THE LAND OF THE MIAMIS

By Elmore Barce

Member of the State and National Bar Associations
Member Indiana State Historical Society
Author "Land of the Potawatomi"

An Account of the Struggle to
Secure Possession of the North-West
from the End of the Revolution until 1812.

Fowler, Indiana
THE BENTON REVIEW SHOP
1922

Copyrighted, 1922, by the
Benton Review Shop, Fowler, Ind.


Photos and Maps by
Lieut. Don Heaton

Dedicated to

CARRIE MAY BARCE

My Wife.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

PREFACE

In presenting this book to the general public, it is the intention of the author to present a connected story of the winning of the Northwest, including the Indian wars during the presidency of General Washington, following this with an account of the Harrison-Tecumseh conflict in the early part of the nineteenth century, ending with the Battle of Tippecanoe.

The story embraces all of the early efforts of the Republic of the United States to take possession of the Northwest Territory, acquired from Great Britain by the Treaty of 1783 closing the Revolutionary War. The whole western country was a wilderness filled with savage tribes of great ferocity, and they resisted every effort of the government to advance its outposts. Back of them stood the agents of England who had retained the western posts of Detroit, Niagara, Oswego, Michillimacinac and other places in order to command the

We are well aware that there is a very respectable school of historians who insist that the British took no part in opposing the American advance, but the cold and indisputable facts of history, the words of Washington himself, contradict this view. England never gave up the idea of retrieving her lost possessions in the western country until the close of the War of 1812.

An attempt has also been made in this work to present some of the great natural advantages of the Northwest; its wealth of furs and peltries, and its easy means of communication with the British posts. The leading tribes inhabiting its vast domain, the Indian leaders controlling the movements of the warriors, and the respective schemes of Brant and Tecumseh to form an Indian confederacy to drive the white man back across the Ohio, are all dwelt upon.

The writer is confessedly partial to the western frontiersmen. The part that the Kentuckians played in the conquest of the Northwest is set forth at some length. The foresight of Washington and Jefferson, the heroism of Logan, Kenton, Boone and Scott and their followers, play a conspicuous part. The people of the eastern states looked with some disdain upon the struggles of the western world. They gave but scanty support to the government in its attempts to subdue the Indian tribes, voted arms and supplies with great reluctance, and condemned the borderers as savages and barbarians. There is no attempt to condemn the eastern people for their shortsightedness in this regard, but after all, that is the term exactly applicable. The West was won despite their discouragement, and the empire beyond the mountains was conquered notwithstanding their opposition.

William Henry Harrison has been condemned without mercy. Much of this hostile criticism has proceeded from his political enemies. They have distorted the plain facts of history in order to present the arguments of faction. Harrison was the greatest man in the western world after George Rogers Clark. The revelations of history justify his suspicion of the British. The people of the West were alone undeceived. The General was always popular west of the Alleghenies and justly so. Tecumseh and the Prophet were, after all is said, the paid agents of the English government, and received their inspiration from Detroit. Jefferson knew all these facts well, and so wrote to John Adams. Jefferson's heart beat for the western people, and throughout the whole conflict he stood stoutly on the side of Harrison.

We recognize the fact that we have done but poorly. Out of the great mass of broken and disconnected material, however, we have attempted to arrange a connected whole. We submit the volume with many misgivings and pray the indulgence of the reading public. We have endeavored at all times to quote nothing that we did not deem authentic, and have presented no fact that is not based on written records.

We desire to express our appreciation of the valuable help afforded by the State Library people at Indianapolis, by Prof. Logan Esarey of Indiana University, who kindly loaned us the original Harrison letters, and by Ray Jones and Don Heaton of Fowler, Indiana, who were untiring in their efforts to give us all the assistance within their power.

E. B.

CHAPTER I

A BRIEF RETROSPECT

—A general view of the Indian Wars of the Early Northwest.

