History of Randolph County, Indiana with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers : to which are appended maps of its several townships, Part 5

Author: Tucker, Ebenezer
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Chicago : A.L. Klingman
Number of Pages: 664

USA > Indiana > Randolph County > History of Randolph County, Indiana with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers : to which are appended maps of its several townships > Part 5

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Shell heaps, apparently gathered by human hands, abound all along the coast from Nova Scotia to Florida-some of them are very extensive. One heap upon Stalling's Island in Savannah River, 200 miles from its mouth, is 300 feet long, 120 feet wide, and 15 feet high. Doctor Koch of St. Louis states that in 1839 he dug up, in the bottom lands of the Bourbeuse River (in Missouri), at eight or nine fect deep, the bones of a mastodon, with legs standing erect and sunk in the deep tenacious clay. Fires had been kindled around it, and, in the ashes, from two to six inches deep, were found half-charred wood, half-burned bones, stone arrow-heads, stone axcs, rough stones, etc.

A year later the same gentleman discovered, in the bottom of the Pomme de Terre River, Benton County, Mo., a skeleton of a mastodon, almost entire, with two arrow-heads underneath it. They lay in a bed of vegetable mold covered by strata of sand, clay and gravel, hitherto undisturbed, and on the surface stood a forest of old timber.

The works which have been discovered are of different kinds in different regions. In Ohio, Indiana and Illinois the mounds are round, square, or having many angles, re-entrant or otherwise. In some regions, mounds are found in the shape of animals.

In Wisconsin, a few miles belew the mouth of the Wisconsin River, is one called the "Big Elephant Mound," from its shape like an elephant. The length is 135 feet, and its width is in proportion.

Many of the works were probably for defense, many for burial, some, perhaps, for worship, while to some no apparent purpose has been assigned. Many of them are very large.

On the Scioto River are embankments, the aggregate length of which is twenty miles !; The walls, in some cases, are twenty- five feet high, with an outside ditch fifty to eighty feet wide.

Some inclosures contain 150 acres of ground. They are arranged in groups of squares, circles, squares in circles, circles in squares, etc.

IHISTORY OF RANDOLPH COUNTY.

The mounds are of various shapes-pyramids, circles, trun- cated, terraced, approached by inclined planes and what not. Avenues between embankments appear, extending, in one instance, near the Ohio River for sixteen miles.

The squares, circles, etc., are perfect, and, in some cases, more than a mile in circuit. Their shape and measurement are so accurate as to show a high degree of geometrical knowledge and skill.

There are some Temple Mounds, so-called because they appear like the Mound Temples in Mexico. Altar Mounds occur, con- taining layers of ashes, ete.

In many of them are found relics of various kinds-pottery, arrow-heads, axes and hammers (made of stone), copper tools, pipes, images, and sometimes human bones, though mostly the sand banks and the gravel banks alone seem to have been used for places of burial.

The copper mines of Minnesota would appear at some remote period to have been extensively worked by some ancient unknown people. Trenches, twenty feet deep, have been found by modern miners, containing tools made of stone, of copper and of wood, and covered by centuries of vegetable and forest growth. In one deserted mine in Minnesota there was found, eighteen feet down, a mass of copper ore weighing six tons, raised up on a frame of wood five feet high, apparently for removal. How they did these things, moved this mass, worked their copper, made their tools, etc., is entirely unknown. Whether they used fire and molds, or pounded the tools into shape with their ponderous stone ham- mers, or otherwise, will always remain a fathomless mystery. Some of the mounds were of immense size. One at Cahokia, Ill., covered six acres of ground, and its truncated top measured 200 by 450 feet, and its cubical area equaled one-fourth of that of the great Pyramid of Ghizeh in Egypt. There are graded roads leading from terrace to terrace, evidently for easiness of access.

In Ohio has been found a work combining a square with two circles. Each square measures exactly 1,080 feet to a side, and the eireles are precisely 1,700 and 800 feet. Implements have been discovered made of polished porphyry, of granite, of jasper, of quartz and of obsidian.

ANTIQUITIES.

[NOTE .- All kinds of eurious antiquities are given promis- cuously in the following sketch, whether strictly pre-historie or not, and even though not pertaining to the " Mound-Builders."]

RANDOLPH COUNTY.

There are many antiquities in Randolph County, mounds, embankments, etc., some of which are described below :

1. One of the best known is to be seen (partly) in the fair grounds northwest of Winchester. It is an inclosure of forty- three acres in the form of an exact square. The embankment was from seven to ten feet high, with openings east and west eighty feet wide; as also having a mound in the center of the area fif- teen feet high. The whole inclosure and the embarkment also, when found by the first settlers was covered with large forest trees exactly like the adjacent regions. The eastern opening was unprotected, the western one was surrounded outwardly by an embankment shaped like a horse shoe open toward the gate, joined on the north side to the main embankment, but left open at the south side of the gate for a passage to the outer grounds.

