USA > Indiana > Northwestern Indiana from 1800 to 1900; or, A view of our region through the nineteenth century > Part 2
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GENERAL OUTLINES.
dence of such stragglers that has reached Crown Point is the statement, in some of the narra- tives of La Salle's expedition down the Kankakee River, that they captured a buffalo that was mired in the big marsh. Elk were evidently here, because their horns have been found in Lake County. Bones, sup- posed to be mammoth bones, have been found in Porter County; but of Buffalo no bone, no horn, seems to have yet been seen.
Of feathered animals, there were wild turkeys in the heavy timber, prairie chickens or pinnated grouse on the prairies by the thousands, partridges and quails in the woods, and, in a part of the summer, in numbers which it would be hard for the white boys of the pres- ent to credit, wild pigeons. To realize the immense numbers of pigeons that were here in each August month, when some of us who are now living were young hunters, one would need to see them almost darkening the sky sometimes, and hear the sweep of their wings, and see them rapidly gathering the acorns from the oak trees, and again covering large areas in the stubble of the grain fields, constantly in motion, as they picked up the scattered grains of wheat and of oats. Such sights would make the boys of this day almost go wild with delight. The American wild pigeon has gone, perhaps exterminated like the bison. They were here in the Indian times without doubt. There were also in prodigious numbers various kinds of water-fowls, wild geese, brants, swan, sand-hill cranes, ducks of many species, mud-hens, and plover.
The rivers and the lakes, of which more mention will be made, were well stocked with fish. With a few ex- cellent varieties of these, such as pike, black bass, rock bass, and sunfish, the lakes may be said to have been
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swarming, and especially one, afterwards called the "Lake of the Red Cedars." The Indians had no long drag nets with which to draw these from the water, and when the white men drew their nets through these waters the multitude of fish brought to the shore was a remarkable sight for any one to behold. .
There was also for the Indians a large abundance of valuable fur-bearing animals, beaver perhaps almost extinct-the white settlers saw only their works-but otter, mink, raccoons, muskrats in prodigious num- bers; and wolves, the large timber, gray wolf, the smaller prairie wolf, some wild cats, and, perhaps, occasionally a lynx. Elk were here once, as has been said, but whether as late as 1800 has not been ascer- tained. No attempt is here made to give the entire list of native animals, but only to name those with which the Indians, as hunters and trappers, would have the most to do.
From this outline sketch of this region, as it must have been in 1800, it is evident that it was a favorable location for uncivilized man.
We are now ready to look at the Indians them- selves.
CHAPTER II.
THE INDIANS .- 1800-1833.
The North American Indians, a singular and an interesting portion of mankind, whose origin on this continent is unknown, have been divided by different writers into eleven or more large families, these families being subdivided into tribes. The terms Nation and Clan are also used by writers to denote divisions among the Indians, some writers making tribe co-extensive in meaning with nation, others in- cluding in an Indian nation several tribes. Some make clan a subdivision of a tribe; others make clan more extensive than tribe. The meaning of these different terms must be learned from their use.
That in 1800 Indians alone had any proper claim to this region is evident, and they roamed over it at their own will, whether they were, as Venable calls them in 1763, Kickapoos, or, as the pioneers here found them in 1830, Pottawatomies.
In King's Handbook of the United States, it is said that La Salle, "Indiana's first European visitor," concentrated "all the Indians of the Ohio Valley around his fort on the Illinois River, for mutual defense against the terrible Iroquois, and in so doing he depopulated Indiana." That the Indians at that time left the south shores of Lake Michigan is not
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certain. It is further stated in King's Handbook that "After the French founded Detroit the local tribes wandered back into Indiana and settled there."*
William Henry Smith, in his History of Indiana (1897), says that the native Indians of Indiana were driven out by the Iroquois before 1684, and that they returned from Fort St. Louis on the Illinois about 1712.
