USA > Indiana > Pioneer history of Indiana : including stories, incidents, and customs of the early settlers > Part 37
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50
At the county seats, towns, and wherever the country was more thickly settled, there were usually better schools than those I have described, but as a rule I have given a true description of them as they were.
I feel warranted in asserting that our schools have kept well to the forefront as our state has made rapid marches to its present greatness. From these primitive schools have come some of the greatest men this nation has produced.
From the organization of the Territorial Legislature up to 1850 every assembly had a message from the Governor ask- ing that the interest of the people should be well looked after and ample provision made for the education of the children. By the wise provision of the ordinance of 1787 and the laws passed afterwards by the Territorial and State Legislature, the foundation for our large and ever-increasing school fund. The common school fund in 1825 consisted of 680,207 acres of land, estimated at two dollars per acre, making $1,360,414.00.
There are always those to be found who are against any
467
PIONEER HISTORY OF INDIANA.
public policy, and this was true when free schools were first advocated by our law-makers. When it was submitted to a vote in 1852 whether we should have free schools or not, there was a strong minority opposed to it. They had many objections to its becoming a law. One was that it would largely increase the taxes to keep up the schools, and another was that it imposed a heavy burden on persons who had used economy and had accumulated property to pay taxes to edu- cate the children of those who were poor, in many cases by their own vicious habits and a want of industry. Those ob- jecting lost sight of the great blessing which would come to all the people by having an opportunity to educate the rising generation. Fortunately, the majority of Indiana's voters were not so narrowly constructed, and the law that placed Indiana in the front rank in educational matters was passed.
Notwithstanding the interest manifested by our law- makers, education in most sections of the state in 1850 was at a low standard. The schools were all subscription or private ones.
After the free school system came into operation in April, 1853, by the election of trustees for each township, which committed into their charge the educational interests of their respective township, the trustees had to organize school districts and then to provide houses to teach in.
In many townships in Indiana there was not a single house of any sort to teach in. Most of the houses used were found to be old, dilapidated buildings that a farmer of this date would not house his sheep in. It took a good while to make all these necessary arrangements, but after a while things began to run smoothly and the townships were toler- ably well provided with school houses.
Another serious difficulty was the lack of efficient school teachers. This want was cured by a new law authorizing the appointment of deputy superintendents in each county to ex- amine applicants for license to teach; the deputies by lower- ing the standard were enabled to secure teachers for most of the schools. The Legislature in 1853 enacted a law that made a standard of qualification and authorized the county
468
PIONEER HISTORY OF INDIANA.
commissioners to license teachers, that all schools might be supplied with a teacher, for fear there might not be a suf- ficiency of properly qualified teachers.
County commissioners were authorized to give temporary licenses to those taking charge of schools that did not require a high grade of teaching. It would seem a reasonable con- clusion that all parents would be glad to avail themselves of the opportunity of giving their children an education, since it was free, but such was not the case then any more than it is now.
In 1854 our common school fund was $2,460,600. This amount has been increased from many sources, until now we have a magnificent fund of more than ten million dollars and an average school year of six months. All can be educated, if they will, and be sufficiently advanced, free of charge, to enter any college.
-
CHAPTER XIX.
THE NOBLE ACT OF RETURNING SOLDIERS OF THE BATTLE OF TIPPECANOE - AARON BURR'S CONSPIRACY AND THE MIS- FORTUNES ATTENDING IT-DIFFICULTY OF PROCURING SALT AND DESPERATE BATTLE WITH TWO BEARS - INCI- DENTS OF BURR'S CONSPIRACY-GOVERNOR JENNINGS' TEM- PERANCE LECTURE - BATTLE BETWEEN TWO BEARS AND Two PANTHERS-PANTHERS KILLING INDIANS -- A HER- MIT - PANTHERS KILL A MAN AND BOY - EARLY DAYS; NEAR PETERSBURG, INDIANA -- PANTHERS KILLING ONE AND DESPERATELY WOUNDING ANOTHER MAN OF A SUR- VEYING PARTY - WILD HOGS -SHOOTING MATCHES - EARLY DAYS IN DUBOIS COUNTY, INDIANA - KILLING OF EIGHT INDIANS - HUNTING - EARLY DAYS NEAR SPRIN- KLKSBURG, Now NEWBURG, WARRICK COUNTY, INDIANA- A YOUNG WOMAN KILLED BY PANTHERS - HUNTING WOLVES - HUNTING DEER - AN AMUSING INCIDENT OF AN IRISHMAN AND THE HORNET'S NEST. .
