History of Vigo county, Indiana, with biographical selections, Part 6

Author: Bradsby, Henry C
Publication date: 1891
Publisher: Chicago : S.B. Nelson & co.
Number of Pages: 1032

USA > Indiana > Vigo County > History of Vigo county, Indiana, with biographical selections > Part 6

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HISTORY OF VIGO COUNTY.

unequaled stoicism, and his death song rose in his throat as the caroling of the forest birds. Herein was the strong individuality of the Indian, the redeeming quality of his nature.

Joliet, Marquette and Hennepin, the first white men to visit the Indians of the west, have left much authentic information of the conditions in which they found them. The pure and gentle Mar- quette was carrying to these wild children of the plains the cross of Christ, and receiving the tender in return of the calumet and wampum. These men discovered northern Indiana and met the Miamis. They discovered the Illinois and the upper Mississippi rivers, and traveled south from the lakes via the rivers to Arkansas Post, Ark. They agree that the northern Indians were inferior to those found in the south in their knowledge of the simplest of the arts. The Natchez were found to possess some little idea of the use of iron or copper, while their northern brothers knew nothing of it, and used only stone. On the borders of streams or lakes they had their scattered villages. Their wigwams being the rudest and simplest structures. All seemed to be nomadic in their habits. Each tribe having its chief, with no certain authority except to com- mand hunting and warring expeditions. The men performed no manual labor, this being done by the women or squaws. In the timber they built their wigwams of bark chiefly. This was laid on poles that were brought to a center, and here a hole was left for the smoke to escape. On the prairies these were made of grass mat- ting, that is, the covering was of that material, and was made and fastened together so neatly that it would readily turn the rains that beat upon them. The latter were so light that in their migrations the matting was rolled and carried from place to place. If very hungry they ate the game captured raw. The most of their cooking was over the fire or in the hot coals; they would boil water by heat- ing stones and dropping into the water in their crude stone vessels. Their best cooks would but poorly compare with our French chefs in some of our fine hostelries. Their mode, for instance, of cook- ing a turkey was to pull a few of the largest feathers and then cook it just as it was. This they regarded as not only saving labor, but saving all that part of the turkey that we throw away-a double economy. Their marital relations were loose and illy defined. Poligamy was often practiced, but not universally, as the bucks bought their wives, paying in a pony or game or pelts, or whatever else that was the current of the realm. Wives were bought often for stated periods, when they would return and be in the marriage market again without bothering the divorce courts. It was only such dusky maidens as mated without being paid for that were discredited in the first circles of Indian society. The female chil- dren, in case of separation by virtue of the terms of the contract,

HISTORY OF VIGO COUNTY.

went with the mother and the males belonged to the father. With these impediments in his way it may be assumed that he would as soon as possible get another squaw to support " the old man and the boys." Sometimes as many as sixty persons would compose one family, and altogether these would live in one wigwam-larger than the simple round ones. They slept upon the bare ground or on the skins of animals, and all their clothing in the rigors of the winter were also of the skins of animals. In the long winters their places of abode would be indescribably filthy. The numerous family and the dogs were huddled together in the smoke and the horrid air of their worse than kennels. While it was cold weather they never bathed, and they changed their clothes only by their wearing out and falling off. In the warm weather all took to the water daily like ducks, but when they came out would smear them- selves with horrid rancid grease, mixed often with certain kind of clays. This seemed to be the only part of their toilet that they were at all particular to attend to.

The food of the Indian consisted of all the varieties of game, eating nearly everything except the rattlesnake. They called this reptile "grandfather," and believed that he had the soul of their dead ancestor, and they held it sacred. When the hunters would find a snake of this kind they would surround it, carefully keeping out of striking distance, and they would light their pipes and blow the smoke at it, calling it by endearing names, and pray to it to guard their families and help them in their expedition, whether war or hunting. In a rude way they cultivated corn, melons and squashes. From the corn they made their "sagamite," parched and pounded the corn, mixed it with water, bran and all, and roasted the mass in the hot ashes. Sometimes they mixed in the meal ground gourds or beans.

