Читать книгу History of Indianapolis and Marion County, Indiana, Volume 1 - Berry Robinson Sulgrove - Страница 5

Location of Marion County — Topographical and General Description — Geology of the County— The Indian Occupation.

Marion County, in which is the city of Indianapolis, the capital of Indiana, occupies a central position in the State (as is mentioned more particularly hereafter), and is bounded on the north by the counties of Boone and Hamilton, on the east by Hancock and Shelby, on the south by Morgan and Johnson, and on the west by Hendricks County. Its shape would be almost an exact square but for an inaccuracy in the government survey, which makes a projection of four miles or sections in length by about three-fourths of a mile in width at the northeast corner into the adjoining county of Hancock, with a recess on the opposite side of equal length, and about one-fourth of the width, occupied by a similar projection from Hendricks County. The civil townships of the county follow the lines of the Congressional townships in direction, except at the division of the townships of Decatur and Perry, which follows the line of White River, taking off a considerable area of the former and adding it to the latter township. The area of the county is about two hundred and sixty thousand acres

Topography and General Features. — Indianapolis, which is the county-seat of Marion as well as the State capital, lies in latitude 39° 55', longitude 86° 5', very nearly in the center of the State and county. Mr. Samuel Merrill makes it two miles northwest of the center of the State, and one mile southwest of the center of the county. Professor R. T. Brown's Official Survey, in the " State Geologist's Report,'' regards the entire county as part of a great plain, nowhere, however, actually level over any considerable areas, with an average elevation above low water in the river of about one hundred and seventy-five feet, and of eight hundred and sixty above the sea-level. Occasional elevations run to more than two hundred feet above the river-level, and probably to nine hundred above the sea. The West Fork of White River, running for twenty-two miles in a very tortuous course twenty degrees east of north and west of south, divides the county unequally, the western fraction being little more than half as large as the eastern, or one-third of the whole area. The river valley varies from one to four miles in width, presenting a bluff on the west side of fifty to two hundred feet through most of its extent, and on the east side a gentle slope. Where the bluff comes up to the water on one side the " bottom" recedes on the other, sometimes swampy, and frequently cut up by " bayous" or supplementary outlets for freshets. The current is on the bluff side, usually deep, swift, and clear. Occasionally the low "bottom" land comes up to the water on both banks, but not frequently. There are many gentle slopes and small elevations in and around the city, but nothing that deserves the name of hill, except " Crown Hill," at the cemetery north of the city, and one or two smaller protuberances a mile or two south. All the streams that drain this undulating plain flow in a general southwesterly direction on the east side of the river, and southeasterly on the west side, proving, as the first secretary of the State Board of Health says, that Indianapolis lies in a basin, the grade higher on all sides than is the site of the city, except where the river makes its exit from the southwest

Subordinate Valleys. — Dr. Brown says that " the glacial action, which left a heavy deposit of transported material over the whole surface of the county, has at the same time plowed out several broad valleys of erosion, which appear to be tributary to the White River Valley." The most conspicuous of these comes down from the northeast, between Fall Creek and White River, is about a mile wide at the lower end, narrowing to the northeast for six or seven miles, and disappearing near the northern line of the county. The grinding force has cut away the surface clay, and in places filled the holes with gravel and coarse sand. South of the city and east of the river are two other valleys of the same kind. One, about a mile wide, extends from White River, a little north of Glenn's Valley, about five miles to the northeast, with well-defined margins composed of gravel terraces. The other lies chiefly in the county south of Marion, and between it and the first-mentioned is a ridge called Poplar Hill, composed of sand and gravel on a bed of blue clay. West of the river there is but one of these valleys. It begins in Morgan County, and running a little north of east enters Marion County, passing between West Newton and Valley Mills, and connecting with White River Valley near the mouth of Dollarhide Creek. A water-shed between the tributaries of the West Fork of White River and the East Fork, or Driftwood, enters the county two miles from the southeast corner, passing nearly north about twelve miles, makes an eastward bend and passes out of the county. Unlike water-sheds generally, this one is not a ridge or considerable elevation, but a marshy region overflowed in heavy rains, when it is likely enough the overflow runs into either river as chance or the wind directs it. These swampy sections lying high are readily drained, and make excellent farming land

