USA > Indiana > Porter County > History of Porter County, Indiana : a narrative account of its historical progress, its people and its principal interests > Part 3
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Geologists account for the formation of the Calumet or Northern region as follows: After the formation of the terminal moraine, the glacier slowly receded toward the northeast, leaving between the great ice wall and the inner slope of the moraine a low area, which was soon covered with water from the melting glacier and from rainfall. This
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HISTORY OF PORTER COUNTY
body of water, known to geologists as "Lake Chicago," continued to rise until it overflowed the moraine at the lowest point, which happened to be near the present city of Chicago, and through the ontlet thus form- ed the waters of the glacial lake found their way to the Des Plaines river, and ultimately to the Mississippi. Blatchley says: "The area of this lake was necessarily a variable one; since the ice dam on the north was all the time slowly receding. However, the name Lake Chicago is applied to all its stages from the time of the first opening of the Chicago outlet until its final closing on account of the overflow of the Great Lakes, finding for itself a new channel through the Niagara river."
With the opening of the Niagara channel and the Great Lakes taking something like their present form, the waters of Lake Chicago disappear- ed; leaving a low tract of land between the terminal moraine and the lake basin. Leverett has discovered three well defined ridges which mark in part the old shore line of Lake Chicago at different stages. To these ridges he has given the name of beaches. The upper or Glenwood beach was thrown up by the first stage of the lake and is so named because it is well exposed at the town of Glenwood, a few miles south of Chi- cago. It enters Indiana at Dyer and continues due east unbroken for a little more than two miles, where it becomes broken into sand hills or dunes, which extend to a point about two miles east of Schererville, where they come to an end.
The middle or Calumet beach, formed at a later stage, enters Indiana about four miles north of Dyer and extends almost due east for a dis- tanec of eight miles. Here it is joined by Glenwood beach, which makes its reappearance near the village of Griffith, and side by side they trend northeastward to a point near the Calumet river about two miles north- cast of Crisman, Porter county, where they terminate abruptly.
Again the waters of the lake receded, and when they again advanced they threw up the third ridge, known as the lower or Tolleston beach, since it passes through the Indiana town of that name. It crosses the western boundary of the state a mile north of the Little Calunnet river. and from there extends almost due east to Miller's Station on the Balt-
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HISTORY OF PORTER COUNTY
imore & Ohio and Lake Shore railroads. Here it diverges slightly to the northeast and ends near the northeast corner of Portage township, Porter county.
.North of the Calumet river, in Westchester and Pine townships, are two low lying beaches, thought to be a continuation of the Glenwood and Calumet beaches. In places they are separated by a narrow marsh lying a short distance north of the Michigan Central railway. East of Furnessville the southern beach lies mainly south of the Michigan Cen- tral and the northern beach enters Laporte county not far hom the Northern Indiana Penitentiary.
Between the beaches thus formed by the advancing and receding waters of old Lake Chicago, there have been deposited sand and silt until the Calumet region has been built up to its present state. The amount of sand thrown up by the waves of Lake Michigan upon the shores of Lake and Porter counties has been thus compted by Dr. Ed- mund Andrews: "For 25 miles west of Michigan City the beach main- tains an average eross section of about 6,000 square yards, and its con- tents are 264,000,000 cubic yards. In this division the beach is in the form of a lofty belt of sand dunes, about one-third of a mile wide and in places 160 to 200 feet in height. In the next eight miles (extending to the Indiana line) the beach spreads out into a broad belt of low parallel ridges, about two miles in extreme width. This division has a eross seetion of about 16,000 square yards, after dedueting the sand which was deposited by Lake Chieago. It contents amounted to 225,280,000 cubic yards."