They had three kinds of canoes, and these they made and handled dexterously. Having only stone axes they would burn down the tree, chopping away the charred part. They would chop it off at any required length in the same way, dropping water at the points that they did not want to burn. The heavy wood canoes were burned out in a similar way, and with slow fires they could shape and fashion them exactly as wanted, and smooth and polish with stone. A pirogue was made by fastening two or more canoes together abreast by poles reaching across on the top. These would carry great weight, and were not liable to upset. Their most com- mon canoe was made of bark, elm or birch. The elm-bark canoes were very frail, and not used for long voyages. To make a canoe of the elm they would select the trunk of a tree very smooth, and at a time when the sap was up. They would cut around, above and below the length wanted, and then remove the whole in one piece,

HISTORY OF VIGO COUNTY.

shaving off the roughest of the bark, making this side the inside of the canoe; fastening the ends of the bark together, the sides of the canoe were held apart by bows that would be fastened about two feet apart. They would sew up the two ends with strips of other elm bark, and in such a way as to cause the two ends to rise, with a swell in the middle. Any chinks they sewed together and covered with a gum they would chew. It may be that this is where our girls got the fashion of gum chewing without inheriting any knowledge of making bark canoes. They would add a mast, and on this use their blankets or skins for sails. All the passengers in such a craft sat upon their heels. There was much art and perfect balancing required to ride without turning over. It is supposed that one of our ordinary mouse or bug-squealing girls could upset one of these vessels in a few seconds-at least by the time it had reached deep water. The chief merit of the elm-bark canoe was its lightness. A squaw could shoulder one with ease and carry it along or over any portage. In ascending streams these people knew the road so well that frequently by crossing a great bend, and by going overland a mile or two, would save many miles around to the same spot.

Canoes made of birch bark were stronger and heavier, and looked more artistic in finish. The frames of these were of strips of cedar wood, which is light and flexible. This frame was made complete and was then covered with birch bark, which would be sewed together like skins. The seams were covered with chewed gum. Cross bars were put in to hold the sides apart, and these made seats for the passengers.

The French fur traders were the only white men who adopted the Indian's mode of making canoes, or had the skill to use them after the Indian fashion. Some of these canoes of the traders would carry as much as 3,000 pounds, and in the hands of an expert they would shoot along the water with great swiftness.

As already said, the Indians were cannibals, though human flesh was only eaten at war feasts. They would torture a prisoner to death; in this the women and children were peculiarly delighted, and the body would then be thrown into "the war kettle " and greedily devoured after a partial cooking. An early traveler among the savages, Joseph Barrow, says he saw Pottawatomies and Miamis, with hands and limbs, both of white men and also of other tribes of Indians. The privileges of this feast were confined to the noted and foremost warriors.

They would bury their dead with great care and ceremony. Joutel says: "They pay great respect to their dead. Some of the tribes would prepare the grave carefully and then for days weep and wail about it; others would dance and sing for twenty-four hours. These dancers would hang their calabashes or gourds

HISTORY OF VIGO COUNTY.

about their bodies, filled partially with dry beans and pebbles, and these would rattle and assist the mourners greatly in expressing their inconsolable grief. The heirs of the deceased were not forced by fashion to dissimulate their joy in the form of grief, because when the old man died they buried his fortune with him, and had to throw in something of their own to help him along the journey to the happy hunting ground.

CHAPTER III.

THE PIONEERS.

A COMPARATIVE STUDY-" THE SIMPLE ANNALS" OF THE WORLD'S RE- MARKABLE MEN-THE HARD SCHOOLS OF FATE THAT PRODUCED THEM- THE SILENT MEN OF THE WILDERNESS-THEIR WORK-THE SPLENDID RESULTS AND THE PAUCITY OF RESOURCES AT THEIR COMMAND-THE MEN WHO MADE EMIGRATION A SCIENCE AND BUILT AN EMPIRE FOUNDED ON THE BIBLE-THE SAXON AND THE GAUL-THE FUR TRADE-THE COURIEURS DES BOIS-ETC.

