that so just a claim should have been so long neglected, thereby permitting the widow and children of so meritorious a man to drag out life in penury and want-hereby report a bill for their relief, and recommend its pass- age without delay."
Accordingly a bill was passed and ap- proved March 3, 1847, giving half a sec- tion to the widow and a quarter section each to the two children, Charles B. and Mary L. The widow survived both of these children and lived with her grand- children until her death in St. Joseph county about 1876. Two of these de- scendants, Charles T. Chaudonia and Edward Breset, were faithful Union sol- diers in the civil war. This petty chief of the Pottawattomies, whose blood on both sides was inimical to the American cause, is worth remembering in Michi- gan City, for he it was who more than any other single individual stayed the treacherous hands of the Indians and opened the path whereby the first settlers of the city made their entrance.
CHAPTER FIVE.
Inspecting the Premises.
The government title to the soil of the valley of Trail creek was acquired by a treaty held October 16, 1826, at the mouth of the Mississinewa river, near Peru, negotiated by Lewis Cass, James B. Ray and John Tipton, and attended by all the Pottawattomie chiefs of this region. Following this, and other treat- ies soon ensuing, the red natives were in- duced to leave their homes near the lake and remove to new places of residence in the far west, and by 1837 the migration was completed. The white man was left in possession and with title. Only a few straggling Indians remained. As com- pared with the -St. Joseph and Wabash river regions there were few of the cop- per colored natives in this county after 1830, and those who dwelt or visited here after that were not troublesome. They were a careless, improvident, drunken lot in the main and they did not much frequent the sand and marshy areas about the lake shore.
With the close of the war, the re- establishment of Fort Dearborn in 1816 and the increasing negotiation of Indian treaties there came into this region a new class of travelers, those who came, not as soldiers, traders or missionaries, but as explorers, tourists and prospectors. With these new adventurers into the wilder- ness there was a disposition to write journals and letters of description. To such writings we must turn to find the earliest portrayals of the spot where Michigan City has grown up, for among all those visitors whose names are re-
corded in the preceding pages not one left any known writing descriptive of the place ; even the French agent Courte- manche, who mentioned everything. made no statement relating to Trail creek or Hoosier Slide, though in his journey of 1702 between the St. Joseph and Chicago rivers he quite likely slept within the shelter of that towering peak of sand. During Hull's administration as governor of Michigan, when our creek was in that territory, he gathered much information pertaining to this district and its military and trading positions ; but all that is left concerning this locali- ty is what appears on a map made for him before 1812 showing the "Riv. du Chemin," the "Little Fort" near the head of Fort creek, the "Grand Killamic R." a Pottawattomie village on its southern bank, and a table of distances as follows :- "From Chicagou to the lit- tle Kellomick is 15 miles-From the lit- tle to the Big Kellomick, 21 miles. To the little Fort 12. To the River du Chemin 14." A military messenger who passed along the old trace from Fort Wayne to Fort Dearborn, through the sites of South Bend and Michigan City, in 1815, said that in all that distance there was not a single house of any kind visible.
The Western Gazetteer of 1817 men- tions the "Chemin river," which, it says, "has forty miles of navigable water," and it says further that "there is in use a portage of four miles between the Che- min and Little Kennomic." October 4,
ST. PAUL'S CHURCH
62
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN CITY
1817, Judge Samuel A. Storrow of Mas- sachusetts, judge advocate general of the army, left Fort Dearborn after a visit of inspection while he was on a tour of the west, and traveled to Fort Wayne on horseback by the same route. This gentleman recorded no impression of Trail creek, but the next visit of which there is definite knowledge was both interesting and productive, for it resulted in the earliest account we have of the conditions prevailing at the mouth of that stream while the spot was in its original state of nature. Deeming it im- portant that the vaguely known region of the Red river of the north should be explored President Monroe, early in 1823, directed the war department to cause an expedition to be immediately fitted out for that purpose, which was done in accordance with orders to Major S. H. Long, an experienced western ex- plorer, dated April 25.
