The Red Man's Retreat from Northern Indiana
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The Red Man’s Retreat From Northern Indiana Leon M. Gordon II* Early Indian settlements in the northern part of Indiana were centered along the Wabash River, in the Fort Wayne area, and east of Chicago. Potawatomi and Miami predomi- nated and acted as buffers between the Fox, Sauk, and Wine- bag0 in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, and the Shawnee in Ohio. Following the defeat of the Prophet and Tecumseh’s forces at the mouth of the Tippecanoe River on November 7, 1811, scattered bands from the Wabash area fled to northern Indiana in large numbers. By 1830 white settlers thus found groups of Potawatomi and Miami scattered over the area in villages of varying size. The necessity of effecting a modus vivendi with the natives, which was never fully solved, but rather eliminated by their ultimate removal, immediately pre- sented itself. Even before the battle of Tippecanoe, the Calumet River in Lake County had been a favorite haunt of Indians, both because of its abundance of fish and navigability for canoes. Available records indicate that as late as the 1830’s and 1840’s the stream was still attractive to them. On August 2, 1833, Charles Butler, heading for Chicago, ferried the river and recorded in his diary the presence of a Potawatomi encampment along the shore. The Indians had hammocks slung between the trees on the river’s west bank.’ An Indian post run by a Frenchman and his Indian squaw stood nearby and consisted of six or eight primitively constructed log cabins which were gray with age.2 As late as 1850, Indians were still at the fork of the Grand Calumet ; the squaws worked for white women and received payment in food supplies. Chief Shaubenee, the short thick-set owner of Shaubenee’s Grove in Lake County, resisted the settlers’ influence, and unlike his two daughters continued to dress in moccasins, leggings, and a blanket. *Leon M. Gordon I1 is a graduate assistant on the staff of the Indiana Magazine of HiSto~y,Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana. This article is a revised chapter of a master’s thesis at Indiana Uni- versity, 1949, written under the direction of John D. Barnhart. *Charles Butler, “Letter of August 4, 1833,” Bessie .L. Pierce, As Others See Chzcago (Chicago, 1933), 41n. ZCharles F. Hoffman, A Winter in the West (2 vols., New York, 1835), I, 229. 40 Indiana Magazine of History Most of the natives in that area left by 1862 when Tolleston was developing.8 There were also other settlements near the Calumet River, as well as on Cedar Creek, north of Cedar Lake, and on Red Oak and Big White Oak islands in the Kankakee River, south of the Calumet. Some three hundred and fifty Indians camped on those islands during the winter of 1837- 1838. The following year hunting attractions at Deep River, a tributary of the Calumet, drew Indians from Michigan City. Hunting parties of fifteen to twenty were seen at Pleasant Grove, on the shore of the former river, in 1840.’ About six hundred natives camped in the woods near West Creek, another tributary of the Calumet, over the winter of 1837-1838, and there was another small settlement south of Lowell. In 1840, the Indians camped at the site of the latter town appeared rough and disheveled but not hos- tile to Mrs. John M. Dwyer, an early settler of Lowell. The Indians left the area prior to the Mexican War. Around present Gary and vicinity, Indians were especially common in the early thirties, but only a few remained scattered about the neighborhood as late as 1869.5 A center of Indian settlement in the middle thirties was also located two miles southwest of present Memillville, then called Wiggin’s Point, which at the time was a division point of the Potawatomi trail. One branch went southwest to Will County, Illinois, and the other passed through Benton County to the Wabash.e Although the red men were neighbors of the whites for many years, reactions to their presence +ere generally not hostile. There was an undercurrent of hope, however, that the tribes would soon be removed. Until that day arrived, comments on the Indians’ peculiar way of life were common. a James W. Lester, “Pioneer Stories of the Calumet,” zndkm Mugdne of History (Bloomington, Indiana, 1905- ) , XVIII (1922), 167-168. 