The sand dunes form the most picturesque and striking feature of the country's seenery. Sometimes they are great ridges of sand, a mile or more in length, but more frequently they are found as isolated hills. The highest of these hills is Mount Tom in Westchester township, the erest of which is abont 190 feet above the waters of Lake Michigan. In the vicinity of Dune Park the ridges are almost entirely devoid of vegetation. Blatchley says: "Their bared surface, 50 to 100 feet in height, with sand piled just as steeply as it will lie, gleams and glistens
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HISTORY OF PORTER COUNTY
in the sunlight and reflects the summer's heat with unwonted foree. Other ridges and rounded hills, especially those back some distance from the lake, are often covered with black oak, northern serub pine, stunted white pine, and many shrubs and herbs peculiar to a soil of sand. The roots of this vegetation form a network about the sand grains and pre- vent the leveling of the dunes. In time, however, a tree is uprooted, or a forest fire burns off the vegetation. The protecting network of root- lets is destroyed. A bare spot results over which the winds freely play. A great storm from the north or northwest seoops out a small bowl- shaped cavity, and, carrying the sand either south of southwest, drops it over the hillside. The cavity is cut deeper and wider by succeeding storms, and a great 'blow-out' in time results. Where a few years be- fore stood a high hill or unbroken ridge now exists a valley, or a cavity in the hillside, aeres, perhaps, in extent, and reaching nearly to the level of the lake. The sands which onee were there now constitute new hills or ridges which have traveled, as it were, a greater distance inland. In many places the drifting sands have wholly or partly covered a tall pine or oak tree. Where but partly covered, its dead (sometimes liv- ing) top projects for a few feet above the erest of the hill or ridge. One may rest in its shade and not realize that he is sheltered by the upper limbs of a large tree whose trunk and main branches lic far beneath him embedded in the sands."
The Calumet river, which drains this northern region of the county, has its source in Laporte county a short distance east of the Porter county line. It is a slow sluggish stream with low banks, subject to overflow with the melting of the snows and the usual rainfall of early spring. After erossing the county line about half a mile north of the morainie belt, it flows almost due west through Pine and Westchester townships to Dune Park, where it turns slightly to the sontheast and enters Lake county about a mile south of Long Lake. Then, following a westward course, it erosses the state line about three miles south of the city of Hammond. From this point it follows a northwesterly course to a point near Blue Island, Illinois, where it make a sharp curve,
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HISTORY OF PORTER COUNTY
flowing first northeast and then southeast, until it again enters the State of Indiana not far from Hammond. It then flows eastward and finally empties into Lake Michigan in section 31, township 37, north, range 7, west, less than three miles from the point where it first enters Lake county. To distinguish the two parallel streams flowing across Lake county, the one flowing westward is called the Little Calumet and the northern stream-the one flowing eastw, rd-is called the Grand Calumet. During the spring freshets, the C'alumet marshes become the temporary home of myriads of waterfowl and a fruitful field for the sportsman.
That portion of Porter county lying south of the southern border of the Valparaiso moraine is included in the Kankakee basin. Of this section about sixty-five square miles consist of swamp land proper and forty square miles of prairie, which lies from ton to forty feet above the level of the marsh lands. The Kankakee river, which forms the southern boundary of the county. is noted for the crookedness of its channel, its low banks and its sluggish current. From its source in a marsh about three miles southwest of the city of South Bend, Indiana, to where it crosses the state line at the southwest corner of Lake coun- ty is, in a direct line, about seventy-five miles. Yet, within that dis- tance the stream is said to make 2,000 bends and to flow a total distance ' of 240 miles.
The Kankakee marshes constitute the most extensive body of swamp land in the state. Some of the lands have been reclaimed and brought under cultivation. Before this was done the area of marsh lands in the seven counties drained by the Kankakee was estimated at 500,000 acres. As early as 1858 an effort was made to reclaim some of the marsh lands by the excavation of a large ditch. The experiment showed that the lands could be drained and a few years later the legislature of In- diana passed a law under which was organized the "Kankakee Valley Drainage Association," with power to levy assessments against the lands to be benefited. In many instances these assessments were opposed upon the grounds that they were nujust, excessive or partial; indigna-
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HISTORY OF PORTER COUNTY
tion meetings were held, and the opposition grew so formidable and de- termined that the association passed out of existence without making any serious attempt to carry out the works for which it was organized. Since then various schemes have been tried for the purpose of reclaiming the Jand. In 1870 another large ditch was dng. This was followed by dredging the tributaries of the Kankakee, which had a good effect. A mile of rock, seven feet in thickness, was removed from the river at Momence, Illinois, at the expense of the state of Indiana, and thousands of dollars have been expended in other directions. No richer soil can be found in the state. It is a dark, sandy loam, rich in organic matter, and ranges from three to six feet in depth. Where brought under cultivation good erops are the universal result. In 1897 Blatchley estimated the amount of unreclaimed marsh land in Porter county at 40,000 aeres, which he says "for at least four months of the year are covered with from one to five feet of water; and during the four remaining months this area is an immense bog or quagmire."
