USA > Indiana > Wabash County > History of Wabash County, Indiana, Volume I > Part 5
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HISTORY OF WABASH COUNTY
"The mass of the people know little or nothing about the first princi- ples of hygiene. To them it is a sealed book; they have no means of gaining knowledge in this direction. Physicians, as a body, are not learned in this science, and are too busy to impart knowledge to their patrons. The daily and weekly press have adequate facilities for dis- seminating knowledge of this kind among the people; but they, too, like the physicians, are not skilled in this department of science."
NOW IN THE LIST OF HEALTHFUL PLACES
It is fortunate that the remarks contained in the last paragraph no longer apply to the present times, in their entirety. The residents of Wabash County, as elsewhere, are fairly well posted as to hygienic conditions-the necessity of good air and water, and the careful selec- tion of residence sites; and, with the advancement of public hygiene, these are now within the reach of all. Thanks largely to the physicians, as a body, and the publie press throughout the country.
ARCHAEOLOGICAL REMAINS
The Ohio Valley is rich in archeologieal remains-the valley of the Wabash, less so. In the latter are few of those distinctive mounds at- tributed to prehistoric man; but Northern Indiana has furnished several more striking evidences of prehistorie animal life than those found in the earth works of the Ohio Valley. In the dim ages the great glaciers of the North are supposed to have brought to the soil of Northern In- diana the carcasses of those mastodons which were the forefathers of the elephants of the South.
MASTODON GIGANTEUS OF WABASH COUNTY
That Wabash County is fortunate in the unearthing of such monsters is evident from the following published in the Plain Dealer of Septem- ber 5, 1872: "Having been informed last Friday (August 30, 1872) by a friend who resides in Pleasant Township, in this county, that the bones of a gigantic animal were being dug up a couple of miles west of Laketon, accompanied by Elijah Hackleman, Esq., Rev. L. L. Car- penter and Dr. R. F. Blount, the senior of the Plain Dealer started at daylight on the day following to visit the ground, to investigate for ourselves and ascertain whether this was what we hoped, a material addition to the realm of scientifie discovery. We went immediately to where the bones were said to have been discovered-on the old Menden-
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HISTORY OF WABASHI COUNTY
hall farm in Pleasant Township-where we found nothing but a hole in the ground and our old friends, James Scott, Amos Nye, Stevens and others, trying to make it larger. We were told, however, that a good many bones of some very large animal had been taken ont of the hole, but that they were most of them then at Laketon, and a part of them at the residence of Mr. Scott, a short distance away.
"This discovery was made on the 28th ultimo, about five or six feet underground, by men engaged in digging a ditch in a wet prairie or marsh. The ground above the bones was a black swamp muck, and that part immediately surrounding them a bluish sand mixed with white particles. We were told by the workmen that just below where the bones were found is a stratum of fine gravel. As the present has been a very dry season and as water stood where the bones were found, the opin- ion that they had always been covered by water as well as earth, seems warranted.
"Having satisfied our curiosity here, accompanied by Mr. Nye, we proceeded to Laketon, where we were shown a sight truly astonishing. Mr. Nye emptied box after box of immense bones in a most remarkable state of preservation. Except the decomposition of cartilaginous sub- stances and discoloration, these fossils are as perfect as they were when the animal died. It required little stretch of the imagination to fancy these mammoths of a distant period making the earth around us tremble with their ponderous tread. We have no doubt from the shape and character of these bones as to the class of animals to which they be- longed. This was evidently a Mastodon Gigantens, many of the bones we examined corresponding in shape and structure with those described by Dr. Warren, of Boston.
"Several measurements were made of these wonderful fossils. Al- though this in its lifetime was a monster, the bones are not so great as some others which have before been found. The knee-joint is twenty- seven inches around one end. The femur is three feet long. At its greatest circumference around the joint, thirty-two and one-half inches. The distance across the glenoid cavity, eight inches. A portion of the dorsal vertebrae have very long spinous processes. One of these meas- ures as follows: Transverse diameter, eleven inches; longitudinal, twenty-four inches; distance around the lower extremity, twenty-six inches. The patella, or knee-pan, five inches in diameter, and nearly globular. The longest rib is forty-seven and one-half inches long. Un- like the ribs of most animals, instead of the broadest part being on a line with the outer surface of the animal, its widest part extended in the direction of the peritoneal cavity.