The route prescribed was from Phila- delphia, via Wheeling and Fort Wayne, to Chicago, and on to the source of St. Peter's river and the northern boundary of the United States. This was the first officially authorized exploration of the valley of Trail creek. The party was composed of Stephen H. Long, major of U. S. topographical engineers, coni- mander ; Thomas Say, the great natural- ist, who went with Long to the Rocky mountains in 1819 and in 1825 identi- fied himself with the New Harmony movement in Indiana ; William H. Keat- ing, geologist, who wrote the narrative of the expedition ; Samuel Seymour, a noted artist ; James E. Colhoun, astrono- mer, and the necessary attendants! Reaching Fort Wayne May 26, and pausing long enough to gather a great deal of valuable information about the Pottawattomies, they set out three days later on the military express route to Fort Dearborn, following the only path then in use between the two points. The
party then consisted of the five princi- pals already named and Private Bemis, of the Fort Dearborn garrison, as guide ; David McKee, aged 23, a blacksmith en route to Fort Dearborn in the employ of the government pursuant to the treaty of 1821, and Andrew Allison, a negro servant. They were mounted and had two led horses carrying provisions. Passing the Elkhart river and the south bend of the St. Joseph, they turned aside from their route to visit the Carey mission near Niles, then seven months old and in charge of Rev. Isaac McCoy. The account of Keating, the historio- grapher, then proceeds :-
"Having engaged an Indian to lead us back from Mr. McCoy's to the Chicago trace, we resumed our journey on the 3d of June. Our guide's hoary head would have satisfied even Humboldt himself, that his assertion 'that the hair of Indians never becomes gray,' was too general. We have met with many in- stances, and the circumstance is so nat- ural that we should not have mentioned it, but for the importance attached to the slightest observation of a traveller so accurate as Humboldt generally is. After travelling about ten miles through a prairie, [this was Portage Prairie] we parted from our guide, who considered himself amply rewarded with half a pound of gunpowder. We then entered upon what is termed the Fourteen-Mile prairie, [Terre Coupee] which, for the first seven miles presented an extensive plain, uninterrupted by the least eleva- tion, and undiversified by the prospect of a single tree. * *
* ** At noon we rested our horses in the vicinity of the remains of an Indian village named the Grand Quoit, and we observed a few Indian lodges scattered along the edge of the forest which encloses this prairie. On discovering our party on the prairie, the tenants of the lodges immediately rode out of the woods, advanced toward us, and opened a conversation with our guides. Their intercourse with white men, and the consequent departure from their original customs, were observable in the circumstance of their commencing the conversation, and in their minute in-
63
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN CITY
quiries respecting our object and inten- tions, in visiting the country. They are said to experience a great scarcity of food, which we can readily believe from the total absence of any kind of game which we had observed upon the route. An Indian who rode up near us, while we were partaking of our dinner, stop- ped, and appeared to long after food ; but called for none. We offered him some, which he very thankfully accepted, and seemed to eat with great voracious- ness."
The village of the Grand Quoit (the name is neither French nor Indian) was probably, judging from the description of the country and the distances men- tioned, the old Indian settlement found six years later by the government sur- veyors in section 18 of Wills township, and resorted to by the red natives as a dancing ground until about 1834. There is no evidence of any other Indian vil- lage in that vicinity west of Grapevine creek that could have been seen by the expedition. The narrative continues :-
"At about forty-three miles from the Carey station, the trail, which we follow- ed struck the shores of Lake Michigan ; this was a source of great gratification to us ; as the last twelve miles of our road had been very dangerous, on account of the numerous deep holes formed in it; to these may be added the many super- ficial roots that projected from the beech trees, in every direction, and that ex- posed the horses to frequent stumbling. The forest was almost exclusively com- posed of the finest growth of beech ; on some of the higher grounds we found, in great plenty, the partridge or fox- berry, (Gaultheria procumbens,) with its aromatic red fruit, in a state of perfect maturity ; it was accompanied by the whortleberry in full blossom. We saw this day the first white pine, and in some places this tree was very abundant. We had been following for some time the valley of a small stream, called by the French, Riviere du Chemin, (Trail riv- er,) [this is the first appearance of the English name] but on approaching near to its mouth, our path winded to the
south, and we found ourselves at the base of a sand-hill of about twenty feet in height; the fog which arose behind it, and the coolness of the air warned us of our approach to the lake; and on turning along the base of the hill, we discovered ourselves to be on the beach of Lake Michigan. The scenery changes here most suddenly ; instead of the low, level and uniformly green prairies, through which we had been travelling for some time past, or of the beech swamp which had offered us such diffi- culties during the last four hours of our ride, we found ourselves transported, as it were, to the shores of an ocean.