Streams. — Except Eagle Creek and its affluents, there are no considerable streams entering the river in the county on the west side. There are Crooked Creek north of Eagle, and Dollarhide Creek south, and several still smaller and unnamed, except for neighborhood convenience, but they are little more than wet weather " branches," or drains of swampy sections. Dr. Brown explains this paucity of watercourses by the fact that a large stream called White Lick rises northwest, flows along, partly in Hendricks and partly in Marion Counties, parallel with the course of the river, and enters the latter in Morgan County, thus cutting off the eastward course of minor streams by receiving their waters itself On the east side of the river, which contains nearly two-thirds of the area of the county, a considerable stream called Grass Creek runs almost directly south for a dozen or more miles very near the eastern border of the county, and finally finds its way into the East Fork. It has a half-dozen or more little tributaries, as Buck Creek, Panther Run, Indian Creek, Big Run, Wild Cat and Doe Creek. Of the east side streams tributary to the West Fork of White River — far better known as White River than the short course of the combined East and West Forks to the Wabash — Fall Creek is much the most considerable. Except it, but a single small stream called Dry Run enters the river north of the city. Fall Creek enters the county very near the northeast corner, and flowing almost southwesterly enters the river now near the northwest corner of the city. It formerly entered west of the center of the city, but a " cut-off" was made nearly a mile or more farther north for hygienic and economic reasons, and the mouth has thus been shifted considerably. The main tributaries of Fall Creek are Mud Creek on the north, and North Fork, Middle Fork, Dry Branch, and Indian Creek east and south. The duplication of names of streams will be observed. There are two Buck Creeks, two Dry, two Lick (one White), two Indian, and two Eagle Creeks in the county. As few of these names are suggested by any special feature of the stream or country, except Fall Creek, which is named from the falls at Pendleton, and Mud and Dry Creeks, the duplication may be set down to the whims of the pioneers. South of the city, on the east side of the river, the streams flowing directly into the river are Pogue's Creek, passing directly through the city; Pleasant Run, mainly east and south, but cutting into the southeast corner of the city (Bean Creek is tributary to the latter), Lick Creek, and Buck Creek

Bottom Lands. — The valley of White River, says the Official Survey, is divided into alluvium or bottom land proper and the terrace or second bottom. In that portion of the valley that lies north of the mouth of Eagle Creek it consists chiefly of second bottom, while the first bottom largely predominates in the southern portion. Much of this latter is subject to overflow in times of freshets, so that while the soil is exceedingly fertile and easy of cultivation a crop is never safe. Levees have been made for considerable distances below the city, on the river and on some of the larger creeks, to remedy the mischief of overflows, but, the Survey says, with only partial success. The primary difficulty is the tortuous courses of the streams, and of the river particularly, that runs a distance of sixteen miles to the lower county line, which is but nine in a straight line. This not only diminishes the fall per mile, but the water, moving in curves and reversed curves, loses its momentum, the current becomes sluggish, and when freshets come the accumulation overflows the low banks, and covers large districts of cultivable and cultivated land, to the frequent serious injury of crops, and the occasional destruction of crops, fences, and stock. A straightened channel would increase the fall and the strength of the current, and in the sandy formation of the beds of most of the streams would soon cut a way deep enough to secure the larger part of the land against overflow. This would be cheaper than making levees along a crooked course that required two miles of work to protect one of direct length, but it would have to be carried out by a concert of action on the part of riparian proprietors, which would be hard to effect, and it would also divide a good many farms that are now bounded by original lines of survey terminating at the river, which was made a navigable stream by law but not by nature. Changing the bed would confuse the numbers of sections, and possibly disturb some land titles. This objection is presented to this policy in Professor Brown's Survey, but an act of the Legislature might open a way for concerted action, and provide against the confusion of lines and disturbance of rights

