USA > Michigan > Cass County > A twentieth century history of Cass County, Michigan > Part 3
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.As already mentioned, the glacial ridge, roughly paralleled by the Grand Trunk Railroad, is the watershed separating the county into two drainage divisions. Eventually all the surface waters of the county find their way into the St. Joseph river. But, recognizing the line of division just mentioned, thie drainage of the south and eastern half is effected by two general outlets, and of the north and west half by one.
Christiann creek, which reaches the St. Joseph at Elkhart. receives thie drainage, in whole or part, of Ontwa, Mason, Jefferson, Calvin, Penn and Newberg townships. Its extreme sources may be traced to Mud and
HISTORY OF CASS COUNTY
Wildcat lakes in north Penn. Several of the lakes in southwest New- berg drain into this creek, and the surplus waters from the Diamond lake basin pass into the little branch that extends from the lake's south- ern extremity, through Brownsville, to a junction with the Christiann. A little further south Christiann creek receives accessions to its placid current from the "chain lakes" of Calvin, and from various small tributaries in cast Jefferson, and from the lakes of north Ontwa. From the earliest period of white settlement Christiann creek has furnished sites for mills, one of the first in the county being at Vandalia, where the water is still utilized for similar purposes, though its volume at this point is small.
To the student of nature, especially with reference to the physical geography of this county, some of the facts derived from observations of familiar scenes become as impressive as the grandeur and surpassing wonders that lie a thousand miles away. Surely there is cause for con- templation and admiration in the knowledge that at one time the great area roughly defined by the Christiann and its tributaries was under the dominion of confused and dashing waters, under whose influence the land surface was moulded and shaped anew, and that when it finally emerged, water-worn, to the light of the sun its surface was the more fit for the uses of man. From total inundation the waters withdrew by stages until they are now confined to the diminishing lakes and the narrow streams.
The entire Christiann basin is, in turn, tributary to the St. Joseph valley, whose irregular shore line is clearly and sometimes abruptly de- fined along the southern border of Cass county. The old Indian trail and Chicago road often follows close on the edge of this river bluff, now descending to the old stream level and now winding along on the heights.
We have described with some particularity the Christiann drain- age area, because its features are quite typical of the other similar areas in the county. And before speaking of these other drainage divisions, it is necessary to state the part played by artificial drainage in the county.
The pioneers found many portions of the county unfit for cultiva- tion and agricultural improvement. Marsh hay was the only product of value furnished by these areas, and to offset this the flats and marshes were the breeding grounds of chills and fevers and for many years a source of disease to all who lived here. Now these same places are the sites of some of the most productive, valuable and healthful farmsteads
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HISTORY OF CASS COUNTY
in the county. Not alone the system of ditching, under individual and county enterprise, has been responsible for this. The clearing of the timber tracts and undergrowth and the loosening and upturning of the soil by the plow increased surface evaporation and sub-drainage, and these were the first important agencies in removing the excess moisture and making the land more habitable as well as arable.
The first acts of the legislature with reference to drainage were passed in 1846. For ten years all the public drainage undertaken was un- der the direction of township authorities. In 1857 the board of super- visors were given power to appoint three commissioners to construct and maintain drains. This act was amended at different times. In 1881 it was provided that one drain commissioner might be appointed in each county, to holdl office two years, and in 1897 the office of drain commissioner was formally established in each county, to be filled by appointment of the board of supervisors for a term of two years, the first full term dating from January, 1898. In consideration of the vast benefit conferred upon the counties of Michigan by drainage works, it is noteworthy that the laws and court decisions expressly affirm that such construction and maintenance of drains can be undertaken only on the ground that they are "conducive to the public health, convenience and welfare." In other words, the increased value of lands and the ben- elits to private individuals are only incidental. The present incumbent of the office is G. Gordon Huntley, and his predecessor in the office was Jolin Condon.