Geologically, Porter county is comparatively young. At several . points where deep bores have been driven the bed rock has generally been found to be the black Genesee shale of the Devonian age. In some places in Lake county it is the lower Helderberg limestone, and in others it is the Niagara limestone, both of the Upper Silurian age. Says Blatchley : "Could all the drift be removed from the surface of Lake and Porter counties the elevations of the different portions of the exposed surface would be found to vary but little, and the three formations-Genesee Shale, Lower Helderberg and Niagara limestones-would be exposed as the surface roek, each occupying its respective area above mentioned. If the black shale eould in turn be stripped from the area which it covers, beneath it would be found the Lower Helderberg, and beneath that the Niagara."
Consequently there are no fossils of importance to the scientist to be found in the county, except possibly a few belonging to the Silurian age, and these have been deposited by the glacial drift. Remains of the mastodon have been found in the Kankakee marsh three miles southeast
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HISTORY OF PORTER COUNTY
of Hebron, near Sandy Hook creek a short distance northwest of Konts, and in a marsh on Cobb's creek east of Hebron. In each of these cases a few bones or teeth were discovered while excavating a drainage diteh, and no systematie search was made for the rest of the skeleton. The most perfeet skeleton ever found in the county was the ove unearthed by some workmen engaged in excavating what is known as the Koselke diteh in Washington township in the fall of 1911. On November 4, 1911, a suit was filed by Mrs. Zada Cooper in the Porter Superior Court, claiming to be. "the owner of and lawfully entitled to possession of the following personal property, to wit: The head, consisting of the skull, upper and lower jaws, and teeth, fourteen vertebrae, two humeri, two ilnae, two patellae, twelve ribs, two tusks and other minor bones forming and mak- ing a part of a skeleton of a certain mastodon, a prehistorie animal of immense size," ete.
"William Hubbard, IIerman Shales and Jacob E. Davis, the men who discovered the skeleton; were made the defendents, and in her complaint Mrs. Cooper placed a value of $500 upon the bones, which she claimed had been discovered on a traet of land owned by her. The case was finally compromised, the plaintiff taking part of the skeleton, the defend- ents retaining possession of some of the bones, and a portion of the skele- ton was left in the ground. By a compromise of this character no one was materially benefited by the discovery. The mastodon inhabited this country at the close of the glacial period, and the remains found in Porter county were doubtless left there by one of the great masses of ice, probably the one which formed the Valparaiso moraine.
With regard to the economic geology of Porter county, it is worthy of note that it contains but few mineral productions of commercial value. Neither coal, building stone, oil nor natural gas has been found within its borders. Molding sand of fine quality occurs at several places, the best known deposits being near MeCool, in Portage township, and near the "Nickel Plate" railway a short distance southeast of the city of Valparaiso. In the marsh north of Furnessville and along the Sandy HIook creek in Morgan township there are large peat beds, but they have
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HISTORY OF PORTER COUNTY
never been developed, owing doubtless to the fact that coal ean be deliver- ed by the many railroads so cheaply that it would be unprofitable to work the peat deposits. Beneath the peat bogs, especially in the Calumet region, there are great quantities of limonite or hog iron ore. In the peat marsh north of Furnessville have been found masses of limonite weighing several hundred pounds, but the ore is too impure to compete with the high grade ores from the Lake Superior, Missouri and other iron mines. Some years ago a blast furnace was ereeted at Mishawaka, St. Joseph county, for the reduceton of the bog ores found in the Kankakee region, but it has long since ceased to exist.
In 1859 Richard Owen made a geological reconnaissance of Indiana, and in his report says: "On Mr. Ilowell's elevated land, about three- quarters of a mile southeast of Valparaiso, on section 30 (35 north, 5 west), we were shown good gray crystalline limestone which had been quarried and burned into lime; but as the layer is only two or three feet thick, and apparently loeal in extent, it was soon abandoned. Unfortu- nately, no fossils were found, the lithographie or lithologieal character however, indicates a rock of Upper Silurian age."
Subsequent investigation developed the fact that Mr. Howell did burn lime there, but the stone was not in strata, being set up on edge, the supply proved to be limited, and the stone was no doubt of the drift origin. In the fall of 1897 it was reported that an outerop of sandstone had been discovered on the land of John Tratebas in the western part of Liberty township in one of the Salt creek bluffs. Beneath some sixteen feet of soil, elay and sand was a vein of calcareous sandstone formed By the eementing action of carbonate of lime on the grains of sand. The blocks of it were rough and irregular in size, and when exposed showed a tendeney to disintegrate into loose sand.