4Zbid., 172; TCimothy] H. Ball, Lake County, Indiana, 1854-1872 (Chicago, 1873), 67, 70, 73, 77-78. BBall, Lake County, Zndkm, 1854-1872, p. 72; [James W. Lester], Historical Records of the Lake County Old Settlers Association (n.p., 1924), 9; History o Lake County, Lake County Historical Association Publicatwn (Gary, indiana, 1929), X, 82-83. eLester, “Pioneer Stories of the Calumet,” Zndkm Magazine of History, XVIII, 347 349-360; Elmore Barce and Robert A. Swan, History of Benton dwnty, Zn&iancl (3 vols., Fowler, Indiana, 1930), I, 58-69. The Red Man’s Retreat From Northern In&iana 41 On Robinson’s Prairie near present Crown Point in 1834, sticks covered with long grass and flag matting composed the natives’ tepees, which had small smoke holes at their apex. The fragile nature of their homes on Lake Michigan was due partly to the temporary nature of their camps since they moved as often as a dozen times a year. Lakeside loca- tions were favored in winter and high grassy knolls in sum- mer.r Indians of the Calumet made a rather uniform impres- sion on the early settlers. Moccasins, broadcloth or buckskin leggings, a kind of kilt, and often a blanket thrown over their shoulders constituted the natives usual apparel. White men considered them lazy and incurable beggars, who ex- changed venison, leggings, bead work, cranberries, and skins for bread, flour, tobacco, corn, pork, salt, iron kettles, po- tatoes, meal, and other products. The squaws wove cloth, made bead work, chopped wood, built the fires, and waited on the braves, while the latter fished and hunted. Indian men evidently excelled in these occupations, for in the thir- ties some thirty thousand muskrat and several hundred mink skins were taken annually from the Kankakee area, the latter worth about ten dollars apiece. Settlers took an annual toll of about three thousand duck and used severaLcamps along the shore of the Kankakee River as bases from which hunting forays were made.8 Two other quite diverse practices which provoked com- ment were the Indians’ burial methods and their operation of excellent sugar camps on Door Prairie in La Porte County. Bodies, often surrounded with food and hunting equipment, were usually interred in a sitting position, but were some- times laid horizontally in tree branches. The sugar camps were a lesser-known pursuit of the braves, but they were well supplied with the necessary copper and brass kettles. THerbert A. Kellar (ed.), Solon Robinson, Pioneer and Agl-imltur- ist (2 vols., Indianapolis, 1936)) I, 55. These volumes are XXI-XXII of the Indiana Historical Collections (Indianapolis, 1916- ) . T[imo- thy] Ball, Lake County, Z&hna, 1884 (Crown Point, Indiana, 1884), 179. For a good description of the Indians’ winter camps, see Hoffman, A Winter in the West, 11, 323, note I. *Kellar, Solon Robinson, 66; Lester, “Pioneer Stories of the Calu- met,” Indium Magazine of History, XVIII, 168, 348; Ball, Lake County, Indian?, 1884,,p. 180-184; Amasa C. Washburn, “Canoeing on the Kan- kakee in 1831, Society of Indiana Pioneers Yewbook (n.p., 1921- ), (1944), 6,9,11. 42 Indiana Magazine of History Every spring the camps were the site of feverish activity but were mostly deserted in inter.^ Solon Robinson, the founder of Crown Point, was one of many to comment on the Indians’ civility except when drunk, and he blamed white men for the unhappy conse- quences, which included the beating of a boy with the ram- rod of a native’s gun; fights among themselves in drunken brawls, usually with fatal consequences ; terrorization of the inhabitants of an isolated cabin by Indians on their way to a liquor dispensary ; and a gradual disintegration of their character.1° In La Porte County, Indians in the mid-thirties were concentrated on Tsrre Coupee Prairie and in the vicinity of La Porte. As in other camps, the women worked while the men followed field and stream. Natives’ wigwams there were often lined with furs and fancy blankets, but the deleterious effects of alcohol upset the normal tenor of camp life. Remains of deserted settlements were scattered through- out the county.ll Indians roamed over the face of Noble County until 1838 and made their usual impression of friendly beggary except when drunk. As in other areas, the natives dressed in gaudy, multi-patched clothes, and squaws carried their babies strapped to boards that hung from their backs.12 Other centers of Indian settlement in northeastern Indi- ana where life went on much as noted above were around Columbia City in Whitley County, and Jamestown and Brock- ville in Steuben County. In the Wabash Valley, natives congregated in the vicinity of Decatur, Adams County, and Big Creek in White County. Trading with white settlers and raiding their homes for food were common. Indian and 9 Ball, Lake County, Indiana, 1834-1872,p. 68; Kellar, Solon Robin- son, I, 63. For a good description of the process involved in the Indians’ sugar manufacture, see Hoffman, A Winter in the West, 11, 227, note J. IoKellar, Solon Robinson, I, 55; Charles C. Chapman and Company (pub.), History of Elkhart County, Zn$iana (Chicago, 1881), 662; Inter- State Publishing Company (pub.), Hzstory of Steuben County, Zn+mna (Chicago, 1885), 294; Inter-State Publishing Company (pub.), Hastoly of DeKalb County, Indiana (Chicago, 1885), 273-274, 295.