Public drains may now be found in all parts of the county. In some places the digging of a ditch through a natural barrier and the maintenance of a straight channel in place of a former tortuous and sluggish outlet, has effected the complete drainage of a lake basin, thus ending another dominion of the picturesque tamarack and marsh grass and making room for waving grain fields. As a result of drainage many of the lakes which the pioneers knew and which are designated on the county maps in use today, are now quite dry and cultivable, and in the course of another generation many more of these sheets of crys- tal water, reminiscent of geologic age and picturesque features of the landscape, will disappear because inconsistent with practical utility and the welfare of mankind.
Another important phase of the drainage work is the deepening and straightening, by dredging, of the existing water courses. Per- haps the most notable instance is in Silver Creek and Pokagon town-
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HISTORY OF CASS COUNTY
ships, where the sinuous Dowagiac creek, for considerable portions of its course, has been removed, as it were, bodily from its former bed and placed in a new straight channel, where its current hastens along at a rate never attained by the old stream in times of freshet. By this means, the water being confined to a narrow channel and not allowed to wan- der at its sluggish will over the ancient bed, as though unwilling to for- get its former greatness, a large area of timber and swamp land has been rendered available for productive purposes. By clearing of the forests and by improvement of surface drainage, the "Dowagiac Swamp," so fearful to the early settlers as the haunt of pestilence and long deemed impossible of reclamation, has lost its evil reputation and is now not only traversed by solid highways as successors to the old corduroy or primitive "rail road," but is cut up into fertile and valuable farms.
Resuming the description of the remaining topographical divisions of the county, we find that besides the Christiann basin a large portion of Newberg and Marcellus townships sheds the surface water through the outlets afforded by Little Rocky river and its branches, which pass east to a junction with the St. Joseph in the county of the latter name. That portion of the county that forms the barrier of separation between the Christiann and the Little Rocky presents the most diverse and rugged surface to be found in the county. The south part of Newberg town- ship was at one time quite submerged, this conclusion being based on the numerous lake basins and plains to be found there. But north from Newberg town hall, which is situated on a delightfully level plain, where the loamy soil itself indicates a different origin from that found in the rougher areas, the level is abruptly broken and the road ascends to a series of morainal hills and ridges, forming a fairly well defined group spreading over sections 8, 9, 10, 15, 16 and 17. Among these is "Bald Hill," between sections 9 and 16, conceded to be the highest elevation not only of this group, but perhaps of the entire county. From these hills of heaped up gravel, sand and clay, with corresponding deep and irregular sinks and valleys, prospects are afforded on all sides. To the south the country appears to extend in level perspective until the hori- zon line is made by the hills in north Porter township. The view on the east is not interrupted short of the east line of the county, though all the intervening surface is extremely hilly and some of the most tortu- ous roads in the county are in east Newberg. Northward froni Bald Hill the descent into the valley of the Little Rocky is such that here is seen the most impressive panorama in Cass county. On a clear day,
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HISTORY OF CASS COUNTY
when the timbered areas have lost their foliage, the houses of Marcellus village, at the center of the next township, are visible. Between are the succession of woodland and cultivated fields, dotted with farm- houses and all the evidences of prosperous agriculture. Some of the landscape vistas that stretch away in every direction from the hills of Newberg, not to mention the hills themselves, are worthy the labors of a most critical painter.
As soon as the Lake Michigan moraine north and west of Cas- sopolis is crossed an entirely different drainage area is reached. Here Dowagaic creek reaches out its numerous branches and increases its current from the drainage of practically half the county. Fish lake, in the northeast corner of the county, is the extreme source. within the county. Thence the course lies westward through the Little Prairie Ronde, which attracted the Gards and Huffs and other well known carly settlers to Volinia township. Further along, as the stream increased, it afforded power for mills, which all along its course have been im- portant factors in the industries of the county from the pioneer period. Wandering on in its course through Volinia and LaGrange, its drainage area has been marked by alternate forest, flat marsh-land, and beautiful, fertile prairies. Reaching northeast LaGrange, its valley expands into the broad LaGrange prairie, which the succeeding pages will describe as the site of one of the three earliest and largest Cass county settle- ments. The valley again contracting as it winds through the hills east of Dowagiac, the stream passes into the series of marshi flats which characterize the country surrounding Cass county's only city. As al- ready mentioned, the country between the two forks of the Dowagaic, comprising a large part of Silver Creek, as also of the adjoining town- ships, has been redeemed from the reign of swamp and water by man's enterprise. The north branch of the Dowagiac, with its source in Van- Buren county, is bordered by the flats of Wayne and Silver Creek, which ditching and clearing are making some of the most productive land in the county.