Flora. — The central region of Indiana was a favorite hunting-ground of the Indian tribes that sold it in 1818. Its woods and waters were unusually full of game. There were no prairies of any extent and not many swamps. The entire surface was densely covered with trees. On the uplands, which were dry and rolling, the sugar, white and blue ash, black walnut, white walnut or butternut, white oak, red beech, poplar, wild cherry prevailed; on the more level uplands were bur-oak, white elm, hickory, white beech, water ash, soft maple, and others; on the first and second bottoms, sycamore, buckeye, black walnut, blue ash, hackberry, and mulberry. Grapevines, bearing abundantly the small, pulpless acid fruit called " coon" grapes, grew profusely in the bottoms, covering the largest trees, and furnishing more than ample stores for the preserves and pies of the pioneer women. Under all these larger growths, especially in the bottoms, there were dense crops of weeds, among which grew equally dense thickets of spice-brush, — the backwoods substitute for tea, — papaw, wahoo, wild plum, hazel, sassafras, red and black haw, leatherwood, prickly ash, red-bud, dogwood, and others. The chief weed growths, says Professor Brown, were nettles and pea-vines matted together, but with these were Indian turnip, — the most acrid vegetable on earth probably, — ginseng, cohosh, lobelia, and, in later days, perfect forests of iron-weeds. There are a good many small remains of these primeval forests scattered through the county, with here and there patches of the undergrowth, and not a few nut-trees, walnut, hickory, and butternut, but the hazel, the spice-wood, the sassafras, the plum and black haw and papaw are never seen anywhere near the city, and not frequently anywhere in the county. The Indian turnip is occasionally found, but ginseng has disappeared as completely as the mound-builders, though in the last generation it was an article of considerable commercial importance

Fauna. — The principal animals in these primeval woods were the common black bear, the black and gray wolf, the buffalo, deer, raccoon, opossum, fox, gray and red squirrels, rabbits, mink, weasel, of land quadrupeds; of the water, otter, beaver, muskrat; of birds, the wild turkey, wild goose, wild duck, wild pigeon, pheasant, quail, dove, and all the train of wood birds which the English sparrow has so largely driven off, — the robin, bluebird, jaybird, woodpecker, tomtit, sap-sucker, snowbird, thrush. For twenty years or more laws have protected the game birds, and there is said to be a marked increase of quail in the last decade, but there is hardly any other kind of game bird, unless it be an occasional wild pigeon, snipe, or wild duck. Buzzards, hawks, crows, owls, blackbirds are not frequently seen now near the city, though they were all abundant once. Flocks of blackbirds and wild pigeons occasionally pass along, but not numerously enough to attract the hunter. In fact, there is very little worth hunting in the county, except rabbits, quail, and remote squirrels. For fish the game varieties are almost wholly confined to the bass and red-eye. Water scavengers like the " cat" and " sucker" are thick and big in the off-flow of the city pork-houses, and in the season form no inconsiderable portion of the flesh-food of the class that will fish for them, but game fish must be sought for from five to ten miles from the city. In early days, and for the first twenty-five years of the existence of the city, the river and its larger affluents supplied ample provision of excellent fish, — bass, pike, buffalo, redeye, salmon rarely, and the cleaner class of inferior fish, as "red-horse," suckers, cats, eels; but the improvidence of pioneers, who never believed that any natural supply of food could fail, and the habits acquired from them, particularly the destructiveness of seining, has reduced the food population of streams till it needs stringent laws, and the vigilance of associations formed to enforce the laws, to prevent total extirpation. Even with these supports it will take careful and prolonged efforts at restocking to reproduce anything like the former abundance

Mineral Springs. — Although they form no conspicuous feature of the topography of the county, and have never been used medicinally, except by the neighbors, it may be well to note that there are a few springs of a mineral and hygienic character in the county, where the underground currents of water rise through crevices in the overlying bed of clay. One of these, called the Minnewa Springs, in Lawrence township, a mile and a half northeast of the little town of Lawrence, was talked of at one time as capable of being made a favorite resort, and some steps were taken in that direction, but nothing came of them. Another very like it is within a half-mile of the same town. Southwest of the city is one on the farm of an old settler that has been famous in the neighborhood as a " sulphur spring" for fifty years. A couple of miles nearer the city is another on the farm of Fielding Beeler, which Professor Brown says is the largest in the county. " It forms a wet prairie or marsh of several acres, from which by ditching a large stream of water is made to flow." The water of all these springs contains iron enough to be readily tasted, and to stain the vessels that are used in it, and this peculiarity gives it the misname of sulphur water