The memories of the early prairies, filled with vast stretches of waving grasses, made beautiful by an endless profusion of wild flowers, and dotted here and there with pleasant groves, are ineffaceable. For the boy who, barefooted and care-free, ranged over these plains, in search of adventure, they always possessed an inexpressible charm and attraction. These grassy savannas have now passed away forever. Glorious as they were, a greater marvel has been wrought by the untiring hand of man. Where the wild flowers bloomed, great fields of grain ripen, and vast gardens of wheat and corn, interspersed with beautiful towns and villages, greet the eye of the traveler. "The prairies of Illinois and Indiana were born of water, and preserved by fire for the children of civilized men, who have come and taken possession of them."

In the last half of the eighteenth century, great herds of buffalo grazed here, attracting thither the wandering bands of the Potawatomi, who came from the lakes of the north. Gradually these hardy warriors and horse tribes drove back the Miamis to the shores of the Wabash, and took possession of all that vast plain, extending east of the Illinois river, and north of the Wabash into the present confines of the state of Michigan. Their squaws cultivated corn, peas, beans, squashes and pumpkins, but the savage bands lived mostly on the fruits of the chase. Their hunting trails extended from grove to grove, and from lake to river.

Reliable Indian tradition informs us that about the year 1790, the herds of bison disappeared from the plains east of the Mississippi. The deer and the raccoon remained for some years later, but from the time of the disappearance of the buffalo, the power of the tribes was on the wane. The advance of the paleface and the curtailment of the supply of game, marked the beginning of the savage decline. The constant complaint of the tribes to General William Henry Harrison, the first military governor of Indiana, was the lack of both game and peltries.

From the first the Indians of the Northwest were pro-British. Following the revolutionary war they accepted the overtures of England's agents and traders, and the end of the long trail was always at Detroit. The motives of these agents were purely mercenary. They were trespassers on the American side of the line, for England had agreed to surrender all the posts within the new territory by the treaty of 1783. The thing coveted was the trade in beaver, deer and raccoon skins. In order that this might be done, the Americans must be kept south of the Ohio. The tribes were taught to regard the crossing of the Alleghenies as a direct attempt to dispossess them of their native soil. To excite their savage hatred and jealousy it was pointed out that a constant stream of keel-boats, loaded with men, women, children and cattle, were descending the Ohio; that Kentucky's population was multiplying by thousands, and that the restless swarm of settlers and land hunters, if not driven back, would soon fill the whole earth. Driven as they were by rage and fear, all attempts at treaty with these savages were in vain. The Miamis, the Potawatomi and the Shawnees lifted the hatchet, and rushed to the attack of both keel-boats and settlements.

The wars that followed in the administration of George Washington are well known. Back of them all stood the sinister figure of the English trader. Harmar was defeated at Miamitown, now Fort Wayne; St. Clair's army was annihilated on the head waters of the Wabash. For a time the government seemed prostrate, and all attempts to conquer the savages in their native woods, futile. But finally General Anthony Wayne, the hero of Stony Point, was sent to the west. He was a fine disciplinarian and a fearless fighter. At the battle of Fallen Timbers, in 1794, he broke the power of the northwestern Indian confederacy,

On July 11th, 1796, the British, under the terms of Jay's Treaty, evacuated the post of Detroit, and it passed into the hands of its rightful owners, the American people. Well had it been for the red men, if, with this passing of the British, all further communication with the agents of Great Britain had ceased. Already had the tribes acquired a rich legacy of hate. Their long intercourse and alliance with the English; their terrible inroads with fire and tomahawk, on the settlements of Kentucky; their shocking barbarities along the Ohio, had enraged the hearts of all fighting men south of that river. But the British in retiring from American soil had passed over to Malden, near the mouth of the Detroit river. Communication with the tribes of the northwest was still kept up, and strenuous efforts made to monopolize their trade. At last came Tecumseh and the Prophet, preaching a regeneration of the tribes, and a renewal of the contest for the possession of the lands northwest of the Ohio. All past treaties were to be disregarded as impositions and frauds, and the advance of the paleface permanently checked. The joy of the British agents knew no bounds. Disregarding all the dictates of conscience and even the welfare of the tribes themselves, they whispered in the ears of the Wyandots of Sandusky and began to furnish ammunition and rifles. As a result of this fatal policy the breach between the United States and the Indian confederates was measurably widened. The end was Tippecanoe, and the eternal enmity of the hunters and riflemen of southern Indiana and Kentucky who followed General Harrison on that day. One of the ghastly sights of that sanguinary struggle, was the scalping by the white men of the Indian slain, and the division of their scalps among the soldiers after they had been cut into strips. These bloody trophies were carried back to the settlements along the Ohio and Wabash to satisfy the hatred of all those who had lost women and children in the many savage forays of the past.

