10 MIDWESTERN FOLKLORE these traditions reveals the ways Churubusco relates to other communities and to the nation through its folklore. Further analysis suggests how participation in the broader American symbolic system both influences and inhibits local collective representations of identity and pride. Although the symbols introduced in this chapter recur in various guises in later turtle days traditions, they play minor roles since they convey neither the sense of community uniqueness nor the absolute national significance of the Beast of ’Busco, the focus of the emergent folklore. Chapter Two, “The Great Turtle Hunt,” relates the history of the 1949 events. Local newspaper sources, along with interviews with participating townsfolk, establish a chronology of the historic events. Folkloristic discussion focuses on local and national turtle lore, the American tall tale/traveler tale tradition, and the mythical animal quest theme. The events of 1949 are viewed as an enactment of American cultural themes. Chapter Three, “Town Folklore,” concerns the town’s elaboration of the cultural script enacted by the turtle hunters. This chapter examines the symbiosis of folklore and popular culture by detailing the extent to which elements of folklife and folklore along with commerce, industry, and media hoaxing produce a complex of celebratory protofestive behavior. The focus here is how the town placed itself on the map and acquired its source of local and national identity. Concluding discussion addresses the American provenance of protofestive behavior. Chapter Four, “Emergent Folklore,” is based on interviews and observations twenty-two years after the events of 1949. The reader is returned to Fulk Lake and to Churubusco to discover that personal-experience stories, conversations, tall tales, practical jokes, folk poetry, folk speculation, hoaxing, and legend related to the Beast of ’Busco theme continue to appear in a variety of contexts, both oral and printed. The entrance of the beast into formal academic and popular literature is also considered as a new development that contributes to the manifestation of local tradition. Chapter Five, “The Festival,” examines the history of “Turtle Days” from 1950 to 1992. An extended ethnographic description of the 1971 event conveys a sense of its structure and performance. Chapter Six, “Turtle Town Revisited,” focuses on 1992 festival highlights, described under circumstances in which the ethnographer becomes more the performer-observer than participant observer, with his work guided by the community. This chapter concerns itself with interpretations of the continuing Beast of ’Busco legacy as shown in dramatic enactments, changing practices, and the filming experience within the Turtle Days context. A concluding section addresses the broader issues of both festival and community metaphor. This leads to a final commentary on meanings and values of the Churubusco phenomena in terms of their local and national contexts. THE BEAST OF ’BUSCO 11

1

COMMUNITY AND TRADITION

The Community

Churubusco has the look, feel, and substance of the familiar Midwestern, middle-American, Main Street town. In the 1920s, it would have resembled the Gopher Prairie of American fiction. In the 40s it would have compared favorably with the Plainville of American social science. By the 60s and 70s, like many a small town in mass society, it would assume characteristics ascribed to “fringe communities” and “bedroom suburbs” located near metropolitan areas. Today it sees itself as an attractive satellite town for the nearby, city of Fort Wayne, twelve miles away.1 Churubusco derives economic and cultural benefits from its metropolitan hub as it perpetuates its historical function of service center for surrounding “open country neighborhoods.”2 The town itself is small but expanding; agricultural in origin but industrial in development; Republican in politics but democratic in principles. Churubusco values rural tradition and frontier individualism, while it accommodates urban change and institutional bureaucracy. It is a place where the local weekly newspaper reports community rather than national news; where what is said at the Rotary or Jaycees meeting still has an impact on town life. It is a place that retains a Main Street manner and identity despite its immersion in a mass society.3 Yet, as even its traditions attest, Churubusco also remains a place where the events, trends, discourses, ; . and problems of both region and nation continue to inform both the content and the quality of everyday life. Except for a few pioneers who arrived early in the decade, settlement of this area began in 1834 when the United States Government Land Office in Fort Wayne began selling tracts in Smith Township, Whitley County. By 1838 the township, named after Samuel Smith, 1834 Yankee settler, became organized, and by 1840 the first school was built.4 Throughout the 1840s the site of Churubusco was occupied by two growing settlements on either side of the new railroad line running south from DeKalb County to the Whitley County seat in Columbia City. In 1847 the original settlements, one called Union, the other Franklin, decided to incorporate in order to qualify for a local post office. The townsfolk decided upon the name Franklin; but when the state government informed them that Franklin had already been appropriated by a southern Indiana village, a meeting was organized to rename the town, and Churubusco’s first community legend was bom.

A heated discussion ensued between a German, an Englishman and an Irishman. The German proposed the name Brunswick, the Englishman suggested the name Liverpool, while the furious Irishman insisted that die name should be Mahoney, that he’d be darned if he would have the name of his town burdened with an English or German name, and to make his demand emphatic, he jerked off his coat. The Englishman squirmed with anger, the German just puffed hard on his long-stemmed pipe, and for a moment it appeared as if a fight was at hand. A Mrs. Jackson was permitted to speak and in an effort to establish peace at this gathering, appealed to the patriotism of the men in disagreement; she said she knew that all present were now true patriotic Americans and would willingly fight for their country if occasion would demand; she read a letter she had just received from one of her relatives who was a soldier in the war with Mexico with the United States army; and in the letter it told of the victory that 12 MIDWESTERN FOLKLORE

the Americans won at the battle of Churubusco and she thought that it would be a patriotic move for the citizens to name the town Churubusco and felt quite sure that it would not conflict with the name of another town in the state. The Irishman put on his coat and remarked that although he could not pronounce the name, yet he was for it if it was patriotic, but he never would permit a foreign name for his town. The little group decided upon the name, made an application for a post office under it, and a permit was granted in 1847, and to this day not another post office by the same name has ever been registered in the United States of America?