The embankment has been considerably lowered throughout the greater portion of its extent by cultivation, by the passage of highways, etc., but it is still several feet high, and is very plainly traceable along its entire extent.

Some of the bank on the south side toward the southeast corner still remains as it existed at the first settlement of the country. That part is now some six feet high, and perhaps twenty-five feet wide. A large portion of the eastern bank has lately been dug away for the purpose of brick-making, and it is

said that charcoal is found seattered throughout the mass of clay composing the embankment.

On the side of a creek not very far distant were gravel banks containing great quantities of human bones, which are said to have been hauled away by wagon loads. These skeletons were many of them large, but the bones were much decayed, and crumbled readily when disturbed and brought out to the air.

2. Another embankment exists on the Heaston farm west of Winchester, near the crossing of Sugar Creek, inclosing per- haps an acre-not very high.

3. There are mounds in Washington Township. One is near the Hegback Pike on the right of the Winchester and Lynn road. It covers two acres and is forty or fifty feet high.

4. Up Sugar Creek on the Huntsville pike, a burial place was excavated, throwing out bones and other things.

5. A remarkable hill or inound, forty or fifty feet high, com- prising several acres, round like a flattish hay-stack, is in the southeast corner of Washington Township.

6. In Painter's gravel bank in the bluffs of Bear Creek, near Elder Thomas Addington's (Section 32, 20, 14), were found (in 1879) fifty or sixty skeletons of human frames. Some had been buried separately and some were in a trench three feet deep. Those buried singly were in a sitting posture with the lower limbs extending horizontally. Those in the trench appeared to have been thrown in promiscuously, some of them crosswise. Some of the graves had been eight feet deep, others only three or four. In the treneb was surface earth mixed with the gravel, elsewhere the gravel was pure. Whether the gravel diggers have uncovered the whole trench is not known.

Many, perhaps most, of the skeletons were of unusual size. One jaw was so large as so pass readily outside when applied to an ordinary man's face. One thigh bone was so long that, when put beside the thigh of a man six feet high, the lower part of the bone reached four inches below the knee.

The teeth in the jaws were perfectly sound, some were much worn but none were decayed. No hair was found, nor any woody nor fibrous material, such as cloth, etc. The bones were brittle but the teeth were firm and solid. Elder Thomas Ad- dington saw these things personally, helping to take the gravel from the bank, and the bones from the gravel. He is a sober- minded, intelligent, truthful man. Mr. Painter put the bones in a box, and buried them on his farm.

Mr. Addington said one of the skeletons had high cheek bones and long, thin skull like an Indian, and beside it were a pipe and dog. The others were not so.

7. Skeletons have been found in, and taken from a gravel bank near Joseph Mills's, on the Windsor pike, two miles south- east of Farmland.

8. Two skeletons were found in Jones's bank near Olive Branch.

9. East of Windsor and north of the Pike, on Esq. Thomp- son's farm, may be seen a large oval mound, covering an acre, and twenty-five or thirty feet high. It is 450 yards round the base and longer than it is wide. When dug into, it shows clay mixed with ashes, and coal more or less. A chunk, seeming to have been a sod of grass, was thrown up from the bottom of a hole twenty feet deep, dug from the top vertically downward. A red oak tree, four feet through, was standing (forty years ago) near the top of the mound, but no other trees of mueh size were on its surface. The ground around the mound was then covered with large forest trees. There are now many trees growing along the sides of the mound, from six to fifteen inches through.

An excavation of considerable size appeared (forty years ago) perhaps twenty rods from the base of the mound, which is thought to be the place whence the earth for its construction was taken.

Another smaller mound lies across the river not far away.

Esq. Thompson has preserved many fine specimens of arrow heads, hatchets, hammers, pestles, ete., picked up on his farm. The hatchets and hammers have hollows cut around them for

HISTORY OF RANDOLPH COUNTY.

witbe handles. The relics are all of stone. Many of them are worked smooth and highly polished.

10. There was found on Section 34, Town 20, Range 12, on Bear Creek, Franklin Township, by George Addington, on the farm upon which he resides, a hidden well. Ile was digging in a low but not boggy place on his farm for stock-water. About three feet down he struck some puncheons lying flat, and upon removing them he found below a hollow " gum," and a well, inclosed by the gum, ten or twelve feet deep. Ile put in an oil barrel to complete the " curb," and the well is there now, and he uses it to water his stock.