That the Pottawatomies were here in 1800 is abundantly sure, and while they or other tribes were proper owners of the region, they had learned that the French had claimed some control over them, and they had been in some contact with French civilization, and so were not the perfectly untutored Indians of the wilds. Yet was theirs largely the true Indian life. The smoke that went up into the sky from this region went from their wigwams or from fires that they had kindled; the human voices that were heard beside the rivers and the lakes or in the woodlands and on the prairies, were the voices of their women and children or of their hunters and their warriors; the pathways, the trails, the pony tracks, led to their villages or camping grounds, or dancing floors, and sometimes to their burial places; the boats paddled upon the waters were their canoes; the few places of the up- turned sod were the gardens for their vegetables and the patches for their maize. They were not, to much extent, tillers of the soil, although raising some corn,
*Detroit was founded in 1701, passed to the English in 1760, fully in 1763; and came under the control of the United States in 1783.
Detroit was again in the hands of the British from Au- gust 16, 1812 till October, 1813.
T. H. B.
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THE INDIANS.
more than is generally supposed, and a few garden vegetables ; but they were the hunters, the fishers, and the trappers, where fully indeed abounded game and fish and fur. It would not seem probable that they had any need to suffer, in summer or in winter, for want of food.
For the first third of this century and for how many "moons" or years or centuries before, who knows? these Indians, generation after generation, were the principal occupants here. Tribe may have succeeded tribe, yet Indians were they all. But these Indians, our immediate predecessors, the Pottawatomies, upon whose resources for food we have been looking, did not continue, through these three and thirty years of the century, in the peaceful pursuits of life. Let us look upon them as they too take part in some of the conflicts that were waged.
That noted Shawnee chief, Tecumseh, until his death, in October, 1813, at the battle of the Moravian towns, was very active in endeavoring to unite the Indian tribes into one great confederacy, and encour- aged the hostilities which led to the battle of Tippe- canoe, November 7, 1811, but whether any of our Pottawatomies took part in that engagement cannot here be stated. It is said that Saggonee, who was so much attached to maple sugar, was at Tippecanoe. But the war spirit was evidently among them. The French, who laid claim to such a large part of this once wild Western world, had given to a spot on Lake Michigan, in longitude west from Greenwich 87'37, the name in their language which became Chicago in ours ; and there they had built a fort and established a trading post. The United States Government estab- lished there Fort Dearborn in 1803 or 1804 a few
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soldiers forming the garrison. War was declared be- tween the United States and Great Britain, June 18, 1812, and many of the Indian tribes were ready to aid the British. Seeing probable danger, it was arranged by some one, who certainly did not consider wisely the value of a slight barricade or stockade against Indian forces, for this Fort Dearborn garrison to pass, if possible, through the Pottawatomie tribe, across our region, and reach Fort Wayne.
They left their fortifications August 15, 1812, with some friendly Miamis, but had proceeded only a short distance from the fort when they were attacked by the Pottawatomies and nearly all killed. This action is called the Fort Dearborn massacre. What further part the Pottawatomies took in the events, the cam- paigns of 1813 and 1814, it is not needful here to in- quire. In 1816 Fort Dearborn was re-established, troops being kept there most of the time until after January, 1837; and the Pottawatomies settled down again to their former mode of life.
The brisk fur trade, with the two trading posts of Chicago and Detroit, stimulated their trapper life, as from the days of the first French explorers they had learned that the white man sets quite a large value upon fur, and the influence of the French missionaries, some of them not only zealous, but self-denying, noble men, still remained among them. Their burials were not conducted altogether with pagan rites, they knew the symbol of the cross and they erected crosses be- side some of their graves.
But while some of the French influences for good remained among them until the white settlers met them, evil influences were also among them, coming from the American traders. These men furnished
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THE INDIANS.
them with whisky, taught them to drink it, and nothing good could be the result. It has been found that Indians, in contact with unprincipled whites, al- ways lose some of their native virtues. The French, far better than the English or Americans, adapted themselves to the Indian nature, had larger control over them, and seem to have tried more faithfully to do them good.
Yet in the first third of the Nineteenth Century, some Protestant American missionaries tried very faithfully to instruct, civilize, and evangelize these Pottawatomies.