As hunting was the only means of obtaining a liveli- hood, for there was no money to pay for anything that was to sell and nothing to barter but the venison hams, skins and furs, these were exchanged for a few indispensable articles such as powder, lead, flints and salt, that were bought at a trading post far away.
Later on when more people were here and there was less danger from the Indians, this produce was bought up in large quantities and carried to market at New Orleans in flatboats, where it was sold for Spanish coin. When these traders returned, probably six or eight months after starting, they would pay out the coin for the produce they had bought
1
470
PIONEER HISTORY OF INDIANA.
on credit, thus enabling all who were industrious to have some of the money coming to them.
The hunters would kill many deer, salt their hams and smoke them, thus having them ready when the time came for the produce men to again receive them. They also saved the deer hides, bear skins, and nearly every night went hunt- · ing for coons and other fur-bearing animals. By the time the dealers in produce were ready to load their boats, they would find an immense quantity of produce that had been se- cured by the chase to load their boats at many points; some- times two or three boats would be laden down. On the return of these produce merchants, they would pay out a large amount of money to their creditors. Many men in each neighborhood would have money to enter forty acres of land; others would have half enough and would commence to pre- pare produce for the next winter. The greater portion of all the land entered in the settled sections of Indiana from 1815 to 1835 was paid for by money that came from the chase.
After the bear became less numerous, farmers commenced to raise hogs and fatten them on the abundant mast which was everywhere.
They would make the pork into bacon or sell it to be salted the boats in bulk by the produce dealers. After the people in commenced to raise hogs, for several years they had to keep them in close pens at night, as if they were allowed to run at will they would nearly all be killed by bears. The price they received for a hundred pounds of pork was one dollar and fifty cents, net.
When the game in the older sections became thinned out, the men would organize themselves into a party of eight or ten, go to some place where it was known there was an abundance of game and make themselves a faced camp, and have a man to take care of it and cook for the party. Then they commenced in a systematic way to hunt over the sur- rounding country. Before these men would break camp they would kill several hundred deer and probably fifteen or twenty bears.
Captain Spier Spencer's company at the battle of Tippe-
-
471
PIONEER HISTORY OF INDIANA.
canoe was in the thick of the fight. The Captain and a num- ber of the men were killed and wounded. Among the num- ber was a man named Davis, who had moved from one of the older states only a few weeks before the call was made for volunteers. Leaving his family in one of the settlements, he enlisted and was killed at the battle of Tippecanoe.
After the remnant of the company got home, those who were neighbors of the widow of their dead comrade held a meeting and resolved to assist her. They therefore organized a hunting party and sold the results of their hunt for enough to enter forty acres of land, and as they entered land for themselves, kept the widow provided for until her sons were old enough to take their part in the chase and in clearing up the farm.
- AARON BURR'S CONSPIRACY AND THE MISFORTUNE ATTENDING IT.
In the fall of 1806 a conspiracy was discovered, in which Colonel Aaron Burr was the chief actor, for revolutionizing the territory west of the Alleghany mountains and the estab- lishment of an independent empire, with New Orleans for its capital and himself for its chief ruler.
To this end (it having been contemplated for some time) all the skillful cunning of which Burr possessed so much, was directed. If this project should fail, he planned the conquest of Mexico and the establishment of an empire there. The third project was the settlement of the Washita country which Baron Bastrop claimed. This last was to serve as a pretext for Burr's preparation and allurement, for his mis- guided followers really wished to secure land for homes. If he should be defeated in his first two projects, he could claim the last as his real object. He and his agents influenced many of the restless and dissatisfied elements which were then on the borders of the settled portions of the United States and of those who were always hunting for adventure, to join his force. Col. Burr, by assuring many well meaning, loyal persons that he had the secret influence of the Government back of him, in- duced them to leave their homes and follow his standard.
Not alone was Herman Blennerhassett (who Ipossessed
472
PIONEER HISTORY OF INDIANA.
himself of a beautiful island in the upper Ohio on which he had builded a palatial home and surrounded himself with all comforts, conveniences and adornments which money could purchase at that day), ruined by listening to the seductive and fascinating address of that arch traitor and the Paradise with which he and his beautiful and accomplished wife had surrounded themselves was turned into a very hell and they fugitives from justice, but hundreds of others were influenced to forsake good homes and follow after this traitor, all of them becoming fugitives, hunted down by officers of the Gov- ernment.