The origin legend’s resolution of conflict between Churubusco’s three dominant ethnic stocks through appeal to patriotism, Americanism, and onomastic uniqueness, lends the tradition a special community appeal. The legend continues to be reprinted in the local newspaper, reproduced in Chamber of Commerce publications, while fragmentarily known and debated by a good number of townsfolk even though it is unrecognized in the official History of Whitley County.6 As the origin legend states, most of the early settlers were a mixture of Yankees and Germans who moved west from Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania; and Scots Irish from Virginia, Southern Ohio, and Kentucky. These ethnic strains remain dominant today; however, there is little conscious recognition of ethnicity as a factor in community life. When townsfolk do use ethnic labels, these usually are voiced in association with either the remnants of a small, early settlement of the Polish at nearby Ege in Noble County or the Amish, whose main settlement in Nappanee is much more distant. As one person told me, “We got the Polish in Ege. They’re a little bit eccentric like the Amish, a little bit conceited, but I like ’em. They’re well read, intelligent, good farmers all of them.” The town has one Jewish family, prominent in local business and civic affairs since the 1880’s. According to the government census, the racial constitution of Smith Township is essentially Caucasian.7 In Churubusco, both local and national self-identification transcends ethnic affiliations as well as religious and class differences. Most belong to the two Methodist congregations that unified in 1971. Lutheran, Nazarene Baptist, and Roman Catholic denominations have distinct, smaller memberships. Religious issues seem to be regarded as the private, social concerns of an individual. Though class distinctions exist in Churubusco, their significance is minimized in everyday social interaction in which feelings o f egalitarianism and democracy color personal relations. Here people do say things like “One man’s as good as the next” or “No use putting on airs.” They speak of class differences with difficulty and without a clearly conceived standard for status ascription. People are classified as “ordinary and better,” “rich and poor,” “people who live in ordinary frame homes and people who live in new brick ranch homes,” “businessmen and people who work with their hands,” “farmers and people who don’t farm,” “people who drink in the bars and people who don’t.” To some, the “better” people are local schoolteachers, who are highly respected despite their average economic status. Others recognize wealth accrued through small business or large farm operation. In no way do these inconsistent distinctions reveal anything more than a fundamental two class system, the kind described by West in Plainville, U.S.A. Although broad middle and lower classes with extreme exceptions prevail as in Plainville, in Churubusco people usually regard themselves as good, honest, hard workers of the middle class. They relate to others in similar fashion even though there may be considerable disparity in wealth, education, or occupational TOE BEAST OF ’BUSCO 13 status.8 In general, Churubusco residents downplay differences, whether they are economic, educational, occupational, religious, or ethnic, preferring to deal with both themselves and others as if all were average Americans. Churubusco’s pioneers came as farmers who found throughout the local swampy muck land acres of rich black soil suitable for the raising of onions and potatoes. From the nineteenth century until World War II, this farmland was renowned for its muck crops, especially its onions. Since the war, more and more of the smaller farm holdings have been absorbed by “Agribusiness,” while many onion farmers have converted to com and soybeans, hog and cattle farming, or, south of town, to sod farming. As farms continue to subdivide for housing or to consolidate for big business; as the cost for supplies, machinery and taxes escalates, the small farmer must abandon full-time fanning to supplement income through factory work. Today only twenty-seven percent of the Smith Township population earns its living by fanning.9 Many, approximately five hundred people, work for Churubusco’s principal industrial employer, the Dana Corporation, whose factories manufacture and package gaskets and oil seals. Others commute to Fort Wayne where General Electric and Magnavox plants offer needed work opportunities. Otherwise, limited work is found in town at one of five automobile service stations, two grain elevators, two tin shops, the monument works, electrical repair shops, or an overhead door company. Downtown, a person may work or do business in any of die two real estate agencies, in insurance firms, supermarkets, restaurants, furniture stores, barber shops, beauty salons; at any one of several drug, dress, cleaning, hardware, and lumber stores; or at the offices of the Churubusco bank, utility, or power companies, most of which are concentrated in a four block long strip on Main Street. The town is served by two general practitioners, two funeral directors, and four attorneys. A three-person town board governs the municipality, assisted by a justice of the peace, clerk, treasurer, and town attorney. Churubusco has three officers in its police department and a fire department with twenty volunteers. It also has a number of active civic-fraternal organizations, a Chamber of Commerce, and local chapters of Rotary, Lions, Jaycees, Masons, and American Legion. Leisure time in Churubusco, outside of home and family, can he spent at the four taverns on Main Street, the small town library, or the spacious community park, which features picnic facilities, baseball fields, basketball and tennis courts. At the time of the 1970 census, Churubusco’s population was 1,528. Since its founding, the population has risen steadily, but gradually. In 1930, the total population was 1,095; in 1940,1,122; in 1950, 1,232; in 1960,1,284. The dramatic nineteen-percent increase in the decade of the 60s, spurred by out-migration from Fort Wayne, led town leaders to establish a Churubusco Planning Commission to control future growth through zoning ordinances, land use policies, and general community development projects.10 By 1992, the desired slow but steady growth pattern resulted in an all-time high population of 1,876. Churubusco is not likely to share the fate of the isolated, backward, stagnant, and defiantly rural Midwestern ghost towns from America’s past. Its location conveniently places it in close proximity to urban America. To a great extent, its location has been a key factor in Churubusco’s history and cultural development. It is situated in the northeast comer of Whitley County, where Smith Township abuts with Noble and Allen Counties. 14 MIDWESTERN FOLKLORE