"We were near to the southern ex- tremity of the lake; the view, towards the north, was boundless ; the eve meet- ing nothing but the vast expanse of wa- ter, which spread like a sea, its surface at that time as calm and unruffled as though it were a sheet of ice. Towards the south, the prospect was limited to a few hundred yards, being suddenly cut off by a range of low sand-hills, which arose to a height varying from twenty to forty feet ; in some instances rising per- haps to upwards of one hundred feet. When we first approached the lake, it was covered with a mist, which soon vanished, and the bright sun, reflected upon the sand and water, produced a glare of light quite fatiguing to the eye. Our progress was in a south-westwardly direction, along the beach, which remind- ed us of that of the Atlantic on the coast of New Jersey. The sand-hills are un- dulating and crowned at their summits with a scrubby growth of white pine and furze: while the brow, which faces the lake, is quite bare. In the rear of the hills, but invisible from the beach spreads a level country supporting a scattering growth of white pine, oak, beech, hophorn-beam, (Ostrya virgin- ica,) &c. East and west of us, a contin- uous narrow beach, curved gradually towards the north, and bounded by the lake and the hills, was all that the eye could observe. At our evening's encamp- ment of the 4th of June, we were at the southernmost extremity of the lake, and could distinctly observe that its south- eastern corner is the arc of a greater cir- cle than the south-western. * * ** * The streams passed this day, during our
..
64
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN CITY
ride along the beach, were inconsider- able ; the first is termed the Riviere des Bois, probably from the quantity of drift-wood observed near it; the English appellation for it is Stick river; [this probably has reference to Fort creek, in Porter county : in an Indiana map of 1820 the Little Calumet is designated as the Styx ;] the second which we met was the Big Calamick, (Kenomokonk of the Indians,) where the party dispersed, during the evening, each to attend to his own avocations.
Next morning, June 5, the party push- ed along the beach, crossing the Calu- met near its mouth and passing the scene of the massacre of 1812, and reached Fort Dearborn in the afternoon, having met with no adventure other than to escape shooting what they supposed to be a wolf but which was a dog belong- ing to a very dirty Indian who lived in a hut near the lake in Indiana. The pub- lication of Keating's report of the ex- ploration was not calculated to attract settlers to the Trail creek valley. In the summer of 1824 James Galloway rode from his home at Sandusky to Fort Dearborn on horseback by the Michigan City route. After trapping and trading he returned two years later and took his family to Chicago by water, with a large stock of goods which at first the Amer- ican Fur company prevented him from landing but was later forced to admit by the insistence of the few people there though the military commander threw the weight of his influence in the com- pany's favor. In the summer of 1826 Mark Beaubien passed down Trail creek on his way to Chicago to visit his elder brother, Jean B. Beaubien, and he spoke thus of the trip: "I arrived in Chicago in the year of 1826, from Detroit ; came with my family by team ; no road only Indian trail. I had to hire an Indian to show me the road to Chicago. I camped out doors and bought a log house from Jim Kinzie. There was no town laid
out ; didn't expect no town." He built a hotel later and entered into competition with Samuel Miller, who was one of the first inhabitants of Michigan City. In 1827-8 David McKee, whom we have met with the Long expedition, was the government mail carrier between Fort Dearborn and Fort Wayne, and his road was by Trail creek. Galloway, Beau- bien, Miller and McKee were all con- nected, by marriage or business, with the Clyburns, Benedicts, and Eahearts who formed the first settlement on Door Prairie and with the Kinzie family. It has been stated on a previous page that the first survey ever made on the site of Michigan City was that of E. P. Hen- dricks in laying down the northern boundary of Indiana. As he was trav- ersing the lake coast to get ten miles northing for his starting point due east, he entered in his field notes of October II, 1827, this item: "A stream, 50, NW.," meaning that he crossed a stream fifty links wide, flowing northwesterly and, so far as he knew, without a name. It was Trail creek. He crossed it at about noon and reached the boundary the same evening. Here is his descrip- tion of the lake shore as he saw it from about where Miller's station is to the Michigan line :-
"The lake coast, so far as I traversed it, is a continued chain of hills formed of beautiful white sand, in most places very high, and little or no vegetation. Back of these sand hills it is generally swamp or marsh, therefore there are few places that the lake can be approached without difficulty. No harbors or islands are to be seen.'