These people, while floating down the Ohio in boats, learning that they were being hunted as traitors to their country and that the lower Ohio was patrolled by soldiers to apprehend them, left their boats and scattered over the wilderness of southern Indiana. William Henry Harrison, then Governor, had these injured people hunted up and as- sured them that they were in no danger of arrest, but that they must prepare forts, into which they could repair when in danger from the Indians.
In many portions of southern Indiana these refugees formed the first nucleus around which early settlements were made. They raised families, improved the country, and ever since have added their full portion to the prosperity of the . state.
There was a family of five persons connected with the Burr expedition who located in what is now Perry County, Indiana, five or six miles north of Flint Island, in 1806. It. consisted of two large boys, a grown daughter, the mother and father. Through the misrepresentations of Aaron Burr and his aides, these people had been induced to leave a good home in Virginia and go on the ill-fated expedition with the assurance that great wealth and fame would accrue to them for their portion of the gains. These people had come down the Ohio in a boat. When they arrived at Louisville, Ky., they learned that Burr and his followers were being hunted by the Government as traitors to their country. They floated on down the Ohio until they came to the mouth of Oil
473
PIONEER HISTORY OF INDIANA.
creek, then ran as far up the creek as they could and sunk their boat. Then taking their plunder, they went some dis- tance farther into the wilderness, where they selected a place which suited their fancy and built their cabins, with a brave determination to start the battle of life over again. Joseph Bowers, who was the head of this family, and his eldest son, James, hunted most of their time, killing much game. They had located at a point which was some distance from any of the traveled traces which the Indians used, and began to feel hopeful they would have no trouble from them.
On one of their hunting excursions the two men had lo- cated a patch of hazel brush which was covered over with a thick matting of grape vines loaded with very fine large grapes. The daughter and younger brother accompanied the two hunters, intending to gather the fruit, and in the evening when the hunters returned they would carry it home. They had not been long gathering grapes before they saw a large animal slipping through the brush, coming towards them. The young boy, sixteen years old, had armed himself with an Indian tomahawk. They tried to slip away in the direction of their homes, but got only a short distance when they heard the awful scream of the vicious animal as it came bounding after them. Mary Bowers had heard that a panther would not attack a human as long as they faced it and kept their eyes on the panther's eyes. This she attempted to do, at the same time walking backwards, with the animal slowly follow- ing her, patting its tail on the ground at each step. In her excitement she was not cautious of her steps and was tripped by a vine, when the vicious animal bounded onto her pros- trate body and tore her into pieces with its terrible claws. The young boy rushed at the beast with his tomahawk and sank the blade into its head, but was unable to pull it out of its skull. The panther caught both of his arms with his fore claws and in its dying agony tore the flesh from his legs with its hind claws. Mr. Bowers and his son were a mile away when they heard the scream of the panther. They ran as fast as they could to the point the children had been left, where they found Mary dead and the arms of Joseph still in
474
PIONEER HISTORY OF INDIANA.
the clutches of the dead panther, and it was many months before he was able to walk again.
DIFFICULTY IN PROCURING SALT AND A DESPERATE BATTLE WITH BEARS.
The early settlers in Indiana from 1800 up to 1820 experi- enced great difficulty in procuring a sufficiency of salt for their culinary purposes and to save their meats. It was high- . priced and hard to get, usually selling for twelve to twenty cents a pound in skin currency or backwoods currency, which was all they had to pay with.
A good late fall or early winter bear skin was worth fifty cents, a deer skin twenty cents, and a coon skin from fifteen to twenty cents, in salt. They often made these skins up in packs of seventy-five to a hundred pounds and would carry them from twenty-five to thirty miles to find a sale for them.
They made large meat troughs out of poplar trees. The meat was placed in the trough and salted. After all the salt had gone into the meat that was required, the rest would melt and become brine in the bottom of the trough. After the meat was hung to smoke, every portion of the surplus salt was saved to use again.
Captain Alfred Miler, of Grandview, Spencer county, during the war of the sixties, related to me some early experi- ences of his people. He said the greatest difficulty they had to contend with was to have salt for their food. They had several boys in the family and they would time about getting all the bear, deer and coon skins ready and going to Louis- ville-sometimes to Vincennes-and selling them for salt. Sometimes it was too dangerous, on account of Indians, to go to either place, and they would have to resort to many ex- pedients to have salt for their fresh meat.