In the year 1817 the Rev. Isaac McCoy, a Baptist, a native of Indiana, commenced a mission work among the Miamis and Kickapoos, but met with very little success. In 1822 he established himself at a locality on the St. Joseph River, about one hundred miles north and west from Fort Wayne, at what was called the "center of the Pottawatomie tribe," in what is now Southwestern Michigan, and named his mission station Carey, evidently in remembrance of Dr. Carey, one of the noted Baptist missionaries that went from England to India. He had as an assistant, Johnston Lykins, whom he had baptized, who was appointed as missionary September 2, 1822, and who "removed from Carey Station to the Shawanoes, July 7, 1831 "* At Carey a school for the Indians was opened which in less than two years numbered about seventy pupils, and in the recorded history of this station it is stated that "the people advanced in agriculture and the mechanic arts, and a considerable number were bap- tized." This report further states: "The first Potta- watomie hymn was sung at Carey November 14, 1824,
*Missionary Jubilee, page 257.
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by Mr. McCoy and the native assistant, Noaquette ; the latter said, 'I wish we could make it a little longer.' This year there was a school of sixty Indian pupils. The Mission cultivated sixty acres of land."
"In a little work called "Anthony Rollo, the Con- verted Indian," is found this paragraph, the record belonging to this same year of 1824.
"In June, three lads, sons of one of the missionar- ies,* who had been at school in the state of Ohio, made a visit to their parents at Carey. As they passed Fort Wayne, one hundred miles from Carey, and the whole distance a wilderness without inhabitants, they met with poor, friendless Anthony. They set him on one of their horses,t they walking, and carried him to Carey, at which place they arrived on the 29th of June." This Anthony was but half Indian. His mother was a daughter of Topinchee, who had been a principal chief among the Pottawatomies, and his father was a French trader, He was a cripple in his lower limbs, walking with difficulty. At Carey he learned to read, became a diligent reader of the Scrip- tures, and an earnest, Protestant Christian. He died at Carey Missionary Station, March 8, 1828, twenty- two years of age. The reflection of the devoted mis- sionaries at that time was "how few of the Pottawat- omie tribe had reached the abodes of the blessed !" And they prayed, "O gracious God, permit us to hope that many others of this tribe will be allowed to unite in the everlasting song, 'Thou art worthy, for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood, out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation.' "
*Rev. J. McCoy.
+The boys had only two horses.
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THE INDIANS.
How much either Roman Catholic or Protestant teaching did for the Indians it is difficult, it is in fact impossible, for us to know. It is not likely very much Christian principle was implanted. We all know that remarkable chapter about "charity," or "love," as the revised version reads; and we know also, both Roman Catholic and Protestant teachers alike, how needful this love is, love that worketh no ill to one's neighbor, love that is the fulfilling of the law, to fit the soul for the society of holy ones. And that the Indians who came in contact with the missionaries manifested the possession of much of this love is doubtful. And that no church rites will place this love within the soul we all have the opportunity of seeing. Yet is to be hoped that some of the Indians, learning as they did that a Saviour lived, that he died and arose from the dead, did through that knowledge and through the rich grace of God, who is no respecter of persons, reach the possession of this needful love. And all such we may confidently look for in Paradise. That from all the great divisions of the human family, from the white and black and red and yellow and brown, there will be individuals gathered to form the multitude that no man can number, no loving believer in the Christian teachings has a right to doubt.
But however much or little real or lasting good was accomplished by these well meant and zealous mission efforts, some mention of which should justly be made on these pages of our Indian history, this Carey Mission was not in existence a sufficient length of time to extend its influence over our borders, for "by a treaty provision with the United States the station was substantially relinquished in 1831."
A change for the Indians, a great change for the
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forests and prairies and all the native dwellers here, was rapidly coming. White migration was pushing westward into the great forests of the old Northwest Territory. Settlements were made in the Ohio por- tion, and along the Ohio River, and on the Wabash, and the line of advance was now toward the south shore of Lake Michigan. Settlements had gone up from the Ohio River over a part of Illinois, and had even reached Lake Michigan, for Major Long re- ported at Chicago in 1827 three families living in log cabins. The Indians, peaceful as they have become, are soon to leave their choice hunting and trapping grounds, their favorite fishing spots and camping grounds and dancing floors, and worst of all the burial places of their dead, to the white man's occupancy and the white man's plowshare. Upon very little of that Indian life for the first third of this century can we now look through the eyes of those who saw and knew them; and yet that little is sufficient to enable us, with no great stretch of imagination, to see their hunting parties, and to see the hunters bringing in the deer and other game, and the squaws, or Indian women and girls, dressing and cooking the deer, the rabbits and squirrels, the ducks and geese, the grouse and partridges and quails ; the wigwams with the fire in the center and the smoke passing out through the opening at the top ; and the children playing round the camp. We can easily see them picking the wild fruit and also see them at their domestic employments around the wigwams.