Swamps. — There were once considerable areas of marshy land, or land kept wet by the overflow of adjacent streams, but many of these have been entirely drained, and considerable portions of others larger and less convenient for drainage. With them have measurably disappeared the malarial diseases that in the first settlement of the city, and for a good many years after, came back as regularly as the seasons. There is not, probably, a single acre of land in the county that is not cultivable or capable of being made so. Between three and four miles southwest of city lay a swampy tract, nearly a mile long by a quarter or more wide, entirely destitute of trees, which was long known in the vicinity as " the prairie," the only approach to a prairie in the county

Geology of the County — Marion County rests on three distinct geological members, two of them belonging to the Devonian formation and one to the Carboniferous. Neither, however, shows itself conspicuously on the surface. Upon these lies a deposit of drift, or transported material, from fifty to one hundred and fifty feet thick. This forms the surface of the country, and molds its general configuration. But the rock foundation, in spite of the depth of the drift upon it, affects the face of the country somewhat, most obviously along the line where the Knob sandstone overlaps the Genesee shale. The line of strike dividing the geological members traverses the county on a line from the south thirty degrees northwest. This line, as it divides the Coniferous limestone from the Genesee shale or black slate, passes between the city and the Hospital for the Insane, two miles west. Borings in the city reach the limestone at a depth of sixty to one hundred feet. .It is the first rock encountered in place. At the hospital forty feet of shale was passed through before reaching the limestone. This shows the eastern part of the county as resting on the Coniferous limestone, and the western on the Delphi black slate or Genesee shale. Under a small area of the southwestern corner of the county the Knob or Carboniferous sandstone will be found covering the slate. On a sand-bar in the river, a short distance north of the Johnson County line. Professor Brown noticed after a freshet large pieces of slate that had been thrown out, indicating that the river had laid bare that rock at some near point. This gives the level of the bed of the river in the lower half of its course through the county. But a short distance west of the west line of the county some of the small tributaries of White Lick lay bare the lower members of the Knob sandstone. There are indications both on Pogue's Run and Pleasant Run that the limestone lies very near their beds, but it is not likely that stone can ever be profitably quarried in the county. Geological interest attaches to the deep deposits of drift that cover the stratified rocks.

Drift. — The drift that covers our great Western plains, continues Dr. Brown's Survey, is foreign in character and general in deposition. It is not a promiscuous deposit of clay, sand, water-worn pebbles, and bowlders, like the Eastern glacial drift. These are all found in it, but with nearly as much regularity and order as is usually found in stratified rocks. At the base of this formation is almost invariably found a very compact lead-colored clay, with but few bowlders, and those invariably composed of quartzite, highly metamorphosed or trap rocks. Occasionally may be found thin deposits of very fine gray or yellow sand, but they are not uniform. Between the clay and the rocks on which it rests is generally interposed a layer of coarse gravel or small silicious bowlders, from three to six feet thick. Sometimes, but rarely, this is wanting, and the clay lies directly upon the rock. In Marion County this clay-bed ranges from twenty to more than a hundred feet thick, and is very uniform in character throughout, except where the light strata or fine sand occur. Chemically it is an alumina silicate in a very fine state of division, and mechanically mixed with an exceedingly fine sand, which shows under the microscope as fragments of almost transparent quartz. It is colored by a proto-sulfide of iron. A small portion of lime and potassa and a trace of phosphoric acid can be discovered by analysis. Above this is generally found a few feet of coarse sand or fine gravel, and on this is twenty or thirty feet of a true glacial drift, of the promiscuous character of the glacial drift described by Eastern geologists. In and upon this drift are large bowlders of granite, gneiss, and trap, which are not found in their proper place nearer than the shore of Lake Superior, whence they have been carried, as is attested by the grooves and scratches in the exposed rock surfaces over which they have passed. In this upper drift are the gravel terraces, from which is obtained our best available material for road-making. The mass of it is a yellow or orange-colored clay, with a considerable quantity of sand, and lime enough to make the water passing through it hard. There is an astonishing number and size of bowlders in and upon this clay-bed. Two were measured by Dr. Brown which were nearly ten feet long by five wide, with four feet exposed above ground, and nobody knows how much below. In a few places bowlders are so thickly scattered as to obstruct cultivation. In the central and northern portions of the county they are almost invariably of granite, in the south generally of gneiss or trap