"Other measurements have been made, but these will be sufficient
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HISTORY OF WABASHI COUNTY
to show the magnitude of the beast when alive. Many, if not all the bones of the back have been found. In the collection at Laketon there were ninety-eight bones, and in that at Mr. Scott's enough to raise the whole number to 120."
Consequently, this history of Wabash County covers a period from the days of Mastodon Giganteus to those of the automobile -- which ought to satisfy its patrons.
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CHAPTER II
DISCOVERERS OF UPPER WABASH VALLEY
DID LA SALLE ASCEND THE WABASH ?- CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE- LINE OF POSTS TO PROTECT TRADE-DANGEROUS WABASH-MAUMEE ROUTE ABANDONED-MIAMIS RETURN TO THE WABASH-GATEWAY TO THE UPPER WABASH OPENED-CLAIMS OF FORT WAYNE, LAFAYETTE AND VINCENNES-LA SALLE BUILT NO FORTS IN INDIANA -- THE QUES- TION OF PERMANENCY-PRESSURE OF ENGLISH TRADERS-FIRST MAP OF THE WABASH VALLEY-FIRST MILITARY POSTS-RACIAL AMAL- GAMATION WITHOUT PARALLEL-FUR TRADERS' BURDEN-INDIAN CONSPIRACIES.
The authentic history of the Upper Wabash Valley commences with the explorations and discoveries of La Salle, under the direction of the French Government, in 1669-71. The Iroquois had visited him per- sonally at his settlement above Montreal and told him of that great pleasant valley which stretched toward the Southwest-our Ohio- and which promised to become the splendid gateway into a greater New France. So as an agent in the extension of that empire in the New World, La Salle went forth, the details of his historic journey of two years, being gathered only from reports to the intendant of New France; and they were scant indeed.
DID LA SALLE ASCEND THE WABASH ?
It is only certain that, accompanied by an Iroquois guide, La Salle traveled across the country from the southern shore of Lake Erie, for a distance of some twenty miles, to a stream which finally led him to the Ohio; so called by the Iroquois because of its beauty. IIe descended the parent stream until met by a great fall, supposed to be the Falls of the Ohio at Louisville. Here the direet narrative (published in 1671 by the intendant in his report to the king of France) ends. There is no record of La Salle's journeyings from that time until his return to Canada in 1671, although strong circumstantial evidence tends to
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IHISTORY OF WABASH COUNTY
show that he ascended the Wabash River, passed the portage into the Maumee, and thence into Lake Erie.
CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE
A synopsis of this evidence may be thus given: A manuscript map published by the French Government in 1673, and still preserved in its archives, defines as the area of French discovery an extent of country roughly delineated beyond the falls and a portion of Eastern and Northern Illinois. At a later date, the Jesuit Fathers who accom- panied La Salle, Joliet and other French explorers and made the most faithful records extant of their discoveries in the famous "Rela- tions, " added further evidence that La Salle was the first white man to traverse the Wabash Valley on his way toward the Maumee and Lake Erie. Father Ilennepin was La Salle's special historian and in 1677, six years after the Sieur's return from his first voyage of discovery in the Ohio Valley, he spoke of La Salle's canoe-trade with the Indians along the "Rivers Pyo, Oubach and others in the surrounding neigh- borhood," as of several years' standing.
The natural deduetion is that if La Salle had traversed the Wabash with canoes in the progress of his trade, for several years before 1677, he must have traversed the Wabash Valley sometime during 1669-1671. If he was exploring and trading on the Wabash during that period, it is probable, as has been claimed, that he established a trading post at Ke-ki-ang-a (Fort Wayne), the central village of the Miamis, and an- other at Ouiatenon (Lafayette), the chief town of the Weas, a branch of the Miamis; that he transported his goods up the Wabash to the port- age, across the carrying place to the Maumee, and thence to Lake Erie.
A LINE OF POSTS TO PROTECT TRADE
As early as 1672 a considerable trade had grown up among the Miamis and their allies in the territory watered by the St. Joseph's of Lake Michigan and the St. Mary's and Maumee adjacent to Lake Erie. The erection and maintenance of military posts by the Govern- ment for the protection of this growing trade were the natural out- growth of the situation, and, with the appointment of Count de Fron- tenae as governor-general of New France this policy was soon being vigorously pushed. This was the underlying cause for the first settle- ments along the Wabash-Maumee route from Lake Erie to the Ohio Valley.