THE ripest scholars are realizing that the "simple annals of the poor" is the interesting and most important branch of history, and it will come to pass that the history of nations will no longer be considered written and completed when there is the long and dreary recital of the kings' and princes' lives and the doings of the royal nursery and bedchamber, where a great era is marked by a princely birth, baptism or death. Or a long account is given of wars and battles in which the life and habits of the commander and his doings are the chief objects to be related in the minds of the historian. Once the history of a nation or people was but little more than a rescript of the morning court bulletins; his supreme, august majesty's menu, and the commotion among the courtiers and vast army of retainers, when he opened for the day his blood-shot eyes; who had the honor of handing his supreme highness the towels; how he swore and kicked his grand master of the hounds, and then how the little ones were up betimes, taking their royal porridge from gold spoons, and such other miserable nonsense through volume after volume, to be read with consuming delight by all the living and passed on to posterity, as "history." Kings and their households, wars and the commanders, and the bloody battles they fought, were for centuries all that was supposed to be worth any attention from the historian. Royalty was everything,

HISTORY OF VIGO COUNTY.

the common people nothing. The people believed implicity, be- cause so all were taught, that this was the order of heaven; that fate had so ordained that one man and his household were to have and enjoy the world, and that all else were made to slave for and give up their lives at the whim or pleasure of this divinely born ruler. The people were born to these monstrous beliefs, and the king, gen- erally the most ignorant and superstitious of all, believed that he was sent of God to do with the lives of the people what he listed. To be looked upon by the king was a supreme honor, to be touched by his hand was to be cured of even incurable diseases. When he rode abroad, couriers, with loud bugles, preceded and warned the people to clear the highway, to hide themselves, and to prostrate their bodies in the dirt. The king, though often the lowest and meanest man in the realm, was immaculate, possessing all wisdom, could not sin, and could do no wrong. The average king and queen of history, if stripped of the miserable fictions and superstitions con- cerning their lives, will be found to be a shabby lot, with hardly a redeeming quality or a gleam of superior intelligence in the whole gang. In the nature of things, in the whole of their education, it was not possible for them to be either wise or good men and women. The beliefs drilled into them, commencing even before they could lisp, were inconsistent with good sense, and, therefore, in violation of all good morals. These wicked superstitions about royalty grew with the ages, like the boys rolling a snowball, until the long suf- ferings of mankind became so frightful, and then the miseducated turned upon themselves, destroying and rending one another, in the belief that it was all the results of their own wickedness and lack of faith and fealty to their "divine ruler." If here and there a genius was born, who dared to think the least bit aloud in behalf of suffer- ing mankind, they would rush upon him like wild beasts and tear limb from limb.

It is but a brief century or two ago when this was the belief of the generality of mankind. It was an awful sentiment to prevail throughout the half-civilized world, and the marvel will forever re- main, how it was possible in such conditions that civilization could advance at all. Yet it has advanced regularly. It is still advanc- ing, notwithstanding that there is yet a very large contingent of men making the same obstruction in its way that was so marked two centuries ago. The world slowly emerged from the dark ages- how it did so, is one of the mysteries. Certainly man, like other things in creation, possesses inherent forces, that, in the long cen- turies, can not be resisted, to evolve from the lower plane and spi- rally ascend into the purer air and the warm and better sunshine.

The story of the American immigrants-the pioneers of this continent-is by far the most important and really the most inter-

HISTORY OF VIGO COUNTY.

esting of any of the great movements of the human race since the earliest dawn of history. In has remapped the entire world. Their first coming to America, so bravely leading the way for the innu- merable throng to follow, was the incomparable era in history, the turning point in the long struggle between ignorance and brutal life and that blessed civilization that is now running so brightly round the world. These early pioneers were the little persecuted bands of the old world, fleeing from inflictions far worse than death, and in their rude ships braving the dangers of the unknown seas on their way to the new world; fugitives from the inappeasable wrath of their fellow-man, and especially of their divinely appointed king, they braved the treacherous elements of the waters, to land upon the shores of the cannibal savages and the dark old forests that were alive with both wild beasts and wilder men to beat them back or destroy them. Often there were colonies of them that had been fugitives all over Europe, and, when stripped of all earthly posses- sions, with nothing more than stout hearts and resolute hopes, they came across the ocean, forgetting home and the bones of their dead, and their native land and its childhood memories, they came to create a new civilization. They made emigration a science, and founded the earth's greatest empire upon the old family Bible that they had so carefully kept and guarded in their long wanderings. These little bands, from Florida to Massachusetts, made their land- ings at points along the shore. Their first concern was a church service, to thank God for the free air they at last were permitted to breathe. These little colonies sometimes utterly perished from the earth, but there were others to take their places and carry on the battle against savagery. What odds, apparently, were against them in this contest, and yet how these feeble beginnings have so quickly conquered and overrun the continent. The savage man and beast, sickness in its multiple form of new and strange diseases, the absence of all resources to help the grim and hardy old pioneers, were some of the obstacles that they set about overcoming.