A U.S. highway, Route 33, passes through town becoming Main Street, linking Churubusco to Fort Wayne, twelve miles to the southeast and to South Bend in the northwestern comer of the state. One state highway, Route 205, crosses town from the opposite direction, connecting Churubusco with Garrett and the county seat, Columbia City. Due to the passage of three inter-state freeways within a thirty-five mile radius of town, Churubusco has easy access to metropolitan Detroit and Chicago, both of which are approximately one hundred and fifty miles equidistant from town. Due to its location and the influence of mass media, Churubusco acquires some cultural resources and a partial referential identity from its broader geographical situation. As remote as Detroit and Chicago may be, they still constitute the Churubuscoan’s notion of a major metropolis. These two huge urban centers also contend for the honor of becoming the town’s home team in terms of professional sports. If one wishes to see a live major league contest, one goes to Detroit or Chicago. Because of the regionalism policy exercised by the national networks in sports broadcasting, the television game of the week, depending upon the sports season, will feature either the Detroit Tigers or the Chicago Cubs or White Sox; the Detroit Lions or the Chicago Bears. State conventions and fairs held in Indianapolis, the state capital’s recent development of professional basketball and football, along with some interest in the agricultural and athletic accomplishments of Purdue University and Indiana University, spark a mild sense of state loyalty. Much stronger ties bind Churubusco to Whitley County and the Fort Wayne metropolitan region. Because politics and agriculture have strong county organizational bases in Indiana, identification with Whitley County seems natural for people in Churubusco. However, intense county loyalty and participation in Churubusco are mitigated by two factors: firstly, Smith Township’s proximity to Noble and Allen Counties; and secondly, Churubusco’s second-place ranking to the county seat, Columbia City, which ranks first both in political influence and in population. The latter factor at times produces conflict, rivalry, and disidentification with the county insofar as it is represented by the county seat. Finally, Churubusco subjects itself to the influences emanating from Fort Wayne, for which it is rapidly becoming a bedroom suburb and to which it turns for prospects of economic and industrial growth. On the other hand, Churubusco itself is the id'entificational focal point for individuals and smaller communities outside the town boundaries. A person fanning in Smith Township will say, “I’m from ’Busco” because Churubusco serves as the locus for his business affairs and for his extra-familial social life. Residents of Green Township in Noble County send their children to the Smith-Green Consolidated School System in Churubusco, and, therefore, will be prone to identify with Churubusco as the center for social and educational life. The great turtle hunt, which will occupy much of this study, took place at Fulk Lake in Allen County’s Eel River Township, once a prospective member of the Smith-Green school consolidation. A network of townships and smaller towns within a six mile radius all tend to subsume their particular identities under that of Churubusco. Historically, Churubusco’s grain elevators, railroad depot, and Main Street businesses caused it to function as a market town for farmers in “open country neighborhoods” and crossroad hamlets like Huntertown, Ari, Laotto, Ege, Wolf Lake, Merriam, and Collins. The Churubusco newspaper covers these communities as both the logo on its front page and its title, Tri-County Truth, attest. THE BEAST OF ’BUSCO 15

Community Folklore

From a cultural-geographical viewpoint, Churubusco can be regarded as a small, rural communications center gradually assuming a secondary role .as residential community within a larger urban-industrial metropolitan region. From a folkloristic perspective, Churubusco is both source and field for both the creation and performance of communal folk tradition. This community folklore is produced, reinterpreted, and recreated in response to the facts of life and issues of self that engage a modem, changing town. Such a folklore exists in Churubusco alongside the variety of expressive genres observable in the local diversity of social groups based on gender, age, ethnicity, occupation, religion, and life style. Churubusco’s community folklore transcends its social diversity by inventing a common communicative field for the expression of a broader community solidarity. This is most evident in the town’s prominent symbols, stories, legends, brags, and celebrations that become collective representations of pride and identity. While my mention of words such as “folklore,” “tradition,” and “heritage” to a Churubuscoan immediately stimulates talk about the Beast of ’Busco and Turtle Days, a sufficient number of other topics also occur both frequently and spontaneously. These topics suggest that the local expressive repertoire includes a variety of collective representations dedicated to enhancement of community self image through linkage of the small, obscure town to both the panorama of national history and to the enlarged picture of American popular culture. One such tradition is the Churubusco origin legend. This story is widely acknowledged, usually related in fragmentary form, more customarily excerpted in newspaper or public relations publication, and always used as a way of collectively thinking: “As unusual and unique as our town is named, it’s still as American as can be.” Other good ways of thinking about the town appear in these locally potent symbolic traditions: “Babes in the Woods,” Uncle Sam, Rosebud Slim, Marvin Kuhns, Zerelda Samuels, and Chief Little Turtle.