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IHISTORY OF WABASHI COUNTY
DANGEROUS WABASH-MAUMEE ROUTE ABANDONED
"Meantime the Iroquois were making warlike incursions against the Miamis and Illinois. During the progress of these expeditions against tribes inhabiting the country watered by the Wabash, Kankakee and Illinois rivers to the southward of Lake Michigan, the route of the incursionists lay along the southern shore of Lake Erie in the direction of the principal village of the Miamis. While the Miamis were not the special objeets of Iroquois enmity they were understood to be in alliance with the Illinois, and, as a consequence, subject to distrust. Not unfrequently, therefore, they suffered from the aggressions of their formidable assailants. The situation induced a change in the line of commercial intercourse between the French and their Indian allies with whom the Iroquois were at war. In order to avoid the complications incident to the maintenance of a trading post on the line of warlike operations it was determined to occupy and fortify for the time being another position more remote at the month of the River St. Joseph's, at its entrance into Lake Michigan.
"At a later date La Salle gave the reason for this change: 'I can no longer go to the Illinois but by the Lakes Huron and Illinois ( Lake Michigan ), because the other ways which I have discovered by the head of Lake Erie and the southern coast of the same had become too dan- gerous by frequent encounters with the Iriquois, who are always upon these coasts. Accordingly in the month of November, 1679, a fort was erected by La Salle at the mouth of the St. Joseph's River."
Notwithstanding every effort put forth by the French to protect their trade in the Ohio Valley and its great northern tributary, the Wabash, the pressure and incursions of the Iroquois were too much for all their precautions and bravery, and when the fierce and ambitions Eastern confederacy declared formal war on the Miamis in 1682, that Indian nation deserted the Wabash Valley to join the Illinois and the other Western tribes gathered around Fort Saint Louis, on the Illinois River. There La Salle formed the confederacy which stood as a wall against the further spread of the Iroquois power.
MIAMIS RETURN TO THE WABASH
The return of the Miamis to the country of the Wabash in 1712 was a clear indication that they considered it a safe residence, and the old trading route to Lake Erie was again opened. Until that year the reported establishment of posts and settlements is always subject to suspicion, as far as any permaneney is concerned, and some even go
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IIISTORY OF WABASHI COUNTY
so far as to claim that the first substantial post founded in what is now Indiana was that established at Ouiatenon (La Fayette) in 1720.
GATEWAY TO THE UPPER WABASH OPENED
No effort was ever made to plant a colony there, but it became in time quite a prominent trading point, for several good reasons. It was the largest village of the Quiatenon Indians, was the center of the beaver country, and was easily accessible, being at the head of navi- gation on the Wabash. It was the gateway to the Upper Wabash Val- ley, midway along which lies what we now know as Wabash County. It was at Quiatenon that the cargoes had to be transferred, owing to the rapids in the river, from the large canoes which were used in the Lower Wabash to the smaller ones that were employed between Ouiatenon and the portage to the Maumee.
The threatened inroads of the English made the establishment of other posts imperative and in 1725 they were ordered by the Government of New France. There is no direct record of when the post at Vincennes was established, but it was probably in 1727.
CLAIMS OF FORT WAYNE, LAFAYETTE AND VINCENNES
ITistorians of the Wabash Valley have written much and earnestly on the claims for priority of the posts, or trading centers, established by the French at the places we now know as Fort Wayne, Lafayette and Vincennes. It seems probable that much confusion and considerable argument might have been avoided if the various champions for the several localities had stated whether they had in mind a simple trad- ing post, or a military establishment of some permaneney fixed by the Government of New France to protect her trade and Indian allies.
· As stated, these subjects have been voluminously discussed by nu- merous writers, and perhaps by none more thoroughly than William Henry Smith in his "Indiana, " by S. C. Cox in his "Wabash Valley," and by Richard S. Peale in his "Historical Atlas of Indiana." With- out further comment we quote from these authors and publications, even at the risk of a little overlapping and repetition.
LA SALLE BUILT NO FORTS IN INDIANA
"It is highly probable that on La Salle's return from his 1669-71 journey he ascended the Wabash to the Portage and then crossed to the Maumee. In fact, there can be little doubt remaining on that point.