11. Arthur McKew, of Ridgeville, a prominent and relia- ble citizen of the county for nearly fifty years, says that, when he was taking the assessment of Greensfork Township ( say thirty-five years ago ), a light-colored mulatto man who lived apart from the "settlement" and who had a white wife, showed him, not far from his house, what seemed to be a sort of a sunken well, filled with logs set endwise in the earth, the ends of the logs reaching to the top of the ground. The well ( if it was a well) was in the center of a brush-pond, with more or less water around it. The roots of the trees for some distance around had been "blazed," the blazes pointing from several directions to- ward the well as a central point.

Mr. McKew saw the well and the sunken logs and the blazed trees, and it was his understanding that none of the set- tlers had dug the well, nor filled it up nor had done the blazing, and that none of them knew anything about how the thing camo there.

[NOTE .- The country in the region had been settled some thirty years, and it is possible, though hardly probable, that the work had been done by some of the settlers. ]

12. There is a large, whitish, mound-like hill or knoll, round and smooth, with neither trees nor grass, not far from Snow Hill Station, north of Lynn, on the Grand Rapids Rail- road, cast of the railroad and west of the pike. This knoll, cov- ered in the winter with snow, is thought to have given the name to the old town, or hamlet, of Snow Ilill.

13. The graveyard in Jericho ( Friends ) seems to have been an ancient burial ground, and human bones have at different times been thrown out where none were known to have been buried. The graveyard is a large gravelly knoll, of an acre or more, ten or fifteen feet high, at a distance from any stream of water.

14. The gravel bank which forms the graveyard at Arba is an ancient burial ground.

15. Bones have been taken from a gravel bank northwest of Spartansburg.

16. Human bones were found in a gravel hill north of Stocksdale's, east of the pike, and southeast of Bartonia.

17. In a gravel bank on the west side of White River, west of Mt. Zion Church, near Nathan Butts's, were found several skeletons; and, with nearly every one, coals of fire seem to have been thrown in. They were three or four feet below the surface, lying horizontally, and mostly large The teeth were solid, though some were worn.

[Rev. N. T. Butts, who lives ucar and helped take them out, is our informant.]

18. There is a considerable knoll, or mound, in Washing- ton Township, west of the railroad and of the wagon road that passes along west of the railroad and parallel thereto. It is southwest of Snow Ilill station, located in Cal. Johnson's field, and in sight of the large claycy knoll (No. 12 ).

19. There are some circular embankments on the Bales farm (now owned by Mr. Branson), not far from Cedar (Friends) Meeting House, in Stony Creek Township, a little north of Cabin Creek. In one place there are two circular embankments to- gether. The circles cut each other. A mound is in the center of each circle, higher than the embankment. The earth for both the wall and the mound would seem to have been taken from the

space between the two. The embankments are now about three feet higher than the level of the ground outside. The central mounds are perhaps ten feet across and four feet high. The ground inclosed in both is about three acres, two acres in the larger and one acre in the smaller. There is an opening like a wagon-way on the east side of cach inclosure.

20. Another on the same farm (Bales's) and on the other side of Cabin Creek, is a semi-circle opening to the west. The opening is nearly closed by a curved bank, except a space about twelve feet wide at each end of the bank. There are depressions leading through the passage ways. In the center is a mound fifteen feet across, and the inclosure is about two feet high (1880), containing two geres. South and near by, is another mound fifteen feet across and four feet high.

The fields have been tilled thirty or forty years (or even longer.) At first they were covered by the forest and their height was much greater than at present.

21. Near Buena Vista a stone wall was found near the sur- face at the base of a hill, extending downward into the earth. How deep it went or how long the wall was, our informant does not know. The part he saw was a rod or so long. It was be- tween Buena Vista and Unionsport, on the south side of the road, on land owned by Elliott, about one-half mile south of the road.

22. Temple Smith (now living near Stone Station) picked up a stone (triangular, six inches to a side) an inch thick, scooped hollowing in the middle on both sides, very smooth, and highly polished, of a dark, yellowish cust.

23. On Mulligan's farm cast of Stone Station, Mr. Lewis found (ten or twelve years ago), a dark, streaked stone, very smooth, long and round, two inches through, with a smooth, round hole drilled nearly through lengthwise ; one end had been broken off, the other was smooth and flat.

24. Zimri Moffat, cast of Winchester, found a tombstone with part broken off, 144 years old. [When it was found was not told].

25. When digging a well near Solomon Wright's, not far from the mouth of Cabin Creek, the diggers found, at the depth of twenty-five feet, a walnut log six inches thick. They cut the log out as long as the width of the well, and brought it to the top. This was thirty years ago. The log lay at least ten feet below the channel or bed of Cabin Creek near by.