Gravel Terraces. — The gravel terraces are generally found in a succession of mound-like elevations, ten to fifty feet above the level of the surrounding plain, and usually rest on a compact clay. They are frequently arranged in lines running north, a little northeast and southwest. North of these mounds is generally found a considerable space of level and often swampy lands, indicating the position of a mass of ice, under which a torrent has rushed with great force, excavating the clay below, piling up the heavier gravel and sand, and carrying the lighter clay and finer sand to be distributed over the country. When the ice disappeared the excavation would be a little lake, finally filled up with the lighter material borne from other terraces farther north. These terrace formations, or " second bottoms," bordering the river on one side or the other nearly everywhere, have almost the same character and history as the gravel-beds of the uplands. They consist of deposits of gravel and coarse sand, resting on the lower blue clay, into which the river has cut its present channel. Formerly these plains, frequently three or four miles wide, were regarded as lake-like expansions of the river which had been silted up by its sediment, but an inspection of the material shows that the water from which the deposit was made was no quiet lake, but a current strong enough to bear onward all lighter material, leaving only the heavier gravel and sand behind

Lower Blue Clay. — The Official Survey concludes that the lower blue clay was deposited before the strata of clay, sand, and gravel that rest upon it, and are clearly traceable to glacial action, and that the conditions of its deposit were very different from the rush and tumult of water pouring from a melting glacier, though evidently deposited from water. The greater part of the material is very fine, and could have come only from very quiet waters, and from very deep waters too, as its compactness and solidity prove the existence of great pressure necessary to the production of those qualities. Besides the superposition of the glacial strata, the precedent deposition of the lower blue clay is indicated by the fact that the glacial action, exhibited over the whole surface of the country, made excavations in it by undermining currents from dissolving glaciers which now form the small lakes so numerous in the northern part of the State. The southern end of Lake Michigan rests on this clay, and is excavated into it to an unknown depth. Another fact attesting the deposit of the lower clay anterior to the grinding and crushing era of moving mountains of ice, is the discovery at the bottom of it of the unbroken remains of coniferous trees, probably cypress or hemlock. In digging wells in the county logs ten to fifteen inches in diameter, well preserved, have been found. Glacial action accompanying or following the deposit of these trees would have crushed them. Dr. Brown suggests a theory of the deposition of this clay-bed. If the glacial era was preceded by an upheaval that raised the region of the Arctic Circle above the line of perpetual congelation, there would necessarily have been a corresponding depression south of the elevation, which would be an inland sea of fresh water. During the whole period of the progress of this upheaval north and sinking south (in our region) torrents of water loaded with sediment would have rushed down and filled the huge hollow. As the waters became quiet the sediment would be slowly deposited. The color of the clay, caused by the combination of sulphur and iron, proves that these waters were originally charged with sulfurous gases produced by volcanic agencies. The presence of these gases explains the absence of life in this fresh-water sea till the sulphur-tainted sediment was entirely deposited, when the increasing cold would cover it with an impervious crust of ice, cutting off all access of air and the possibility of life. There are no fossil remains in the clay. With the end of the Ice Age came a reversal of conditions, the northern regions sinking, those about here rising and pouring their waters southward into the Gulf of Mexico in furious torrents strengthened by the melting of great masses of ice, thus furnishing much of the material of the Mississippi delta, and leaving marks of denudation on the hills of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Alabama.