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IIISTORY OF WABASHI COUNTY
He claims to have discovered the portage. In 1651 he drew up his will, and in that important doenment he set out that he had discovered a way to the Mississippi by the head of Lake Erie, but had abandoned it be- canse it had become too dangerous owing to the presence of the Iroquois. Pere Allouez, in 1680, referred to the portage from the Maumee to the Wabash, and says it was a shorter route to the Mississippi than the one usually taken by the St. Joseph of the Lake and the Kankakee.
"For several years La Salle carried on a very large trade with the Indians on the Wabash and the Ohio, and that trade was interrupted by the incursions of the fierce and bloody Iroquois, who sought to drive the Miamis from these favorite hunting and trapping grounds. He did not, however, build any forts or establish any permanent trading posts within the limits of Indiana. His principal post was Fort St. Louis on the Illinois River, and around that post he gathered the various tribes that had been driven from their homes on the Wabash and Maumee by the Iroquois. In the midst of his great cares, and his grow- ing traffic with the Indians, and his desire for gain, he never lost sight of his one great scheme to fully explore the Mississippi from its source to its month. He pursued that with unabated ardor, and under great discouragements, and finally lost his life. La Salle was the first white man to skirt the southern border of Indiana, which he did in 1669, and also the first white man to make known to the world the country around the headwaters of the Maumee.
"It is about as difficult to determine when the first actual settlement of the whites was made in Indiana as to determine the exact time and route of the early explorers. For Fort Wayne it has been claimed that it had become an important trading post as early as 1672, and for Vincennes several dates have been fixed for its first occupation, extend- ing over more than half a century. According to one tradition, French traders visited the site of Vincennes as early as 1690, and that many of them remained there, marrying among the Indians and raising families. Another tradition puts the first arrival of the traders or explorers in 1680. Still another is to the effect that a party of French Canadians, in 1702, descended the Wabash River and established several posts, Vin- cennes being one of them. The historians of the Maumee valley claim that the first post was established on the present site of Fort Wayne. A part of the confusion which exists as to Fort Wayne has been cansed through the misapprehension as to certain visits of the French mission- aries. The missionaries left records of their work among the Miami Indians, and as the main villages of the Miamis, when record history first begins, were around the headwaters of the Maumee, it has been taken for granted that the labors of the missionaries were at that point. Vol. 1 -2
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IIISTORY OF WABASII COUNTY
The Miamis first lived around Green Bay, Wisconsin, and when the larger part of the tribe migrated to Indiana and Ohio, a remnant re- mained at Green Bay. It was among that remnant that the missionaries labored.
"As has been already stated, the maps eovering the explorations up to 1684 show no settlements anywhere in Indiana, and from the import- ance attached by the French Government to all such settlements, the conclusion is irresistible that prior to that time no such settlements existed."-Smith.
"On the Wabash near the present site of Vincennes was an important Indian village known as Chip-kaw-kay, and it is highly probable that when the first French settlers arrived they heard stories of prior visits made by traders, and after a lapse of time those traditions became transposed into facts relating to the first actual settlement. To hold their claim upon the Mississippi valley the French, in 1702, determined to establish some posts along the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, and M. Jucherean did ereet a fort at the month of the Ohio. Some writers have attempted to claim that Vincennes was the site of this fort, but all the records oppose such a view.
THE QUESTION OF PERMANENCY
"MI. de Denonville adds to the confusion. In a memoir on the French possessions in North America, dated the 8th of March, 1688, he says the French at that time had 'divers establishments' on the Mississippi, 'as well as on that of the Oyo, Oubache, etc., which flows into said River Mississippi.' What he meant by the term 'divers establishments' is doubtful. That La Salle, and probably others, had, prior to that time, visited the Indian villages and traded with them, is well settled, and it is probable that M. de Denonville had in mind only that those traders had made friendly relations with the Indians, whereby the various hunters and trappers roaming the country could take to the villages their accumulations of peltries until such times as they could be shipped to Canada. He certainly could not have meant that the French had established any permanent posts or colonies on the Wabash, or even on the Ohio. In faet, up to that time the Wabash country was in such a state of alarm from the incursions of the Iroquois that it would have been dangerous, if not practically impossible, to have attempted to make any settlements by the whites.