Hendricks did not dream that, within ten years after he wrote, Indiana City, City West and Michigan City would all be raised up as hopeful rivals of Chicago with their harbors, the last to endure, the others to pass into the hazy realm of romance. This mention of the lack of harbors on Indiana soil was a disappoint-
65
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN CITY
ment to the legislature, which then had the Michigan road in mind, but, with the contested northern boundary dispute in view, that body promptly approved the Hendricks survey by a resolution of January 17, 1828. Michigan City owes its origin to the Michigan road, a his- tory of which will appear in another chapter, and the explorations made in pursuance of that project of internal im- provement are therefore of great his- torical importance in this locality. It was the dream of a harbor that led In- diana to insist upon a northern boundary ten miles north of that claimed by Mich- igan ; it was the same vision that led to the insertion of the second article in the treaty of October 16, 1826, whereby the Pottawattomies ceded lands in their ter- ritory for the purposes of a road to the lake, and it was to admit of the construc- tion of this road to a lake harbor that congress, March 2, 1827, passed the ces- sion over to the state. When the gen- eral assembly next met it acted prompt- ly in accepting the donation and the au- thority conferred by congress under the treaty and passed the act of January 24, 1828, out of which our city grew. This act appointed "John McDonald of Da- viess county, Chester Elliot of Warwick, and John I. Neely of Gibson," as com- missioners to survey and mark the pro- posed road, which was thenceforth called the Michigan road and was to extend from the Ohio river to the shore of Lake Michigan through Indianapolis, and in- structed them to "proceed to examine all the bays, inlets and estuaries of rivers on that part of Lake Michigan lying within the state of Indiana in order to ascertain where the best harbor can be had, * * * and suitable site for a commercial town ; and survey and mark a road by the most eligible route to In- dianapolis."
The three legislative commissioners, with the necessary assistants, Indian
guides (Joe Truckee was chief guide ) and camp equipment, proceeded imme- diately to the lake and thoroughly ex- plored the Indiana coast in harmony with their instructions. The report of this exploration and the map filed there- with are most unfortunately lost, but the mouth of Trail creek was decided upon as "the most suitable place for a com- mercial town, where the best harbor could be had," and there, June 12, 1828, for the second time in its history, a sur- veyor's instrument was set up within the present limits of Michigan City. On that date the northern terminus of the road was marked and the party started toward the south, a band of Pottawat- tomies of uncertain amity hanging on its flanks. Here are the field notes for the first two miles :-
"Thursday, June 12. Beginning at the mouth of the river Styr or [ italicised words crossed out] Trail creek five miles II chains [from] the place where the north line of the state of Indiana strikes the shore of the lake as measured along the shore, thence south 62 deg. east 80 chains to a tree marked I M. At 20 chains from the lake a creek crosses the line, course cast, 20 links wide. Soil, sand; timber, mostly black and white oak and some pine. Southing 36.32. Easting 71.28. 2nd Mile. Continue south 62 deg. cast 28 chains, crossing a small marsh, otherwise soil and timber like last mile ; thence south 8 chains to a pine 12 inches in diameter marked 2 M. Tim- ber, pine and oak. 14 mile crossway- ing.'