Economical Service of the Clay-Bed. — This lower clay stratum when exposed to the air for a few years undergoes chemical changes which make it the basis of a very fertile soil. Frost breaks down its adhesiveness and makes it a mass of crumbling, porous earth. The oxygen of the air converts the sulphur into an acid which unites with the potash and lime accessible to it and makes slowly-soluble salts of them, which supply valuable elements of fertility for years of cultivation, needing only organic matter to be available at once for use. It is an excellent absorbent owing to the fineness of its material, and might be advantageously used in composting manures, as it would retain ammonia as sulphate. Of greater value, at least to the city, than its fertilizing quality is its action as a filter, securing an inexhaustible supply of pure water in the bowlders and gravel beneath it. In a region as level as Marion County, and as prolific of vegetation, the surface water must become charged with organic matter, which the porous upper strata of soil, sand and clay, but imperfectly retain, so that the water of springs and shallow wells is rarely so pure as to be suitable for domestic use. These impurities are, of course, increased in the vicinity of residences, barns, and stables, and still more in cities, where there are large quantities of excrementitious matter. Surface water more or less tainted in this way is readily absorbed by the porous soil, and may reach the bottom of wells of twenty feet in depth. Against the inevitable and incalculable evil of a corrupted water supply, as that of Indianapolis would be if there were no other resource than the surface water of shallow wells, this blue clay stratum is an ample and admirable provision. It acts as a filter to the reservoir in the gravel and bowlder bed beneath it. The water there is free from organic matter, though always sufficiently tainted with iron to be easily tasted and to color vessels used in it. This iron taint is an invariable characteristic of the water filtered through this blue clay, and gives the popular reputation of mineral water to springs of it that rise through fissures in the clay to the surface. The best known of these springs have been already referred to. In the city and several places outside of it wells have been sunk to the sub-clay water through sixty -seven to one hundred and eight feet, the water rising to various distances from the surface from eight to forty feet. The blue clay stratum runs from eight to sixty feet in thickness. The reservoir of water under this clay has no outlet except through openings in the clay and in consequence can never be exhausted by natural drainage. To a large manufacturing center like Indianapolis the power derived from water in stream or steam is indispensable, and that, says the Survey, " we have under every acre of land in Marion County."

Character of Soil. — The glacial drift furnishes the material for a soil that meets every demand of agriculture. Says the Survey, " Being formed by the decomposition of almost every variety of rock, it holds the elements of all in such a state of fine division as to give it excellent absorbent properties, and enables it to retain whatever artificial fertilizers may be added. In its natural state the soil of the county generally has but one prominent defect, — the very fine material of which it is made lying so nearly level is easily saturated with water, and having no drainage below, except by slow filtration through the clay, is kept wet longer than usual. This necessitates the escape of a great part of it by surface evaporation, and this, especially in spring, delays the warming of the soil and its early preparation for summer crops. The condition of saturation has an unfavorable effect on the vegetable matter in the soil, excluding it from free contact with the air, and arresting its rapid decomposition, often changing it into humic acid, a chemical product injurious to crops. In the first and second bottom lands this defect is remedied by a stratum of gravel or coarse sand a few feet below the surface, which rapidly passes the water downwards and relieves the saturated surface. The same effect is produced on the clay uplands by a system of tile drainage.

Ideal Section of the County. — The following measurements of the different strata of an ideal section of the county are given by Dr. Brown from natural sections, borings, and excavations made in different parts of the county. Beginning with the most recent formations, we have:

Transported Material

1. Alluvium, or bottom land, from 10 to 20 feet

2. Terrace formations, gravel and sand, from 50 to 100 feet

3. True bowlder clay (glacial), from 40 to 110 feet

4. Blue sedimentary clay and sand, from 20 to 120 feet

5. Bowlders and gravel, from 5 to 15 feet

Rock in Place

6. Knob sandstone (Carboniferous) 25 feet

7. Genesee slate (Devonian) 80 feet

8. Coniferous limestone (Devonian) 50 feet

The coniferous limestone has been penetrated fifty feet, but its entire thickness at this point is undetermined, as its eastern outcrop is concealed by the heavy drift deposit. Nos. 1, 2, 6, and 7 underlie only portions of the county; the other members are general in their distribution