There was a large deer lick not far from their home. They would gather a large amount of saline dirt from the lick, put in an old-fashioned ash hopper, put water on the dirt and after it had leached through the dirt the salty water was caught in a trough at the bottom of the hopper. Often a quantity of hickory ashes would be put in with the dirt. In"
475
PIONEER HISTORY OF INDIANA.
this way the substance, after it was boiled down, would be- come very strong and penetrating.
When there was less danger from the Indians, the people who lived in the southwestern part of the state would go to the saline section of southern Illinois and make salt, but not until after the war of 1812 was over was it safe to make such venture unless in large parties.
In the early winter the turkeys were very fat. Many persons would kill them in large numbers, clean them and split them in halves and salt in a trough. When they were sufficiently salted they were taken out, washed clean and hung up and cured with smoke.
At such times as the hunters were busy the turkey would be cooked with bear bacon, and was rich, wholesome food. For several years after there were no buffaloes in the older section of the state they were seen on prairie lands of northwestern Indiana. Up to 1825 buffalo were found feed- ing on the rich prairie grasses bordering on the Kankakee swamps. The deer were never so plentiful in that section of the state as they were in the country where the timber and underbrush grew. The prairie wolves were in such numbers in the open country that most of the young fawns were killed by them before they could run fast enough to keep out of the way. The black bear was at home in all parts of the state. The last that were killed in Indiana, in numbers, were near where the city of Hammond is now located.
At a point not far from English lake two young men, named John Miller and Jean Vought (in the employ of Alexis Coquillard, the manager of John Jacob Astor's fur company in the country about the Great Lakes), had a camp and had spent several months at the place. One evening in the latter part of March, 1832, as these hunters were round- ing out their very successful winter's hunt, they yet had a large tree which they intended to cut that was in a small strip of timber not far from their cabin and near the border of what is now Starke county, in which they thought a col- ony of raccoons made their home. They had laid their guns to one side and commenced to chop on the tree, when two
、
476
PIONEER HISTORY OF INDIANA.
large bears came rushing at them. They had no time to se- cure their guns before the bears were on them. They tried to defend themselves with their axes. At the first pass Miller's ax was knocked out of his hands and beyond his reach. Be- fore he could get away he was caught and came near having the life squeezed out of him by the vise-like hug the bear gave him.
Vought had been more successful in his battle and had crippled his bear so that it was disabled. He ran to Miller's aid and stuck the blade of an axe into the bear's head, when it fell dead, but carried Miller with it, still holding the death- like grip on him, and he could not be released until Vought had chopped off one of the bears' arms. Miller was carried back to their cabin and it was many weeks before he could travel. They found that the tree, instead of being the home of coons, had two large openings in it, one above the other, and the two bears had occupied it for winter quarters, and probably the first time they had been down during the winter was the evening of the battle. The tree was cut down and two small cubs were found. Miller and Vought were old trappers and were well acquainted with the people in the neighborhood of the White river, as they trapped for years on that river and its tributaries before going north. In the fall of 1812 they had a camp about one mile east of White Oak Spring, now Petersburg, Pike County, and had traps set at many places.
Late one evening, while engaged in setting some traps above and between the forks of White river, they heard the chattering of squirrels some distance to the east, which con- tinued to come closer. Soon the squirrels, but a short dis- tance away, set up a terrible chattering. The hunters, think- ing it was a bear or a panther that was causing the excite- ment among the squirrels, placed themselves in hiding to see what was coming. Soon two Indians came out on the bank of the river, one of them on horseback.
The hunters, knowing the Indians were not there for any good purpose, held a whispered council and determined to. kill them. Miller killed the one on foot. Vought's gun
477
PIONEER HISTORY OF INDIANA.
flashed in the pan and his Indian turned his horse and ran away.
The dead Indian had a scalp in a leather pouch hanging to his girdle; the hair of a beautiful light color, which, un- wound, was over four feet in length. They also found a notched stick on him that had several peculiar engravings on it as well as notches, which a friendly Indian afterwards told them meant that he had killed six white persons and four In- dian enemies.
AN INCIDENT OF AARON BURR'S CONSPIRACY.
The Indian that Miller killed was very fantastically dressed and carried a heavy silver-mounted rifle which had a large silver plate on the side of the breech with this engrav- ing on it:
"This rifle is presented to James Jones as a small token of my great appreciation of his brav- ery and for personally risking his life to save mine in a battle with the Indians north of the Ohio river. Louisville, Kentucky, December 12, 1805. John Caldwell."