Beside the water courses, the Calumet and the Kankakee, the Tippecanoe, and the Iroquois, and the Pinkamink, and on the banks of so many small and beautiful lakes, while the men and boys trapped or
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THE INDIANS.
fished, the women and children must have enjoyed the choice camping places amid the beauty of the bright autumn time; and those rich flowers of the prairie left from the golden summer, how could they fail, loving bright colors, richly to have enjoyed? In those smoky days, when the Great Prairie and the Big Marsh and hundreds of smaller ones had been burn- ing, when the sun, so red in the morning and in the evening, and while visible, made no shadow even at midday, and the air was still; and then in the evening when the full and red hunter's moon shone upon them, how they must have dreamed of the beautiful hunting grounds of which their pagan ancestors had told them and taught them to look for in the great future. Per- haps to them, amid those beauties of the world around them, some ideas of the power and the glory of the Great Spirit came. Perhaps some blind prayers went up from their darkened minds to his throne above. Per- haps some longings for a higher life came at times upon them. A little good, and yet it seems to have been a very little good, have white men done to the Indian race. They were here, those copper-colored, uneducated, native children of America, but a few years ago, where are now our towns and villages, our farms and orchards, our churches and schools, our domestic animals and our homes. Some of their stone axes, their arrow and spear heads, and many of their bones, are left in our soil; their dust is here to be mingled with our dust; but they have passed forever away. They wrote no history, they published no songs, they erected no monuments; even the earth- works are, probably, not their work; and after they had passed into the distant West, this fair, long stretch of land was almost as though they had never
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been. There were no bridges, no mills, no fences, no buildings, and not much mark of human occu- pancy.
Something more of these Indians and of their pe- culiar life we may see when we come to the mixed life of the pioneer and Indian from 1830 to 1840, when incidents may be found sufficient to make a long chap- ter.
At present let us look at two of their noted chief- tains.
SHAUBENEE. CHEE-CHEE-BING-WAY.
The following particulars in regard to this noted Indian chieftain are taken from a Chicago publica- tion of 1889. He was what is called a "good Indian." His name is said to mean "built like a bear." He is said to have been "nearly a perfect specimen of physical development." He was born in 1775, in Canada, a grandnephew of Pontiac, and was a con- temporary of the celebrated Indians, "Tecumseh, Black Hawk, Red Jacket, and Keokuk." Born an Ottawa he was brought in 1800, by a hunting party, to the Pottawatomie country and married a daugh- ter of their principal chief whose village was where is now Chicago in Illinois. When forty years of age he was the war chief of the two tribes, the Ottawas and Pottawatomies. He joined Tecumseh in getting up his confederation, and was next to him in com- mand at the battle of the Thames, and when Tecum- seh fell on that battlefield Shaubenee ordered a retreat. That was his first and last battle against the whites.
For his refusal longer to contend against the whites he was deposed as war chief, but continued to be the principal peace chief. For some twenty years he was "the practical head of the Ottawas, Pottawatomies, and
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THE INDIANS.
Chippewas." When the Indians ceded their Illinois lands to the United States they reserved 1,280 acres near Paw Paw Grove in Illinois, for Shaubenee, but of this rapacious whites "by force and fraud de- prived him."
At length, in 1859, some generous white people bought twenty acres of land and built for him a house in Grundy County, Illinois, on the south bank of the Illinois River, where he died July 17, 1859, being 84 years of age, "and was buried with imposing cere- monies in the cemetery at Morris." While not resid- ing in Indiana yet as connected with our Pottawato- mies Shaubenee is surely entitled to a place in our Indian records.