26. A Mr. Osborn, who was at Amos Smith's, one-half mile south of Powers' Station, Jay County, Ind., told as follows [1880]:

In a ditch dug by Joseph Stevens, in the northeast part of Green Township, nearly south of Powers' Station, to drain a pond, great numbers of human bones were taken out, many being of unusual size. The jaw bones were full of teeth.

The jaws were brittle, and the teeth, though sound and solid in texture, were yet so loose as to shake readily in the sockets.

There was found also what seemed to be a shriveled hand. like the hand of a little child.

[NoTh .- Whether any remains of mastodons or other huge animals have come to light in Randolph County, we are unable at present to say. No such discovery has ever come to our knowledge].

HISTORY OF RANDOLPHI COUNTY.

CHAPTER IL. INDIAN HISTORY.

GENERAL-INDIAN TRIBES-RACES-CHIEFS - MISCELLANEOUS- REMINISCENCES -TROUBLES-WARS-TREATIES- RESERVES -- TOWNS-BURYING GROUNDS-RETROSPECT-DESTINY-WHITE AND CHIEF-PEACE COMING-TECUMSER'S WAR-THE END.

GENERAL.

H TROM its first discovery by De Soto in 1540, as also at and after the time when La Salle and the French pioneers explored the great river in 1680, down to the period of which we intend. more especially to treat, there had been existing through the whole Mississippi Valley a somewhat dense Indian population. When De Soto reached the Mississippi (as related by his chronicler), " A great cacique, Aquixo, came to meet the strang- ers with an imposing array of 200 canoes, filled with armed men, a part of whom stood up to protect the rowers with feathered shields, but all with their bodies and faces painted, and their heads adorned with plumes of many colors. The caciques and cther chiefs were sheltered under awnings. The canoes were most neatly made, and were very large, and, with their pavilions, feathers, shields and standards, looked like a fleet of galleys. They brought presents of fish and fruit and bread; and came, they said, to welcome and do homage to the strangers."

And when the French explorers floated down the river to Akansea, and when La Salle after them and 140 years later than De Soto, guided his adventurous canoe along the current of the mighty Father of Waters downward to the Gulf of Mexico. and set up the cross and the flag of France, as a token of the proud claim that this whole vast region belonged by right of dis- covery and exploration to the haughty monarch of that proud kingdom,-they found, at every point, abundant evidences of a numorous population.

INDIAN TRIBES.

At that time and long before it, the region now composing the territory of Indiana was occupied by the tribes of Indians belonging to the Miami confederacy.

That confederacy consisted of several Algonquin tribes, and it had been formed many years before for mutual protection and defense, especially against the fierce and powerful Iroquois, or Five Nations, who had made frequent and fatal incursions into the beautiful valley against the Indians dwelling therein. Prom- inent among these Western tribes were the Miamis, the Pottawat- omies, the Weas, the Piankeshaws, etc.

KEKIONGA.

At the junction of the St. Mary's and the St. Joseph's, near what is now the city of Ft. Wayne, stood, as the key to the grand thoroughfare from the lakes to the Ohio, Kekionga, the ancient and venerated capital of the Miamis. It had been visited by white men at least as early as 1676 (and perhaps even much earlier than that, as late researches into the French accounts of the explorations of those times would seem to indicate). Says a narrator, Judge -, given in Tuttle's History of Indiana :

"The ancient route between the Ottawa (Maumce) and the Wabash, and onward to the Ohio and the Mississippi, was first made known to the French in Canada by a visit of one of their priests from the mission on Lake Michigan to Kekionga about the year 1676. Nor can there be any doubt that Baron La Salle was at Kekionga in the year 1680, as his letter to the Governor General of Canada states that fact, and also mentions that the route alluded to had already been traversed by French traders from Canada."

La Salle is said by some to have built a stockade fort at Kekionga in 1680. Vincennes was at the place in 1705, and found there several Indian traders from Pennsylvania. Perhaps Vincennes at that time (1705) built the French stockade, the dim

outlines of which were still visible when Gen. Wayne built Ft. Wayne in 1794.

INDIAN RACES.

A brief account may here be given of the Western Indians, and of their Eastern enemies.

Two great confederacies had been formed.

1. The Iroquois in the East. 2. The Miamis in the West. The Iroquois confederacy is supposed to have begun with the Mohawks, that tribe uniting at first with the Oneidas. After- ward the league was enlarged hy the accession thereto of the Onondagas, the Senecas, the Cayugas ; and, after many years, finally by the Tuscaroras (in 1712). Their territory was at first in New York and Canada, but they enlarged their hunting grounds by conquest, till at length they roamed over parts of New En- gland, over New York, Kentucky, Virginia and Illinois. They had warred against the tribes in the Ohio region, and obliged them also to combine for the common protection and defense.