The night after the killing of the Indian at the forks of White river, Miller and Vought were in Hargrove's camp showing their trophies. Sergeant Bailey, who was in camp not far from White Oak Springs with Colonel Hargrove, looked at the gun and became greatly excited. When shown the scalp above referred to, his grief was almost heart- breaking, exclaiming: "Mary, Mary, my beautiful twin sis- ter, how I loved you-and when I think of the awful, cruel fate which befell you, it is almost more than I can bear."
Afterwards Bailey, relating this strange story, said James Jones was a brave, fearless soldier, and had been in many engagements with the Indians. In the one referred to by the plate on the rifle, the Indians had cut Jones and Cald- well off from the main army while they were dressing a deer. In the running battle that followed Caldwell's leg was broken by a ball and he could retreat no farther. Jones carried him to a secure position between two large logs and they both used the logs for a breastwork. In this way they killed sev- eral Indians and held the others in check until a troop of
478
PIONEER HISTORY OF INDIANA.
their company, hearing the firing, came to their relief. In In 1805 Jones was married to his twin sister, Mary, a beauti- ful woman with a most wonderful suit of light hair. so long that when let down it would veil her person to within a few inches of the floor. An agent of Aaron Burr's had come to their peaceful home on the Monongahela river and per- suaded them to go with the ill-fated expedition. In 1806 President Jefferson issued a proclamation against many per- sons who had attached themselves to Burr's chimerical con- spiracy and they fled in many directions. Jones, Bailey and others from that section started down the Monongahela and into the Ohio river.
They had gone one hundred miles west of the falls of the Ohio, when their boat struck a snag and was sunk, settling in deep water. The occupants were landed by the aid of a. canoe on the Indiana side about forty miles west of the mouth of Blue river, They went back north into the country about fifteen miles, where they built their cabin. The cabin was about ten miles east of the old Indian trace running north from Yellow Banks, Rockport, Spencer County, Indiana, to White river. After staying there during the winter of 1806-07, Jones and Bailey's sister determined to go back by the Ohio river to Louisville, Kentucky, where they hoped to make them a home. Bailey, a few days before they were to start, went to another band of these refugees where two hunting companions of his were living. He and his two friends were on the first hunting trip when they were found by Captain Hargrove's scouts and went with him to Vin- cennes and enlisted in the United States army. Bailey re- mained in the service until after the battle of Tippecanoe. Bailey sent several letters to Louisville, but never received any answer to them, and this was the first time that he had any idea of what became of Jones and his sister. The two hunters offered to give the gun and scalp to Bailey, The scalp he accepted as a precious gift, but said that Miller should keep the gun and he wished he were able to give him a thousand times its value for killing the hated savage who murdered his sister.
479
PIONEER HISTORY OF INDIANA.
GOVERNOR JENNINGS AND TOM OGLESBY.
Governor Jennings used to tell a story of his early elec- tioneering days in which he said that panthers were good temperance lecturers. Once while he was traveling over the. thinly settled hills of Dearborn county electioneering for congress, he met a man he was well acquainted with, Tom. · Oglesby, who was just getting over a protracted drunk. Jen- nings was up to his work and commenced to electioneer with Tom for his vote. The half sober fellow looked at him and said-"Jen, don't you think that a man just out of a panther fight and getting sobered up for the first time in twelve months ought to be electioneered in a more royal style than this? I am just from the grave. I was awakened a little while ago by a panther putting leaves and grass over me. It kept this up until I was entirely covered. I lay still for a while and then raised up and found the panther gone. I knew I was not safe there so I took my gun and climbed into a tree to see what the panther intended to do. In a short time I heard her coming and she had her kittens with her. Every few steps she would jump as is catching something and the little ones would go through the same maneuvers. She was teaching them how to attack their prey. She kept this up until she got near to the bed of leaves that I had been covered with. She made a spring on the pile and then. looked just as I felt when I found I was covered up for dead. She made a mewing noise and the little panthers scampered back the way they had come. She then started in to investi- gate the cause of my disappearance and before she located. me I shot her.". Jennings after hearing this said: "Well, Tom, I do believe I should treat you as one from the dead, and since, Tom, we were school boys together in old Pennsyl- vania and you are a finished civil engineer and very well ed- ucated, if you will quit drinking I will see that you have a good place on the surveying corps" Tom Oglesby did quit drinking, Jennings was elected and put his old school mate in a good place in the engineerig department and he became one of the greatest engineers in the United States.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.