From a commercial standpoint the most important mineral products of the county are the clay deposits which oceur at various places. These elays are sedimentary in their structure and are divided into two groups -- the "drift" clays and the "marly" clays. The drift clays are made into common briek and into drain tile at Hebron, Valparaiso and near
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HISTORY OF PORTER COUNTY
Chesterton, and the marly clays are manufactured into a fine quality of pressed front brick at Chesterton, Porter and Garden City. At the last named place there is an extensive deposit of a fine grained bluish gray clay, which a chemical analysis shows to be very similar in composition to the celebrated terra cotta clay used at Glenn's Falls, New York. The. pressed briek factory at Porter is one of the largest (if not the largest , in the state. It is owned and operated by the Chicago Hydraulie Press Briek Company and has been in operation siuee 1890. At Chesterton, less than a mife east, the Chicago Brick Company has a large plant, capable of turning out 35,000 brick daily. . There is also a company at Garden City which manufactures porous fire proof products, the clay being well adapted to that purpose.
Several artesian or flowing wells have been bored within the county. Near the northeast corner of Jackson township, just within the borders of the moraine, Edward Stevens put down a well in June, 1897, which proved to be a flowing well. The total depth was eighty-four feet, and the water rose through a two-inch pipe to a height of four feet above the surface with a flow of six gallons per minute. The Blair well, in the extreme northeastern corner of the county, has a depth of 840 feet and a flow of eighty gallons per minute. For a time a sanitarium was main- tained here for the treatment of patients, but after the death of the owner the use of the water for medical purposes has been practically aban- doned. The water contains 690 grains of solids to the gallon; chiefly chloride of sodium, bicarbonate of calcium, chloride of magnesium, sulph- ate of calcium and sulphate of potassium. The Chicago Hydraulic Press Brick Company bored a deep well at their works at Porter in the hope of obtaining natural gas. This developed into an artesian well with a flow of about 75 gallons per minute. Dr. J. H. Salisbury of the Northwestern University made an analysis of the water with the following result :
Grams per Gal.
Sodium chloride 208.76
Calcium chloride 51.93
Magnesium chloride 38.71
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HISTORY OF PORTER COUNTY
Ammonium chloride 0.44
Potassium chloride 13.18
· Potassium sulphate 17.08
Calcium carbonate 11.14
Silica
1.10
Total solids per gallon 342.34
Commenting upon his analysis, Dr. Salisbury said : "The water from Porter is very free from injurious organic matters. It is very useful for drinking at the well in cases which need alterative or laxative treatment; and it is also useful for baths and for sanitarium purposes. Its sulphuretted hydrogen will not long be retained if exposed to the air."
In his report for 1897 State Geologist Blatchley publishes a table of altitudes in Porter county, from which the following are taken, the figures in each ease representing the number of feet above esa level :
Chesterton, L. S. Railway 670
Coburg, B. & O. Railway 795
Crest of Moraine, see. 35, T. 36, R. 6 west 825
Crisman, railway erossing 645
Flint Lake (surface of water) 825
Furnessville 670
Kankakee river (Dunn's bridge) 663.7
Kouts 687
Morgan Prairie see. 36, T. 35, R. 5 west 758
Summit, near center sec. 30, T. 36, R. 5 west 888
Valparaiso, Grand Trunk station 820
Valparaiso, Court House yard 803
Wheeler 665
Woodville 721
By comparison of these altitudes with a map of the county one may get a fairly good idea of the general surface characteristics. The level marked "Summit" in the table was run by Henry Rankin while surveyor
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HISTORY OF PORTER COUNTY
of the county. The point. indicated is near the line between Jackson and Liberty townships, about four and a half miles north of Valparaiso, and is believed to represent the highest point of land in Porter county.
This chapter may be brought to an appropriate close by a brief men- tion of the fauna and flora of the county. Many of the animals that once roamed over this section of the country are extinct. While the region was inhabited by the Indians food and fur-bearing animals were plenti- ful. Notable among these were the Buffalo, deer, elk, otter and beaver. Smaller animals, some of which are still to be found, were the gray and fox squirrels, the skunk, the muskrat, the timber wolf and occasionally a porcupine. Around the lakes and swamps waterfowl were abundant, especially during their migrating seasons, and the streams teemed with edible fishes, making a dwelling place well suited to the Red man.