' Between the south branch of the Dowagiac and Pokagon creek, comprising much of the area of Pokagon and LaGrange townships, are located several of the gently undulating, thinly timbered areas to which the pioneers gave the name "prairies." Of these, Pokagon prairie, by its native fertility and beauty, first attracted the homeseekers from the rendezvous at Carey Mission (Niles). Also, Mckinney's prairie is a geographical name often repeated in these pages, designating a tract
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HISTORY OF CASS COUNTY
about and mieluding Sections 20 and 21 of LaGrange. LaGrange prairie belongs to the same general description. All the area, included between the central moramal ridge and Dowagiac creek, was at one time, it must be remembered, the bottom of the immense water basin which contained the floods poured from the edge of the retreating glacier as it withdrew from the moraine, and the mundation which continued for a long time. effected many changes in the surface and the arrangement of drift material.
The southwest part of the county, much of it ridged and over- spread with the moraine, presents a topography similar to Newberg. though not so rugged. The numerous lakes and absence of any im- portant streams, indicate the work of the ice fields in sculpturing the surface of Howard, Jefferson and Milton townships. Here are some ex- tensive flats which a complete system of drainage will in time make very valuable from an agricultural point of view. Howard especially was noted for its "oak openings," and the loose sandy soil and presence of many gravel and boulder ridges militated against a very early occupa- tion by settlers, although the same land has long since been found well adapted to practical agriculture.
Generally speaking, the soil throughout the county, in consequence of its origin in the composite glacial drift, is very deep and contains all the chemical constituent elements of good soil. The character of the soil depends upon the assortment of the drift material into clay, sand or gravel beds, as one or the other of these layers happens to occupy the surface position, or as they are mingled without regard to kind.
A few words may be said, in conclusion, relative to what may be termed the "natural products" of Cass county. At the time of settlement the greater part of the area was covered with forest growth in all its primeval magnificence and wildness. The clearing of these timber areas -for they are meager in comparison with their former area and mostly of second growth trees-effected the greatest changes in the landscape, as it has been modified under the influences of seventy-five years of civil- ization. Pioneers recall the heavy forest growths among which their first habitations were constructed. In those days no value was attached to timber that would now be bought at almost fabulous prices for lum- ber. Black walnut, measuring four or five feet in diameter, white, black and red oak, hickory, elm and beech, were all ruthlessly cut down and given prey to fire in order that space might be had for tillage. The timber tracts now to be found in the county, though in some cases mag-
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HISTORY OF CASS COUNTY
nificent features of the landscape, are restricted and hardly adequate as a means by which the imagination can reconstruct the gloomy. intricate forest depths through which the pioneer forced his way to his wilderness home.
Of coal and mineral deposits, Cass county has none. Borings for gas have not resulted successfully, although about twenty years ago a company at Dowagiac sunk a drill over nineteen hundred feet below the surface. From an early day the manufacture of brick has been carried on, but brick kilns have been numerous everywhere and furnish no special point of distinction.