Babes in, the Woods

Although no one in Churubusco can recall the traditional ballad dating back to nineteenth-century England," most are familiar with the American proverbial expression,12 while many have read the poem entitled “Babes in the Woods.” A copy of Hoosier Rhymes,13 in which the poem is published, may be one of the most prized books in the town library. Adults remember memorizing the poem during school days; they also remember making yearly pilgrimages to the wooded area on the Flowers farm west of Churubusco, the grave site of the unfortunate children. The sentimental poem reads:

Under the Hill in the darkened wood, Where die winter snows lay deep and white, Where the walnuts grew for the squirrel’s food, And the owl kept a vigil watch by night, There are two little graves unkept and wild And each is the cot o f a slumbering child.

No roses in the budding spring, Were seen to bloom above their heads; 16 MIDWESTERN FOLKLORE

No gift did the hand o f mem’ry bring, No tapestry for their lonely beds But a stranger hand above each face Placed a tough hewn plank to mark the place And lettered the boards as best he could With the simple phrase; Babes in Wood. When I pass the spot in the moonlight shades The trees cast their shadows upon the snow,

Scale in Miles

Community Tradition Map

Legend

A. Miami Village of Kekionga J. Marvin Kuhns’ Birthplace B. Little Turtle’s 1747 Birthplace K. Marvin Kuhns’ Neighborhood C. LaBalme’s Defeat L. Marvin Kuhns’ Rampage D. Harmar’s Defeat at Heller’s Comer M. Johnny Appleseed’s Eel River Property E. Little Turtle’s Ancestral Village N. Johnny Appleseed’s Memorial Park F. Little Turtle’s Home 1805-1812 0 . Rosebud Slim Territory G. Gravesite of “Babes in the Woods” P. Onion Festival H. Uncle Sam’s Descendants Q. Turtle Days r. Gravesite of Uncle Sam THE BEAST OF ’BUSCO 17

No sound in the wood nor the everglades Can disturb the slumberers below; And my thoughts go forward to God’s own time For the two little strangers cold and still, When their song shall be set to a better rhyme, As they wing their way from the snow clad hill.

Local tradition prescribed re-enactment of the poem’s central drama. Since the ravages of a previous winter would have turned the grave “unkept and wild,” it became the duty of schoolchildren, in more recent times boy scouts, to rearrange the site and to place flowers where the poem indicates “no roses bloom.” If this custom persists, I was able to find little evidence of it. Only one older person with whom I spoke would admit to having performed the ritual as a youth. This person, Leonard Rapp, and I spent an entire morning in the Flowers woods searching in vain for the grave. Rapp, who has extensive land holdings in the area, an ancestry going back to the early pioneers, and a deep commitment to local history, told all he knew.

I remember asking my grandfather McGuire if there was any tradition about these babes. He said there wasn’t none. The only tradition was that they was buried out there. I remember when I was a kid in the first grade at school. We come out here and cleaned up the grave. There was one stone about 7 to 8 inches long and it had a cross about four inches high cut in it. There was a bunch o’stones around it, oh, about a dozen of ’em, all as big as a man’s fist. We also found an old board that had an inscription burned into it with a hot rock. But we never bothered to take it down. So the story goes. There was a family of early settlers out here in a cabin. It ain’t here no more. But the family would have been the Colliers. And these two babes in the woods would have been the Collier girls. You know it’s just a story. There’s babes in the woods buried all over the country.14

Even if Rapp is correct about babes buried all over the land, the most significant facet of the tradition, nevertheless, is that people here do identify the “babes in the woods” with their own community. They thereby claim a special relationship to a recognized set of national cultural facts: the popularity of the song-poem and the commonness of the American proverbial expression, “a babe in the woods.” The relationship was often expressed not through story, song, proverb, or ritual, but rather through simple prideful statements: “You know what else we got, right here in ’Busco? We got the babes in the woods. Yeah, the babes in the woods are buried in the woods by ’Busco.” An unforeseen consequence of my field inquiries occurred ten months after leaving Churubusco, when I received a copy of the Tri-County Truth that contained an article entitled, “Babes in the Woods.” The article, written by Henry M. Flowers o f Fort Wayne, was located in the scrap book of Nedra Krider, who will appear later in this work as poetess and dramaturge of local tradition. Mr. Flowers writes:

On the southwest slope of a small wood lot on my father’s farm near Churubusco, Indiana, there is a grave which is said to be the burial place of two small babes who died many years ago while being carried across the country in a pioneer’s wagon. I first heard the story of the grave through my parents when they purchased the farm in 1922. I believe that in the town of Churubusco and the immediate country around the story of the babes is known to many of the people..., Previous to Flower’s ownership of die farm it is my understanding that the former owners (the Bowmans) considered the site so sacred that they erected a small square fence around it to keep livestock from trampling over it. 18 MIDWESTERN FOLKLORE

Several times I have found that persons from the town have laid fresh violets and other wild flowers they have picked in the woods about the grave on the site. This seems to be proof that the legend is known to many persons. Within the last few days when I paid a visit to the woods and as always to the grave, I noted that another cross had been added to the place. It was carved in the same dimensions as the one in stone and adorned a rough piece of what I took to be hawthome wood.