. In addition to this the primitive inhabitant found along the sand · ridges a profusion of wild fruits-cranberries, huckleberries, grapes, cherries, plums, etc. Wild rice grew in the marshes, and nut bearing trees of various kinds were to be found in the groves. Rev. E. J. Hill of Englewood, Illinois, has made a special study of the sand dune area, and has found there a number of species of plants not noted by botanists in other seetions of the state. In the Bulletin of the Chicago Academy of Science in 1891 was published a list of some one hundred and twenty of these species. Aside from the well known forest trees, this list in- eluded the white, red and dwarf birch, the common pawpaw, wild red, sand and choke-cherries, several varieties of grapes, violet prairie and bust clover, asters of different kinds, the golden rod, various speeies of sumach, and a large variety of wild flowers. State Geologist Blatchley says: "There is no better place for an extended botanical study of a limited area in the state than among the dunes, swamps, peat bogs, prairies and river bottoms of this area, and it is to be hoped that some one with leisure and ability will, before it is further modified by man, make a complete and permanent record of its flora."
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CHAPTER II
ABORIGINAL INHABITANTS
TIIE MOUND BUILDERS-WHO WERE TIIEY-DIFFERENT THEORIES-DISTRICTS -EFFIGY MOUNDS-PURPOSES FOR WHICH THE MOUNDS WERE ERECT- ED-MOUNDS IN NORTHERN INDIANA-IN PORTER COUNTY-PREIIISTORIC REMAINS-COLLECTIONS OF RELICS-THE MODERN INDIANS-POTTAWAT- OMIES-THEIR TRADITIONS AND CUSTOMS-THEIR ALLIANCES WITH THE FRENCH AND . ENGLISH-TREATIES OF CESSION-INDIAN TRAILS.
Before the white man the Indian; before the Indian the Mound Builder. Who were the Mound Builders? Whence came they and . wither did they go? These questions have enlisted the atention of ethnologists for many years, but they have never been definitely nor satisfactorily, answered, and probably never will be. The earthworks and implements left by the Mound Builders show that they practiced agriculture, and that in some respects they were more civilized than the Indians found here by the white men.
The glacial drift has revealed human bones near the skeletons of mastodons, and this fact has led some of the early writers-notably Fos- ter, Squier & Davis, Baldwin, Conant and Bancroft-to advance the . theory that the Mound Builders constituted a race of great antiquity-a race that has been extinct for thousands of years. Later investigations have caused other ethnologists to arrive at the conclusion that theMound Builders were the aneestors, and not so very remote either, of the Indians who inhabited North America at the time the continent was discovered Vol. 1-2
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HISTORY OF PORTER COUNTY
by Columbus. Among the representatives of this later school are Bishop Madison, Sehooleraft, Sir John Lubbock, Prof. Lucien Carr, of Cam- bridge, Massachusetts, and Cyrus Thomas of the United States Bureau of Ethnology.
All over that portion of the United States east of the Rocky moun- tains are scattered the mounds erected by this peculiar people. Mr. Thomas, in the Fifth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethmology, divides the country into eight districts, as follows: 1. Wisconsin includ- ing the state of that name; 2. Illinois and Upper Mississippi, embracing eastern Iowa, northeastern Missouri and northern and central Illinois; 3. Ohio, which includes the State of Ohio, the western part of -West Vir- ginia and eastern Indiana ; 4. New York and the lake region of the central portion ; 5. The Appalachian distriet, embracing western North Carolina, eastern Tennessee, southwestern Virginia and southeastern Kentucky ; 6 .. The Middle Mississippi district, which ineludes southeastern Missouri, northern Arkansas, middle and western Tennessee, western Kentucky, southern Illinois and the Wabash Valley in Indiana; 7. The Lower Mississippi district, including the southern half of Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi; 8. The Gulf district which embraces all the Gulf states east of Mississippi. While the mounds in general bear a striking resemblance to each other in structure, etc., those of each district possess certain characteristics peculiar to the locality, indicating that the Mound Builders were divided into tribes or families, each of which followed certain customs not known or practiced by the others. Frequently the mounds take the form of birds, serpents or animals. This is especially true of the mounds of Wisconsin, in which the outlines of the deer, fox, lynx and eagle have been distinctly traced. Some writers think these effigy mounds were totems, worshipped by the people as guardians of the villages, but no inscriptions nor traditions have been found to tell how or what the Mound Builders worshipped, and the mounds themselves tell a meager story. .
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