The Algonquins, consisting of many tribes, occupied portions of the country from Massachusetts and New Jersey on the east to the Mississippi on the west. The chief nations were the New England Indians, the Mohegans, Delawares and Powhatans in the central East, and the Ottawas, Chippewas, Sacs and Foxes, Miamis, Shawnees, etc., in the Mississippi Valley.

The Algonquins were a splendid race, rivaled only by the Dakotas in the West and the Iroquois in the Lake Regions. The Miamis were perhaps the leading Algonquin nation, at any rate, among the ablest belonging to that race.

The tribes mainly inhabiting Indiana were the Miamis, the Pottawatomies, the Weas and the Kickapoos.

The Shawnees were chiefly in Southern Ohio and Kentucky and the Illinois between the Wabash and the Mississippi.

The tribes in the Mississippi Valley, northwest of the Ohio, had been greatly weakened by their fierce conflicts with the power- ful Iroquois, yet they still had considerable strength. For many years after the coming of the French, they were able to muster a large array of armed warriors, equipped for attack or for defense, and, even up to the beginning of the second decade of the nine- teenth century, continued to cause much fear and suffering, and great calamity upon the encroaching and aggressive white man.

INDIAN CHIEFS.

Miamis, Me-che-cun-na-quah, or Little Turtle, 1747-1812. Jean B. Richeville (Richardville), 1761-1841. Francis La Fon- taine, 1810-1847. The Godfroys, François and Lewis, lived at Godfroy Farm, and then at the mouth of the Mississinewa.

Pottawatomies, Metea, died 1827 ; Waubunsee, war of 1812. Delawares, Red Hawk, battle of Kanawha.

Cayuga or Mingo, Logan, battle of Kanawha.

Shawnee, Spemica Lawba (High-horn) or Capt. Logan, born on Mad River, Ohio, 1788; friendly to the whites ; gave great aid to the whites ; killed near Fort Wayne, 1812.

Cornstalk, battle of Kanawha, 1774; treacherously murdered by the white soldiers in a fort which he had entered peaceable and friendly.

Shawanose, Blue Jacket, at Wayne's vietory, 1794; chief spirit among the tribes. Black Wolf, born in Florida, of high rank ; cunning, graceful, brave; was at Braddock's defeat, and so on to 1794; was mild and merciful; died at Wapokonet- ta, one hundred and ten years old. Tecumseh, born on Mad River, Ohio, 1768; killed on the Thames, Canada, 1813. The Prophet, brother of Tecumseh, confederate with him ; survived the war ; pensioned by British Government.

Wyandots, Nicholas ; conspiracy of 1747-48.

Ottawas, Pontiac, war of 1763, near Detroit.

BIOGRAPHIES.

Mr. Hawkins says : (Joseph Hawkins, of Jay County, Ind.) " I was well acquainted with Johnny Green, the old Indian war- rior mentioned by Jere Smith.

HISTORY OF RANDOLPH COUNTY.

" The Indian chiefs were Cornstalk, Blue Jacket, Split Log and Capt. Johnny, Shawnees or Delawares; Richardville and the two Godfroys, François and Lewis, Miamis.

" This Cornstalk was not the chief who led the Indians in the battle of the Kanawha, 1774. That Cornstalk (as also his son) was basely shot while in a fort by the soldiers therein, into which he and his son had gone in a peaceable and friendly manner."

Mr. Hawkins was intimate when a boy with the Godfroy chiefs and their families. He gives the following incident con- cerning Poqua Godfroy (son of Chief François):

"Poqua Godfroy (son of Chief Francois) got into an affray at Hamilton, He was about twenty-one years old. . He was frightened, and thought the white folks were going to kill him, und so he tried to be beforehand with them, and slashed away right and left himself. He was arrested for assault and battery, but was at length released on bail, and suffered to depart. On his way home, the first man he saw whom he knew was my brother, Samuel Hawkins, at Winchester, after the mail. The boy was wild with joy ; he cried out, ' O, you my friend ; you shall go home with me. They try to kill me, but you my friend !'

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History of Randolph County, Indiana with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers : to which are appended maps of its several townships, Part 5

Author: Tucker, Ebenezer Publication date: 1882 Publisher: Chicago : A.L. Klingman Number of Pages: 664

Author: Tucker, Ebenezer
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Chicago : A.L. Klingman
Number of Pages: 664