Accompanying the article is an old photograph of a young girl placing a flower garland on the grave before the limestone marker that Mr. Flowers describes in detail.13

Uncle Sam

Another grave site, far more consequential than that of the babes, can be found at the near-by cemetery in Merriam. For there, according to local tradition, lies the historical Samuel Wilson, better known to the American imagination as “Uncle Sam.” During the War o f 1812, Wilson was the upstate New York meat packer who, according to popular national tradition, initialed supply boxes with the letters of his nickname, ‘U.S.”, sold them to the United States government, and, thereafter, became the human source for the nation’s iconic governmental symbol.16 The Churubusco area claims both Uncle Sam’s resting place and his last living direct descendant. Even though these claims should have been abrogated when, through a 1959 congressional resolution a national shrine was established at Samuel Wilson’s grave site in Oakwood Cemetery, of Troy, New York, all of Whitley county and most o f Indiana, including former senators Hartke and Capehart, rallied behind the Hoosier cause.17 Little hard evidence supports the local position. Some refer to the fact that Ripley’s “Believe it Or Not” once ran a feature proclaiming, “The Son of the Original Uncle Sam is Still Alive.” The Ripley’s piece included pictures of Samuel Wilson’s son and grandson, none other than John Wilson and Adam Wilson of Collins, Indiana, a few miles south of Churubusco. Inquiries about Uncle Sam eventually led me to the office of Mrs. Hester Adams, owner of the Columbia City Post and Mail and reporter for said newspaper since 1928. Before showing the results of a summer’s research on the subject, including the Ripley attestation, Mrs. Adams coyly warned, ‘Uncle Sam is supposed to be buried in Merriam, notice I say supposed to be.”18 Through Mrs. Adams I discovered that Louise Sechrist, great-granddaughter of Samuel Wilson, could be located at her country store in Collins. A pleasant hour was spent with Mrs. Sechrist discussing the Churubusco turtle quest. “We were over there at Fulk Lake quite a few times. Don’t you think that is just a myth?” She was equally skeptical about her progenitor. ‘Uncle Sam would have been my dad’s grand-father. My father’s name was Adam Wilson, lived to be ninety-five, almost ninety-six. His father was John Wilson, was ninety-six when he died. His father, Sam Wilson, I’m sure was one hundred one years and one day. He’s supposed to be Uncle Sam, but I’m not sure of it.”19 If certainty about any single detail of Samuel Wilson’s life does not exist in this community, there remains, nevertheless, a communal lore, a bold-faced, stubborn, local assertion that Uncle Sam is buried in Merriam Cemetery. The solitary abandoned market building still standing at the Merriam crossroads was named ‘Uncle Sam’s” in earlier years for no other reason. To a casual observer of the Turtle Days parade in 1971, the home-made float featuring a huge, stilted Uncle Sam figure bedecked in white beard, THE BEAST OF ’BUSCO 19

attired in stars and stripes, could be taken for a simple expression of patriotism. To a Churubuscoan its significance was far greater, for it directly linked genuine national sentiment with the inner life of local community. Understandably, this float, entered by the Neighborhood Extension Organization from Collins, won the first prize trophy.

Plate 7. Award winning patriotic float featuring Uncle Sam whose historic prototype is believed to be buried in the local cemetery and whose last surviving descendant lives in Collins where this float originated, 1971.

Rosebud Slim

A final burial place deserves mention, not because of a Churubuscoan claim, but because of an influence exerted upon a local character tradition in Whitley county. The grave belongs to Johnny Appleseed. The Whitley county tradition belongs to Rosebud Slim. Appleseed, the historical Swedenborgian John Chapman, whose life has been thoroughly documented by Robert Price,20 is buried below the Fort Wayne Memorial Coliseum. The road that passes the grave is named the Johnny Appleseed Memorial Highway. Johnny Appleseed memorial bridge, memorial motels, memorial restaurants, cover the landscape. The Appleseed figure plays a prominent role, along with Mad Anthony Wayne, William Wells, Chief Richardsville, and Chief Little Turtle, in Fort Wayne’s annual “Three Rivers Pageant,” when local media invite all to “Relive the glory of Fort Wayne’s history.” 20 MIDWESTERN FOLKLORE

The fact that Johnny Appleseed rests, both body and tradition, in Fort Wayne, cannot prevent Whitley county from engendering a symbolic figure in Chapman’s image and likeness. For Appleseed’s national significance and imaginative appeal transcend every local boundary. Thus, like, Appleseed, Rosebud Slim bears a sobriquet compounded from an element of flora, “apple-rose,” and a word connoting regeneration or fertility, “seed-bud.” Like Appleseed, Rosebud is an itinerant, but on a smaller, county scale. Like Appleseed, he leaves his mark, a painted rosebud, rather than an apple seedling, wherever he goes. Like Appleseed, he is kind, philosophical, and patriotic. Recently, the Whitley county Historical Society provided a monument for Slim’s unmarked grave and placed a number of his eating utensils on display in the county museum. The society has tracked what little historical knowledge remains:

He was bom John Hoffinan on April 4,1 S75, near Cumberland, Maryland and died in Whitley county, Indiana on April 12, 1943, at the age of 65----- Rosebud Slim, a tall angular person who walked with a decided limp, painted mailboxes and in return he received a little cash, perhaps food, for lettering the boxes. He always affixed his trademark, a rosebud. Rosebud Slim always camped out. He had simple eating utensils and secured supplies from groceries which offered him produce no longer saleable.... Rosebud Slim was a philosopher as well as an itinerant flower painter. He composed reams of poetry in the Edgar Guest manner. Above ail, he was an individual and lived where he wished and did his thing as he sa w fit,21

Marvin Kuhns

While sitting in the Green Grill tavern during my third night in Churubusco I overheard and wrote down these pieces of conversation.