The circumstances required religious, earnest, brave and hardy men, and such they were supremely. They were made to want freedom because of their cruel persecutions at the hands of their fellow-man. Such an age would naturally create a new and distinct race of men, because man adjusts himself to his environments, and herein in this victory over the vast wilderness was the victory of all mankind, and has given us the historical era in the movements, the advances and recoils of the human mind.

These people had their strong prejudices and mastering super- stitions, and perhaps, in their times and circumstances, it were best it should be so. They came from the old world where these things were intrenched in the deep and hopeless ignorance of the masses.

HISTORY OF VIGO COUNTY.

They were the first people in the world who in moral affairs looked to God, and in all else looked to themselves. Self-reliance and those nobler qualities of a nobler manhood could only come of such a school. With energies ever alert, and senses whetted to the keenest edge, they slept upon their arms, and from the cradle to the venerable grandsire everyone learned to do picket duty over his own life. Their lives are the evidence that the highest possible acquirement of a people is that self-reliance and robust manhood that quails before nothing that is mortal.

This was the first loosening movement of men of these bonds that bound our remotest ancestors to the blind faith and adoration of their kings, or rulers-that species of national fetich for the stupid or brutal-born king that grew up in all men's hearts and that seemed to multiply as the royal master descended in the scale of life. Whether it were the new-born babe, a little animated bundle of scrofula or inherited blood disease, or whether it were some coarse monster, a moral leper, idiot or madman, it was all the same. He was their national fetich, and the meaner he was, it seems, the more sacred he became.

The first arrivals on American soil that came here for homes and havens from the cruelties they had left behind, no doubt were but little aware, either of the permanent effects to come of their movement or of the deep causes that moved them. Indeed, they felt that their loyalty to the king was unabated. Thank God, in this one thing they builded better than they knew. Otherwise we would have had no Revolution, no Washington or Patrick Henry, no liberating of men's minds and bodies from the cruel thrall of the dreary past.

The results that came as the effects of men's lives are the only tests by which we can measure the great and small. When we add to this test a consideration of the resources each one had at com- mand then in the history of the race, where is there a people to compare with the American pioneer? This silent man of the un- broken solitude, this man of great action and of little speech, this unwritten hero came and went with no trumpet's blast and blare, no note of fame, no shouting rabble, nor train of flatterers, indeed, with no other thought but that he was of no more consequence to the great world at large than the wild game he pursued and killed, yet in his greatest obscurity and humility stood side by side with. many of the world's celebrities, how incomparably would he rise above them.

Our young school children learn to look with interest at the rather cheap wood cut in the old school books, representing Na- poleon on his white horse, his martial cloak fluttering in the breeze, as at the head of his army he is seen crossing the Alps. He is the

HISTORY OF VIGO COUNTY.

"Young Corsican," the "Little Corporal," the "Great Emperor," at the head of his invincible army and its fluttering eagles on his mission of death and woe, conquering and subjugating the world by sword and fire. Kings were his playthings and empire was his booty. It was new and plebeian blood among the effete and nerve- less royal breeding nests of the Old World. In his earlier and the better part of this wanderer's career, the bluest blood from the longest line of royal ancestors was no more to him than that of the hum- blest soldier of the line. We can not know the bounds of this man's original ambition. Whatever it was, there is but little doubt that in time it changed, and instead of being the world's liberator he would be its conqueror and oppressor. No man ever yet has met and missed so great an opportunity as did Napoleon. Had he de-