"If there was one man above another who was interested in estab- lishing such posts it was La Salle. He was endeavoring to build up an
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IHISTORY OF WABASH COUNTY
exclusive trade with the entire Ohio and Mississippi valleys. He was on friendly terms with the Miamis of Indiana and the Illinois of Illinois. The Iroquois from the East were preparing to war against the Illinois and the Miamis in 1682, and La Salle used all his efforts to get those tribes to form a confederation and settle around Fort St. Louis, on the Illinois, and finally succeeded in getting all the Indians of Indiana to remove to that place. The Iroquois would not trade with La Salle, and they only had roaming parties of warriors in Indiana and along the Wabash. The French could have had no settlements there without pro- treting them with a heavy military force. The Indians did not return to Indiana until about 1712. So it seems that by the term 'divers estab- lishments' M. de Denonville did not mean permanent settlement or posts.
"One of the last to investigate the question of the date of the settle- ments on the Wabash was Justin Winsor, librarian of Harvard Uni- versity, who says in the chapter on ' The Mississippi Basin,' in his Narra- tive and Critical History of America, page 148: 'The territory in dis- pute between the French and English traders was along the Wabash and up the Ohio and its lateral valleys. Charlevoix speaks of the region north of the Ohio as likely to become the granary of Louisiana. Senex, the English cartographer, made it appear that through this region "of 120 leagues the Illinois hunted cows" and he magnified the trade in buffalo peltries. The waning power of the Iroquois and the coming of the Delawares and the Shawnees into the Ohio valley had permitted the French to conduct more extensive explorations, and they had found themselves liable to confront all along the valley the equally adventurous English.'
PRESSURE OF ENGLISH TRADERS
"The Mississippi Company had urged (September 15, 1720) the building of a fort on the Wabash as a safeguard against the English, and the need of it had attracted the attention of Charlevoix. Some such precaution, indeed, was quite as necessary to overawe the savages, for now that the Wabash-Maumee portage was coming into favor the In- dians had lately been prowling about it and murdering the passers. La Harpe, in 1724, feared the danger of delay. In 1725 the necessity for such protection alarmed Boisbriant early in the year. The Carolina traders had put up two booths on the Wabash, and rumors reached Kaskaskia of other stations which they had established farther up the Ohio valley. These last intruders were probably Pennsylvanians-at least it is so assumed in the treaty made at Albany in 1754. The language of such treaties is rarely the best authority, but it is certain that Vau-
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IHISTORY OF WABASHI COUNTY
dreuil, in Quebec, believed it at the time. Ile reported to his home government that the English were haunting the upper waters of the Wabash and trading among the Miamis. As a result, we find the Com- pany of the Indies (December, 1725) instructing Boisbriant to beware of the English, and to let M. Vincennes then among the Miamis, know that these rivals were moving in that direction. The next year the company informed Perier (September 30, 1726) of their determination to be prepared, and authorized him, in concert with Vincennes, to repel the English if they approached. Vincemes had already been recon- noitering up the Ohio valley to see if any English were there."-Cox. 1
"At the beginning of the eighteenth century communication was opened up between Louisiana and Canada by way of the Maumee, Wa- bash, Ohio and Mississippi. Indeed, this route had been traveled by a few, among whom was Robert La Salle some twenty years before, or as early as 1680. But with the beginning of the eighteenth century a gen- eral communication was established. With this came the necessity of forts or fortification, to protect the route against hostile Indians, and also to further possess the country adjacent to it against the encroach- ments of the English colonists, who, until this period and for several years after, were content with a narrow strip of land on the Atlantic seaboard. Such became the policy of the French Colonial Government sometime between 1690 and 1700, a decade during which the possibilities of establishing a permanent brauch of the French empire in the New World was bright and promising.
"In 1700 the French decided to establish this chain of fortifications without delay, and within the following year Fort Pontchartrain (De- troit ) was established on the Detroit River. During the four years following rude forts, or stockades, were erected at the head of the Mau- mee, near where the city of Fort Wayne now stands; on Wea Prairie near the Wabash in what is now Tippecanoe County; and at a point further down the Wabash, where Fort Knox was afterward established and where the flourishing city of Vincennes now stands. The first was called Post Miami, in respect to the Indian Confederacy of that name, which had its ancient capital near the site; the second was called Ouiatenon ; the third, Post Vincennes, in honor of its founder.
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