He was like Jesse James and Robin Hood, He stole from the rich and gave to the poor. When he came in a bar he never sat down with his back to anyone.... He put a silver dollar up on a wall. He shot a hole clean through it and just sat there shooting clean through the hole.

The subject was Marvin Kuhns, an outlaw whom the Whitley County Historical Society also identifies as a local Jesse James.22 Marvin Kuhns is the one local character around whom the most extensive narrative oral tradition revolves. A variant Churubusco orthography that renders his surname “Koontz” confirms the oral provenance of his legend. Bom on a small farm near Wolf Lake in Noble County in 1857, Kuhns began his life of crime by allegedly burning down his local schoolhouse at the age of twelve. From there he moved on to a career of burglary, horse thievery, and murder throughout northern Indiana and Ohio. A group of fanners shot Kuhns to death outside Jamestown, Ohio, in 190L23 Locally, Kuhns is best remembered for the night he shot up Churubusco and, thereafter, was captured and jailed for the murder of William Campau of Fostoria, Ohio. Orlo McCoy, now retired from the plumbing business, remembers that his mother used to sing him a ballad which began with the words, ‘M y name is Marvin Kuhns.”24 Dick Zolman, one of the original group of turtle hunters, when asked about the local equivalent to Jesse James, had this to say:

Old Marvin Kuhns. He was before my time. I know he was an awful good pistol shot. Like, see where that tree is. He would ride has horse around and around the tree in a circle. He rode as fast as the horse THE BEAST OF ’BUSCO 21

would go in a circle and started firin’ and hittin’ the tree. He hit it from every direction. That’s what he did for practice.... He was a horse thief. He sure stole a lot of horses. Yeah, old Marvin. He got shot in the leg right here in ’Busco, where Fisher’s is. But he escaped.25

The legendary tradition was amplified by Pat Crooks, who owns and operates Pat’s Cafe, formerly a Main Street tavern, where Kuhns did some drinking.

JG: What do you know about Marvin Kuhns?

Crooks: When I was a little kid, they told me about a bachelor that lived right out here. He had a team of horses. Beautiful sotrels, an unevenly matched team. But he just pampered ’em too much, had ’em too fat And the story always was that Marvin Kuhns came along there and told him to take those horses out and exercise them. They were too fat. That would hurt the horses. Well, the bachelor was supposed to’ve told him that he’d do what he wanted to do with his horses. The next morning he didn’t have any horses. They never did find any.

JG: He was a horse thief?

Crooks: That was his game, horse thieving. I remembered one old timer was telling me one day about that when he was just married, farmin’ out somewhere. And he had an old plow that just wore out, and he was still trying to plow those fields with it, and he said Marvin Kuhns came along and he stopped and looked at his team and said, “You got a pretty nice team there. Why don’t you get a good plow so you don’t have to work ’em as hard?” And the guy told him he just didn’t have the money for the plow. He was scared to death that Marvin Kuhns was coinin’ back that night to get his horses. He set there all night with a shotgun, just scared to death that Marvin Kuhns was gonna get his horses. He said the next morning, he went hack out to the field to pick up his plow and there was a brand new plow settin’ there and his old plow was gone. [Laughs, winks.] Marvin didn’t like the way he was workin’ ’em. He said he never bothered his horses; he just didn’t like to see ’em work like that Old Abe Maxwell was the one that told about Marvin Kuhns. He was an old bachelor. That was just a week before he died. This used to be a saloon [i.e., Pat’s restaurant] and when you stepped out that door, there was a drop off that far down into the swamp. He was tellin’ that Marvin Kuhns would come in from the swamp. He said he was just a kid and he always watched when he heard Marvin Kuhns was here. Why, he run in and set up here at the bar. He was a kid, but he said as long as Marvin Kuhns was there, he would sit there and drink whiskey and everything, right with the rest of ’em. Marvin would step in that door, pull the door shut and lock it. He sat, with his back to the wall, behind the bar, Marvin would order drinks for everybody. And they’d set ’em up and everybody would drink, as long as Marvin drank. He said when he got ready to go, why he’d just open the door and back out and close tiie door and out he’d go.

JG: He was afraid of getting shot?

Crooks: (Nods head affirmatively.)

JG: He must of been the type of guy that kept popping up in different places.

Crooks: Well, he had to keep on the move ’cause everybody was after him. Yeah, he popped up all over. If somebody had a good team and he didn’t treat ’em right, why then they didn’t have a team anymore. Old Marvin Kuhns, heaven knows what he done with ’em then. He didn’t like anybody mistreating a horse; if they mistreated a horse, why they lost that horse.26

Lewis Geiger narrated the lengthiest and the most historical Kuhns legend about the night the desperado shot up Churubusco. Geiger, age 85, retired farmer, former township 22 MIDWESTERN FOLKLORE trustee and county assessor, notorious teller of tall tales, and alleged instigator of the earliest and most bizarre newspaper accounts of the Beast of ’Busco, would have been five years old on December 6,1890, the night of Kuhns’ Churubusco rampage. Geiger’s recall of the night’s events is remarkably accurate, at least in terms of the account in Campbell’s biography, which Geiger has read. What follows is a selection from Geiger not found in Campbell. The narrative illustrates a Kuhns attribute so well developed in Crooks’s stories: Kuhns’ special relationship with animals.