The most important of nature's deposits are the marl beds. This peculiar form of carbonate of lime, now the basis of Michigan's great Portland cement industry, the total of the state's output being second only to that of New Jersey, was known and used in this county from an early day. The plaster used in the old court house was made of marl lime. Many a cabin was chinked with this material, and there were several kilns in an early day for the burning of marl. A state geolog- ical report states the existence of a large bed of marl at Donnell's lake east of Vandalia, Sections 31 and 32 of Newberg, the marl in places being over twenty-five feet in depth. Just north of Dowagiac, in the lowlands of the old glacial valley is said to be a deposit of bog lime over six hundred acres in extent and from eighteen to twenty-eight feet deep. Harwood lake, on the St. Joseph county line, is, it is claimed, surrounded by bog lime. About the lakes east of Edwardsburg are marl deposits which were utilized for plaster from an early day. But as yet these deposits have not been developed by the establishment of cement plants, and that branch of manufacture is a matter to be described by a future historian.
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HISTORY OF CASS COUNTY
CHAPTER II. ORIGINAL INHABITANTS.
It is asserted that when the first white men settled in Cass county, they had as neighbors some four or five hundred Indians. So that. although we make the advent of the white man the starting point of our history, yet for hundreds and perhaps thousands of years there has been no break in the period when the region we now call Cass county has served as the abode of human beings.
The lands which we now till, the country dotted over with our com- fortable dwellings, the localities now occupied by our populous towns and villages, were once the home of a people of a different genius, with different dwellings, different arts, different burial customs, and different ideas ; but they were human beings, and the manner in which our interest goes out to them, and the peculiar inexpressible feelings which come to our hearts as we look back over the vista of ages and study the few relics they have left, are proof of the universal brotherhood of man and the universal fatherhood of God ..
Almost all of the Indians living here at the coming of the white settlers were members of the Pottawottomie tribe. And they were the successors of the powerful Miamis, who had occupied the country when the French missionarics and explorers first made record of its inhab- itants. This shifting of population had probably gone on for ages. and many tribes, of varying degrees of barbarism, have in their time occupied the soil of Cass county. The Pottawottomies were destined to be the last actors on the scene, and with the entrance of the white man they soon passed out forever.
But during the first three decades of the nineteenth century they were the possessors of this region. The ascending smoke from the wig- wam fires, the human voices by wood and stream, were theirs. They were the children of nature. The men were hunters, fishers, trappers and war- riors. Their braves were trained to the chase and to the battle. The women cultivated the corn, tended the papooses and prepared the food.
And yet these people had attained to a degree of approximate civil- ization. Though they wrote no history, and published no poems, there
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HISTORY OF CASS COUNTY
certainly were traditions among them, especially concerning the creation of the world. Though they erected no monuments, they had their dwellings, wigwams though they were. Their civilization was not com- plicated, and yet they lived in villages, graphic accounts of which have been given. In place of roads they had trails, some of them noted ones, which will be described later. They communicated with each other in writing by means of rude hieroglyphics. They had no schools, but their young were thoroughly trained and hardened to perform the duties ex- pected of them.
The Indians had not carried agriculture to a high degree of per- fection. but they turned up the sod and planted garden vegetables and corn, of which latter they raised more than is generally supposed. though the women did most of the farm work. They were not given to com- merce, but they bartered goods with settlers and took their furs to the trading posts where they exchanged them for the white man's products. They made their own clothes, their canoes, their paddles, their bows and arrows, and other weapons of war, and wove bark baskets of sufficient fineness to hold shelled corn. And another interesting fact concerning them, they also understood how to make maple sugar. The sugar groves of the county have given of their sweetness for more generations than we know of.
Much of a specific nature has been written of the Indians of this part of the country, much more than could be compressed within the space of this volume. We can only characterize them briefly. That they were in the main peacable is the testimony of all records. On the other hand they were by no means the "noble red men" which the idealism of Cooper and Longfellow has painted them. Historical facts and the witness of those who have had the benefit of personal association with these unfortunate people lead one to believe that the Indian, as compared with our own ideals of life and conduct, was essentially and usually a sordid, shiftless, unimaginative, vulgar and brutish creature, living from land to mouth, and with no progressive standards of morality and char- acter. The Indians in this vicinity frequently came 'and camped around the settlers, begging corn' and squashes and giving venison in return. They supplemented this begging propensity by thieving- usually in . a petty degree-and it is said that they would steal any' article they could put their hands on and. escape observation. A sharp watch was kept on their movements ,when they were known to be in the neighborhood ..