The Indian Occupation. — The State of Indiana formed the central . and largest portion of the territory " held by the Miami Confederacy from time immemorial," as Little Turtle, who led the Indians in St. Clair's defeat, told Gen. Wayne. There were but four tribes in this Confederacy, the leading one being the Miamis, or, in early times, the Twightwees; but divisions of four others quite as well known by history and tradition were allowed entrance and residence, — the Shawanese, Delawares, Kickapoos, and Pottawatomies. The Delawares occupied the region in and around Marion County, but the abundance of fish and game made it a favorite hunting-ground of all the tribes from the valley of the White Water, or Wah-he-ne-pay, to the valley of the White River, the Wah-me-ca-me-ca. On this account it was obstinately held by the Confederacy, and only surrendered by the treaty of St. Mary's, 1818. One of the principal Delaware towns stood on the bluff of White River, at the Johnson County line, where, says Professor Brown, was the residence of Big Fire, a leading Delaware chief and friend of the whites. A blunder of ignorance or brutality came near making an enemy of him in 1812, as Cresap or Greathouse did of Logan in 1774. A band of Shawanese, an ' affiliated tribe of the Confederacy, but residing farther south, between the East Pork of White River (the Gun-da-quah) and the Ohio, acting doubtless on the hostile impulse imparted by the great chief of the tribe, Tecumseh, massacred a white settlement at the Pigeon Roost, in Scott County, in 1812. The Madison Rangers in revenge penetrated to Big Fire's town, on the southern line of the county, and destroyed it. It would seem that there should have been little difficulty, to men as familiar with the locations and modes of warfare of the Indians as these rangers, in ascertaining whether the war party of the Pigeon Roost massacre came from the north or not; but whether there was or not no discrimination was made, and it required all Governor Harrison's diplomacy to keep Big Fire and his tribe from joining the forces against the government. " But few remains mark the site of this ruined town," says the professor. In Washington township, on the east side of the river, tradition places the site of another village older, — how much it is impossible to say or guess, further than the vague direction of conjecture by the fact that the place is overrun by a wood of sixty years' growth. Near the river is an old cemetery of the tribe, and near it are some unique remains of Indian residence, both uncovered occasionally by floods. These remains are " pits or ovens excavated in a very compact clay," as Professor Brown describes them, about two feet and a half in diameter and the same in depth, and burned on the inner surfaces like brick. In them have been found coals and ashes, and around them fragments of pottery. Their condition and contents would indicate that they were a sort of earthenware kettle, constructed by the ready process of digging out the inside clay and burning the surface of the outside, instead of taking the clay for each in a separate mass, and molding it and burning it and putting back in its new shape in the hole it came from in its old one. The Indians of this fertile region all cultivated corn and beans and pumpkins, and made sugar of " sugar water" in the early spring, by freezing it during the night and throwing away the ice, which contained no sugar, afterwards boiling it down and graining it. Flint arrow-heads, stone hatchets, chisels, and other implements of the " Stone Age" are found occasionally in the soil and gravel, especially in the southern part of the county, near Glenn's Valley, and these are said by Professor Brown's Report to be made in many cases of talcose slate, a rook found no nearer this region than the Cumberland Mountains or the vicinity of Lake Superior. The curious forms of some of them make it impossible to determine their use. The Official Survey reports no mounds or earthworks of the mound-builders or other prehistoric race in the county except these relics of the " Stone Age." There may be none now, but forty-five years ago there were two considerable mounds in the city near the present line of Morris Street, one near the intersection of the now nearly effaced canal and Morris Street, and the other a little farther east. The excavation of the canal opened one of them, and some complete skeletons and scattered bones and fragments of earthenware were found and taken possession of by Dr. John Richmond, then pastor of the only Baptist Church, as well as a practicing physician. The other was gradually plowed down, probably after being opened at the same time the first was, but no record or definite memory settles the question

For a number of years the agency of the Indians of Central Indiana was held at Conner's Station, some sixteen miles north of the city and about four beyond the present county line. William Conner, the first settler of the White River Valley, established himself there about 1806, after spending most of his youth and early manhood among the Indians, a number of whose dialects he spoke fluently, and whose names and customs and modes of life he understood as well as if he had been one of the race. He was well acquainted with all the chiefs of the Shawanese, Miamis, Delawares, and other tribes, and was frequently employed as an interpreter and guide by Gen. Harrison. He was the guide of the army in the campaign that ended with the battle of Tippecanoe, and in that made memorable by the "massacre of the Raisin River." He accompanied Gen. Harrison in the march into Canada that was triumphantly concluded by the battle of the Thames and the death of Tecumseh, the greatest of all the Western Indian leaders, except possibly Pontiac.