voted his genius to the true welfare of mankind-liberated them and then by his military power forced them to accept the liberation and to recast their thoughts on the subject of every man's right to absolute liberty. instead of driving to the one mean and low thing of becoming the great emperor, of simply destroying existing dy- nasties to supplant them with yet more cruel ones, how different might the story of Europe have been to what it is now. How rad- ically different might have been the memory of himself left as the world's legacy. If this man ever were great he fell from that high estate, perished ignobly and is now literally nothing to the world. Had Napoleon been smothered in his cradle it would have been no loss to mankind. His life was not great because it was not good. He cared only for his own aggrandizement, and was indifferent at what cost to mankind. It was a feverish turbulent life, ending, as it deserved, in wreck and ruin, and the drunken Parisian mob when it toppled over the great mausoleum that held his remains, were nearer in accord with the eternal fitness of things than were the mistaken authorities who taxed the poor unpaid laborers of France to build the monument. There is many a costly marble or granite pile standing guard over the moldering remains of some of the world's most conspicuous shams and frauds. To the clear-eyed man they are mere sores and blotches on the fair face of the earth, the ugly evidences of so much unpaid or slave labor, and are so many wretched object lessons to teach the young minds to meanly admire a mean thing.

No monuments, mausoleums, tall shafts, halls or great art build- ings have ever yet been reared to the memory of the original pio- neers of America. The most of them sleep in long forgotten graves, in the deep woods, on the mountain side, by the bubbling spring, at the outer edge of the ancient "clearin'," anywhere that was most convenient; were buried these men as they fell with their faces toward the common enemy of civilization, scalped so often by the

HISTORY OF VIGO COUNTY.

savage, and left to the wild animals, and their scattered bones carried to the dens of beasts. These heroes were standing picket guards for the oncoming civilization, for us, and the comforts and luxuries we now enjoy. In the ceaseless struggle that was going on, there was not even time to stop and mourn over the fallen brave, but as one would go down, there in time were two to take his place and bravely carry on the good work.

How far nobler the aim and end of these humble men's lives than was that of Napoleon. His was to conquer, enslave and destroy by fire and sword. Theirs was to reclaim, to make us homes, to lift up our civilization, and bring peace and permanent happiness; to sup- plant savagery with gentle intelligence, and build the empire of thought over the ruins of brute force.

Here are the results of the unwritten, obscurest of men's lives placed side by side with the world's great military hero, the subject somewhat stripped of this unreasoning adoration of the world's aver- age fetich. It is the contrast of the truly noble by the side of the admired and ignoble. It is the attempt, however feeble it may be, to direct the thoughts of men into higher and better channels. It is one of the true lessons of real history. It is worth imprinting on the minds of the young, and should be emblazoned on the walls of the school-rooms, and hung in the halls and porches of the great in- stitutions of learning.

To produce such a grand race of men required a long course of preliminary preparation. Their love of freedom and their hatred of tyranny, their stubborn and resolute natures, to rising above that feeling of helpless dependence upon assumed superiors; that pecul- iar frame of mind that dared anywhere and upon every emergency to rely upon itself and its own inherent resources, where no aid could come from others, where there were none of the arts or helps of civilization to call upon in sickness, in hunger, in death or birth; no church, school, physician, blacksmith, mills, no nothing, save the implacable foes that fairly rose up out of the earth in legions to op- pose his coming. The swarms of parasitic and venomous insects, the rattling, hissing reptiles spotted with deadly beauty; the howls of the hungry wolves, the piercing screams of the panthers, and the savage war whoops that oft woke the sleep of the cradle, were some of the things against which were raised the bare hands of the white man. Had these men stopped to count the odds against them, they surely would never have come -- " flying from present ills to those we know not of," and they did not stop to count the dangers or the cost.

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History of Vigo county, Indiana, with biographical selections, Part 6

Author: Bradsby, Henry C Publication date: 1891 Publisher: Chicago : S.B. Nelson & co. Number of Pages: 1032

Author: Bradsby, Henry C
Publication date: 1891
Publisher: Chicago : S.B. Nelson & co.
Number of Pages: 1032