Next to this noted Indian chief may be named a man of mixed blood-Indian, French, and English -whose English name was Alexander Robinson and his Indian name Chee-Chee-Bing-Way, translated Blinking Eyes, who died at his home on the Des Plaines River near Chicago about 1872 (supposed to be 104 years of age), for he is claimed to have been a head chief among the Pottawatomies. No battle deeds of his have been found on record to be re- counted here, but as early as 1809 he is found en- gaged in taking corn around the south shore of Lake Michigan, having become connected with the found- er of Bailly Town in the fur trade and then being in the service or employ of John Jacob Astor. This corn was raised by the Pottawatomies and was taken to Chicago for sale and export "in bark woven sacks on the backs of ponies." So that we may call this Indian chief the first known buyer and exporter of corn at what is now that great mart of trade-Chicago. In August, 1812, it is said, he was on his way in a,
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canoe, again to buy up corn in Chicago, or at Fort Dearborn, when some friendly Miamis hailed him from the shore, and warned him not to go to Chicago, as "it would storm tomorrow." He left his canoe, therefore, at the mouth of the Big Calumet (which is in Lake County), and had no part in the "August Massacre." He lived the next winter in Indian style as a hunter on the Calumet. In 1829 he took a wife from the Calumet who was three-fourths Indian blood. His headquarters were at Chicago and his journeys outward for the purpose of buying fur extended as far southward as the Wabash River.
It is claimed that he, as a Pottawatomie chief, evi- dently a trader rather than a warrior, called together an Indian council at Chicago in the time of the Black Hawk War (1832), and it is said that when, in 1836, the great body of this tribe met for the last time in Chicago, received their presents, and started for the then wild West, this trader chief went with them. But like Shaubenee, who also went out to see his people settled in their new home, he soon returned and passed his last years on the Des Plaines River.
Mr. J. Hurlburt, a well-known citizen of Porter, and afterwards of Lake County, stated several years ago, that he was in Chicago at the time of that gather- ing of the "red children" in 1836, and that as many as ten thousand were supposed to have been then as- sembled there, and that it was understood that five thousand were Pottawatomies.
JOHN B. CHAUDONIA.
The name of another active and influential man may properly be placed on this record.
General Lewis Cass says: "Chaudonia was a half-
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THE INDIANS.
breed Pottawatomie. His uncle, Topenebee, was the chief of the tribe, and was an old man of great in- fluence." Like Anthony Rollo he was the son of a French man and an Indian woman, but unlike him there seems no evidence that he received in any true sense the religion of the whites among whom for some years he lived. General Cass further says of him: "He served many years under my orders both in peace and war, and in trying circumstances rendered great services to the United States. Some of the events of his life were almost romantic, and at all times he was firm and faithful."
General Cass says further: "From the commence- ment of our difficulties with Great Britain, Chau- donia espoused our cause, notwithstanding the exer- tions of the British agents to seduce him to their in- terests."
"He was present at the massacre of the garrison of Chicago, where I have always understood he saved the life of Captain Heald, the commanding officer, and the lives of others also." After mentioning his in- fluence as exerted in inducing the chief, Topenebee, his mother's brother, and other Pottawatomie chiefs, to attend the council of Greenville in 1834 held by General Harrison and himself, General Cass adds : "From Greenville he accompanied me to Detroit, * and rendered me the most essential service."
In 1832 Chaudonia was living for a time in La Porte County, on a piece of land, section 28, town- ship -, range -, "allotted to him by the treaty with the Pottawatomie Indians, held on the Tippecanoe River, October 26, 1832."
He afterward became a resident near South Bend and there died in 1837. Congress granted in 1847 a
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section of land to his widow and children "in consid- eration of the services rendered" by him to the United States. His name among the Indians, says Charles M. Heaton, was Shaderny, which seems to have been sometimes written Shadney. Two of his grandsons were faithful soldiers on the side of the Union in our great Civil War.
One of them was severely wounded. So there was shed in that fierce conflict, not only the blood of Americans and of many European nationalities, but also Pottawatomie blood from the State of Indiana.
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