I’d been down with my dad and we got up home. Dad says to the folks, “Put all the lights out,” says, “Marvin Kuhns is around and we don’t want no lights.” Pretty soon somebody knocked. Dad went to the window here, the door was over here. He says, “Who’s there?” He says, “A friend, I want a drink.” He says, “You just take a path down to the wind pump, and there’s a tin there, you can get a drink.” But just then somebody shot at the edge of town. There was a gang after him. Well, he didn’t wait to get a drink. He goes to the bam and gets his horse and out of there he went. They were getting’ so close on him, when he went out of the last gate onto the road, that they exchanged shots with each other. But his horse just left ’em. It just ran a blue streak. They couldn’t stay in gunshot of him. We had a dog that we thought would eat up anybody, any stranger. And he run into the house. There was a place in the foundation he got a hold there. He run in there and it’s just about high enough that he was so mad and barkin’ I could hear him hittin’ the floor. He wouldn’t touch Kuhns. No dog would bother him. Why, he wrote a piece when he was in the penitentiary about a dog bein’ his best friend. A dog wouldn’t touch him.27

It may seem incongruous that rural Churubusco identifies Marvin Kuhns with Jesse James. James robbed banks and railroads, the coercive exploiters of the hardworking individualist farmers; Kuhns stole horses, the most reprehensible of crimes to the mind of a farmer, whose livelihood depended upon the horse. Yet the human need for heroic models transforms Kuhns, the common horse thief, into the advocate of rural values, the farm work ethic, and animal husbandry. Homer Cray’s significant collection of locally based Missouri traditions demonstrates that the Jesse James of folk tradition is also preeminently a farm boy, an embodiment of rural norms.28 That Churubusco should liken its own folk figure to America’s most famous Midwestern farm hero is perfectly understandabl e.29

Zerelda Samuels

As a corollary to the Marvin Kuhns tradition and as another partial explanation for the ready association of Kuhns with Jesse James, mention must be made of traditions associating Zerelda Samuels, the mother of Jesse James, with the Churubusco area. According to this tradition, after Jesse James and his brother Frank had taken up farming in Kentucky and Tennessee, while posses searched west of the Mississippi, their mother came to Whitley county where she labored for two or three years as a schoolteacher. At the time, no one knew of her relationship to her notorious progeny. She was remembered as “a person of good moral character and a good teacher.” She was also remembered for a few other things as revealed in testimonies reported by the Whitley county Historical Society. THE BEAST OF ’BUSCO 23

Lew Morley said, “When she swept the school, she did so with her left arm, since the right arm was off at the shoulder.” Teddy Ben Mosher, one of her pupils, remembered her well for she gave him a licking. Mrs. Judd Grant remembered many a time the teacher would leave school in the care of one of her older pupils and go to the grove for a half hour. Her actions were unexplained, except for the fact that boys discovered dozens and dozens of whiskey flasks in the grove.30

Chief Little Turtle

Little Turtle, war chief of the Miami Federation, holds the distinction of being the sole Native American leader ever to defeat three Euro-American generals in three separate encounters. In 1780, Little Turtle led the annihilation of General La Balme’s French renegades near the Eel River, several miles south of Churubusco. Jh 1790 he defeated General Josiah Haimar at the battle of Heller’s Comer, near the source of the Eel River between Churubusco and Fort Wayne. This was followed by a second encounter at Kekionga (Fort Wayne) that put an end to Harmar’s campaign and caused him to resign command. In 1791, Little Turtle led a coalition of Miami, Shawnee, Delaware, Ottawa, Potowatomi, and Chippewa in overwhelming General Arthur St. Clair’s troops at Fort Recovery in Northwestern Ohio. This action, likewise, occasioned St. Clair’s military resignation, yet he then resumed governorship of the Northwest territories. Little Turtle was finally stopped by Mad Anthony Wayne at the decisive Battle of Fallen Timbers, which led to the signing of the Treaty of Greenville and the practical end to native hostility in the Northwest Territories. Thereafter, Little Turtle became a statesman, visiting the government capitols at Philadelphia and Washington, where he met with French philosopher Volney, the Polish patriot-general Kosciuszko, and presidents Washington, Adams, and Jefferson. President Washington himself commissioned the Chiefs portrait and presented him with an ornamental sword. Little Turtle died of natural causes in Fort Wayne in 1812.31 A strong identification with Little Turtle exists in the Fort Wayne-Allen-Whitley county area. He is rightfully regarded as both a military genius and a skillful diplomat, but most importantly, he is viewed as a native son, most of whose accomplishments can be related to local environs.32 The larger share of Little Turtle lore, memorabilia, and monuments is preserved and maintained by the Allen County Historical Society in Fort Wayne. The impressive Allen County court house in downtown Fort Wayne memorializes six eminent historical figures in pairs of monumental sculpture on its three major facades. On one appear Washington and Lafayette, on another, Wayne and Allen, on the third, the Main Street facade, are Tecumseh and Little Turtle. The Whitley County Historical Society, headquartered at Columbia City, has neither the membership nor the resources to compete with their well-endowed rival; but due to moral right and the sanction of folk tradition, they do contest Allen County’s pretensions with regard to Little Turtle campsites and battle places. Each year the Whitley County Historical Society conducts a Little Turtle tour to make its point. On July 11,1971, approximately seventy-five people participated in the tour. Most participants came from Columbia City with about six or seven Churubuscoans participating. They travelled by car to several battle and campsites, where they would hear Dr. Holycross of Columbia City, drawing heavily on the writings of Otho Winger, relate the history of Little Turtle along with occasional digressions such as, “The Allen County Historical Society claims this battle was held over there, but we know it was 24 MIDWESTERN FOLKLORE