This particularity of reference to him is not impertinent, for his settlement was closely connected with that of the county, and he was long in active business as a merchant in the city. It may, therefore, be apt as well as not uninteresting, to present the reader a fact almost wholly unknown in connection with the death of Tecumseh. Vice-President Col. Richard M. Johnson, of Kentucky, was long credited with the honor, such as it was, of killing the Shawanese hero, but it was later claimed for one or two others, and the famous question " Who struck Billy Patterson?" was hardly a burlesque on the idle babble, oral and printed, that worried the world as to who killed Tecumseh. Mr. Conner could have settled the question if he had been disposed to thrust himself in the face of the public. But he was not, and the information comes now from Robert B. Duncan, a leading lawyer of the city, who was clerk of the county for over twenty years, and when a lad lived with Mr. Conner as early as 1820. To him Mr. Conner told what he knew of the death of Tecumseh. He, as usual, was Gen. Harrison's guide and interpreter. After the battle of the Thames was over the body of a chief, evidently of great distinction from his dress and decorations, was found, and Mr. Conner was sent for to identify it. He said it was Tecumseh's, and he knew the chief well. The situation, as he described it to Mr. Duncan, showed that the chief had been killed with a very small rifle-ball, which fitted a small rifle in the hands of a dead youth, who apparently had been an aid or orderly of a major who lay dead near him, killed by a large ball, apparently from Tecumseh 's gun. The solution of the case was, probably, that Tecumseh had killed the officer, the boy had killed the chief, and one of the chief's braves had killed the boy.

The payments made to the Indians of this county and the adjacent territory by Mr. Conner at his agency were made in the spring, always in silver and always with strict honesty, but not always with adequate security, or any at all, against the payments getting back to the agent's hands in four prices for buttons and beads and calico, and more for whiskey. The process of payment was peculiar and curious. The Indians sat in a circle, each family in a .separate group. The money came in due proportions of amount and denomination to pay the man in dollars, the wife in half-dollars, and the children in quarters, each getting the same number. Each recipient was given in advance a number of little sticks equal to the number of coins he was to get, and as he received a coin he was to give back a stick, and when his sticks were all gone he knew he had got all his money.

By the treaty of cession of 1818 the Indians reserved the occupancy of the ceded territory, or " New Purchase," till 1821; but a few lingered about the streams, trapping and fishing, till the spring of 1824, when a company of freebooting whites, remnants of the old days of incessant Indian warfare, consisting of a leader named Harper, Hudson, Sawyer and son, and Bridge and son, killed two families of Shawanese, consisting of nine persons, — two men, three women, two boys, and two girls, — to rob them of their winter's collection of skins. The massacre was on Fall Creek, where the Indians had been trapping through the winter, a few miles above the present county line. It alarmed the early settlers of the county greatly, for such murders had made local Indian wars, and brought bloody reprisals often, just as they do to-day. All but Harper were caught, the older murderers hung, young Sawyer convicted of manslaughter, and young Bridge of murder, but pardoned by Governor Ray on the scaffold under the rope that had killed his father. These are said to have been the first men executed in the United States by due process of law for killing Indians. The pacification of the irritated tribes was complete, and this is about the last ever seen or known of Indians in or about Marion County, except the passage of the migrating tribes through the town in 1832. For many years there was visible a trace of Indian occupancy in a deep " cut" made in the bluff bank of the old " Graveyard Pond," near where Merrill Street abuts upon the Vincennes Railroad. It was believed to have been made by a military expedition from Kentucky, on its way to the Wabash or the Wea settlements, for the convenience of getting baggage or ammunition-wagons up the precipitous bluff, but nobody appears to have been sure of either its purpose or its constructors.

Though not particularly relevant to the matter of this history, it will not be uninteresting to its readers to know, as very few do know, that the celebrated speech of Logan, the Cayuga (sometimes called the Mingo) chief, which has been admired in all lands for its manly and pathetic eloquence, beginning, " I appeal to any white man to say if he ever entered Logan's cabin and he gave him not meat, etc.," was made to John Gibson, the Secretary of State of Indiana Territory with Governor Harrison, and the second Governor. In his deposition on the subject, quoted in Dillon's " History of Indiana," he says that when Lord Dunmore, of Virginia, was approaching the Shawanese towns on the Scioto in 1774, the chief sent out a message, requesting someone to be sent to them who understood their language. He went, and on his arrival Logan sought him out, where he was " talking with Cornstalk and other chiefs of the Shawanese, and asked him to walk out with him. They went into a copse of wood, where they sat down, and Logan, after shedding abundance of tears, delivered to him the speech nearly as related by Mr. Jefferson in his ' Notes on Virginia.' " It may be remarked, in conclusion of this episode, that Logan, in consequence of the cruelty practiced upon him, joined Cornstalk and Red Hawk in leading the warriors in the battle at the mouth of the Big Kanawha, in September, 1774, which was a bloodier battle to the whites, though a less decisive victory, than the much more celebrated battle of Tippecanoe.