The name Styx, first written and then crossed out, indicated some confusion in the minds of the commissioners. It will be remembered that the Long expedition mentioned what is now Fort creek as the Riviere des Bois, or Stick river, from the driftwood at its mouth, and that on the 1820 map the Little Calumet is mark- ed as the Styx. When Jeremiah Smith surveyed the Kankakee region for the government a few years later he met
66
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN CITY
with such experiences that he suggested Styx as an appropriate name for that peculiar stream. This first survey of the Michigan road followed, approxi- mately, the old Indian trail now occu- pied, as straightened, by the Yellow river road, and made the distance to Logans- port seventy-four miles. But in confer- ence with the governor the route was re- jected because of the difficulties encoun- tered in crossing the Kankakee marshes and a new survey was decided upon and made in the same year by way of the south bend of the St. Joseph river, 102 miles to Logansport. The course in Michigan City, and for six miles, was the same as in the first survey and was run October 31, 1828, the report being filed with the secretary of state Decem- ber 9 following. The map accompany- ing this report, now nearly destroyed by decay and preserved in the land depart- ment of the state auditor's office, is the carliest map found giving an English name to our little stream. The field notes describe Trail creek as one hundred links wide some distance above the mouth, the soil as sandy, the timber as oak, beech, sugar, etc., and the under- brush as spice, with level land inclined to be wet for the first mile and rolling land for the second. Referring to this report in his message of 1829 Governor Ray said that the road "terminates at the mouth of the river Dysman, where a har- bour for vessels may be easily made." The legislature, hoping to find better ground and straighter lines in places, or- dered a new survey "by the south bend of the Big St. Joseph," but without changing the general route. This work was done and the report, signed by Ches- ter Elliot alone and designated as the second survey, being the third in reality but the second ordered by the legislature, was filed June 12, 1829. The field notes for the first two miles are as follows :-
"Beginning at the mouth of Trail creek, or riviere du Chemin, a stream 1.25 1ks. wide entering Lake Michigan 5 miles and II chains from where the shore of said lake is intersected by the north line of the state of Indiana, thence south 10 deg. east 5 1k., thence south 62 deg. east 15 lk. to a creek 15 1ks. wide course NE, thence S 62 deg E 60 lk to a small white oak marked one mile. Dry sandy land, timber dwarfish oak, a good scite for a town but not for a harbor. 2nd mile. South 75 deg. east 40 1k. to a branch 12 1k. wide course northeast ; same course 40 lk. to a black oak 10 inches in diameter marked 2 M. Soil second quality, timber oak and pine."
This line, like the second, followed closely the ancient Indian trail from the creek to the south side of Hudson lake, through Springville and Rolling Prairie, and crossed the old Sac trail at the "bootjack." Early in 1830 the actual construction of the road was begun at the Ohio river by Samuel Hanna of Wayne county, William Polke of Knox and Abraham McLelland of Sullivan as commissioners, and the contractors were urged northward as rapidly as possible. Later Noah Noble was appointed a com- missioner and, under his supervision, William Polke was placed in charge of the northern division and assumed full control when Mr. Noble resigned to be- come governor in December, 1831. Judge Polke was indefatigable in his labors for the road and made frequent trips to the lake. In the winter of 1830-I he carefully explored townships . 36, 37 and 38 of ranges one to four, se- lecting the most desirable lands to be taken for the state under the govern- ment grant. In the ensuing spring he again went over the tracts to confirm his selections, and in the next winter he sur- veyed them in person. Among the sec- tions chosen were 31 to 34, in and ad- joining Michigan City. To General John Tipton he wrote June 14, 1831 :-
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.