here in Whitley County,” or, “It’s only people from ’Busco who know that Little Turtle camped at Blue Lake.” The latter remark refers to the contentiousness of Leonard Rapp, whose property on the south shore of Blue Lake, just to the west of Churubusco, is believed to be near die original camping ground of Little Turtle. Rapp has argued his position before both Allen and Whitley County Historical Societies, but to no avail. Official recognition has. been withheld. This is a source of personal disappointment since he has spent decades assembling the county’s largest collection of arrow heads and artifacts from his amateur archeological digs around the lake. In a singularly defiant gesture, Rapp has erected a large sign at the entrance to the modem camping area at Blue Lake. The sign’s large letters read “MESHEKINOQUAH,” the Miami word which, rendered in English, reads Little Turtle.33 Little Turtle’s name graces the pages of local news-papers sporadically, but continuously, as even now a new historical fact or a new piece of hearsay surfaces. His name often appears at the Three Rivers Pageant in Fort Wayne, at Turtle Days in Churubusco, or in Columbia City at the dedication of a new Boy Scout home named Little Turtle Lodge, replete with totem poles, Indian artifacts, and a reproduction of the Chiefs only known portrait. Little Turtle’s name has also given rise to literary fantasies based on apocryphal folk traditions. The following account of an encounter between Little Turtle and Johnny Appleseed was printed in the South Whitley Tribune in 1965, titled “The Legend of the Indian War Bonnet.”34

Historical lore of this area reveals that the paths of Little Turtle (1751-1812) the famous Miami chief and Johnny Appleseed (1774-1845), the legendary orchardist, crossed many times during their eventful lifetimes. According to tradition, these two personalities of such opposite temperaments held each other in mutual respect and admiration. In his later years Appleseed was an occasional visitor at Turtletown along Eel River east of Columbia City.... Legend has it that Appleseed was seen coming down the postage trail toward Turtletown late one autumn afternoon in the early 1800’s___ The Indian scout guards at the village hailed the orchardist’s arrival and cordially escorted him to Little Turtle’s log home where the chief came out to greet his welcome guest. “How are you?” spoke Little Turtle. Appleseed, grasping the chiefs extended hand replied, “How do you do my friend.” Johnny took a bundle of seedlings from the pony’s back and presented them to the Indians..., When Appleseed left the next day Little Turtle came forth from his cabin with a farewell gift for his departing guest. It was something that he personally prized and had often worn. It was an elaborately decorated war bonnet of eagle feathers with a head band of colored beads sewn on buckskin, and had side streamers of wild beans sitting on strips of deerskin. This heavy and attractive chief s headdress was about as useless and inappropriate a gift for Appleseed as could be imagined, but Johnny was pleased by the Chiefs manifestation of friendship. Johnny removed the metal mush pot with its protruding handle that he often wore on his head, and the chief helped arrange the war bonnet over Appleseed’s long shaggy hair.. .. Appleseed, having no use for the bonnet, gave it to his married half-sister; she gave it to her daughter. This daughter, Appleseed’s niece, lived to be very old. Her last days were spent in the St. Joseph Hospital in Fort Wayne. Because of the tender care and kindness of the Sister Superior who attended her during her final illness, she gave the war bonnet to the nun before her eyes closed in everlasting sleep. This kind Catholic sister soon afterward was transferred to another hospital elsewhere. There is no further record of this elegant, legendary Indian bonnet that once adorned the heads of both Little Turtle and Johnny Appleseed. THE BEAST OF ’BUSCO 25

While no documentary evidence can substantiate any of this piece’s historical claims, both the sentimental tone and the “Disneyesque” content are indicative of how readily a native American hero has been assimilated into the Anglo-American popular culture. The equally ineluctable mingling of the Miami Little Turtle with Churubusco’s giant turtle will be considered in subsequent chapters. All the aforementioned traditional symbols embody sufficient local meaning and community relevance that each could have become either the emphasis of the town’s historical consciousness or the primary theme commemorated in the community festival. That Churubusco chose none of these can be explained through two considerations. Firstly, though each tradition lends the town pride and prominence through ascribed national signification, each, since claimed or represented elsewhere, fails to convey an appropriate sense of community uniqueness. As Leonard Rapp says, ‘ There’s babes in the woods all over the country.” Rosebud Slim and Marvin Kuhns pale by comparison to Fort Wayne’s Mr. Chapman and Missouri’s Mr. Howard. Troy, New York, has a more effective claim on Uncle Sam. Little Turtle has been appropriated by Fort Wayne. Even the town’s exotic name is shared with a counterpart in New York. The second consideration is the subject of this study. The Beast of ’Busco, Oscar the turtle, belongs unequivocally to Churubusco. Through the events of 1949, Oscar put the town on the map providing it with both its singular claim to fame and its most effective collective representation.