The Indians with whom the settlers of Cass county had to deal had
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HISTORY OF CASS COUNTY
been influenced more or less by coming in contact with Christianity. At different times for a century French missionaries had penetrated this region. Father Marest is one of the first known as having worked in this field. The Pottawottomies yielded more readily than other tribes to the teachings of the missionaries. They were deeply impressed by the ritual of the Catholic church. The tenacity with which many of the converts clung to the faith is a remarkable tribute to the power of that church over a barbarous people. Old chief Pokagon, whose record has come down to us singularly free from the usual stains of Indian weakness, was a lifelong adherent of the Catholic church, and he and his people formed the nucleus and chief support of a church in Silver Creek township.
The natives had been subject not only to the influences of Catholi- cism but to those of Protestantism. This brings us to the consideration of one of the most remarkable institutions of a missionary character that the middle west ever knew. Not only the work of religion but many secular events and undertaking's that concern the early history of north- ern Indiana and southwestern Michigan centered around the Baptist mission among the Pottawottomies, which was founded near the site of Niles in the year 1822. Here gathered the red men to receive re- ligions and secular instruction. The councils between the government authorities and the chief men of the tribe took place at the mission house. This was the destination to which the settler from the east would direct his course. After resting and refitting at this point and counseling with those who knew the country, the homeseekers would depart in dif- ferent directions to locate their pioneer abode. Thus the Carey Mission, as it was called, played a very conspicuous part in the history of this region. It served to connect the old with the new. It was founded pri- marily for the benefit of the Indians, it served their spiritual and often their physical needs, and its existence was no longer warranted after the Indians had departed. But the Mission was also a buffer to soften the impact of civilization upon the Indian regime. Its work in behalf of the Indians and settlers alike pushed forward the process of civilization and development in this region some years before it otherwise would have been attempted.
The name of Rev. Isaac McCoy has become fixed in history as that of one of the most remarkable religious pioneers of the middle west. His influence and fame, while centering around the Carey Mission which he established, also spread to many parts of the west. Born in Pennsyl-
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HISTORY OF CASS COUNTY
vania in 1784, he was taken by his parents to the wilderness of Kentucky when six years old. There he met and married the gentle Christiana, a (laughter of Captain Polk, and as faithful co-workers they devoted their efforts to a common cause. The people of Cass county have special reason to remember this pioneer missionary's wife, for her name is borne by the stream that runs south from the center of the county to a junction with the St. Joseph near Elkhart. For a number of years Rev. McCoy was pastor of a church in Indiana, and in 1817 was ap- pointed a missionary and undertook his labors among the Indians of the western states and territories.
The founding of the Carey Mission was, in the language of Judge Nathaniel Bacon in an address delivered at Niles in 1869, "the pioneer step in the way of settlement. It was barely ten years since the massacre at Chicago, and about the same time after the memorable battle at Tip- pecanoe, and the disastrous defeat of our army at Brownstown, when this mission was established. Emigration had in a great measure stopped. Very few dared to venture beyond the older settlements, until McCoy bold- ly entered into the heart of the Indian country, and began his mission school among the Pottawottomies who dwelt on the river St. Joseph. The fact was soon made known throughout Indiana and Ohio, and at once adventurers began to prepare to follow the example of the mis- sionary, who had led the way."
In the same address Judge Bacon quoted a report of mission made by Major Long of the United States army in 1823. It contained the following description of the mission establishment: "The Carey Mis- sion house is situated about one mile from the river St. Joseph. The establishment was erected by the Baptist Missionary Society in Wash- ington, and is under the superintendence of the Rev. Mr. McCoy, a man whom, from the reports we have heard of him, we should consider as eminently qualified for the important trust committed to him.
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