With the death of Tecumseh at the battle of the Thames and the termination of British influence in the west, the tribes soon surrendered up their ancient demesne, and most of them were removed beyond the Mississippi. The most populous of all the tribes north of the Wabash were the roving Potawatomi, and their final expulsion from the old hunting grounds occurred under the direction of Colonel Abel C. Pepper and General John Tipton, the latter a hero of the Battle of Tippecanoe, and later appointed as Indian commissioner. At that time the remnants of the scattered bands from north of the Wabash amounted to only one thousand souls of all ages and sexes. The party under military escort passed eight or nine miles west of the city of Lafayette, probably over the level land east of the present site of Otterbein, Indiana.

Thus vanished the red men. In their day, however, they had been the undoubted lords of the plain, following their long trails in single file over the great prairies, and camping with their dogs, women and children in the pleasant groves and along the many streams. They were savages, and have left no enduring temple or lofty fane behind them, but their names still cling to many streams, groves and towns, and a few facts gleaned from their history cannot fail to be of interest to us, who inherit their ancient patrimony.

CHAPTER II

WHAT THE VIRGINIANS GAVE US

—A topographical description of the country north of the Ohio at the close of the Revolutionary War.

In the early councils of the Republic the stalwart sons of Virginia exercised a preponderating influence. As men of broad national conceptions, who were unafraid to strike a decisive blow in the interests of freedom, they were unexcelled. Saratoga had already been won, but at the back door of the newborn states was a line of British posts in the valleys of the Wabash and Mississippi and at Detroit, that stood ready to pour forth a horde of naked savages on the frontier settlements of the west and bring murder and destruction to the aid of England's cause. In December, 1777, George Rogers Clark came from Kentucky. He laid before Patrick Henry, the governor of Virginia, a bold plan for the reduction of these posts and the removal of the red menace. Into his councils the governor called George Wythe, George Mason and Thomas Jefferson. An expedition was then and there set on foot that gave the nation its first federal domain for the erection of new republican states. With a lot of worthless paper money in his pocket, and about one hundred and seventy-five hunting shirt men from Virginia and Kentucky, Clark marched across the prairies of southern Illinois, and captured Kaskaskia. Later he took Vincennes. Thus by the cool enterprise and daring of this brave man, he laid the foundation for the subsequent negotiations of 1783, that gave the northwest territory to the United States of America.

The country thus conquered covered more than two hundred and forty-four thousand square miles of the earth's surface, and comprised what are now the states of Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin. Within its confines were boundless plains and prairies filled with grass; immense forests of oak, hickory, walnut, pine, beech and fir; enormous hidden treasures of coal, iron and copper. Add to all these natural resources, a fertile soil, a temperate climate, and unlimited facilities for commerce and trade, and no field was ever presented to the hand and genius of man, better adapted to form the homes and habitations of a free and enterprising people. This was known and appreciated by the noble minds of Washington and Jefferson, even at that day, and they above all other men of their times, saw most clearly the great vision of the future.

At the close of the revolution, however, only a few scattered posts, separated by hundreds of miles, were to be found. Detroit, Michillimacinac, Vincennes, Kaskaskia and a few minor trading points, told the whole tale. Kentucky could boast of a few thousands, maintaining themselves by dauntless courage and nerves of steel against British and Indians, but all north of the Ohio was practically an unbroken wilderness, inhabited by the fiercest bands of savages then in existence, with the possible exception of the Iroquois.

Over this territory, and to gain control of these tribes, England and France had waged a long and bitter conflict, and the gage of battle had been the monopoly of the fur trade. The welfare of the savages was regarded but little; they were the pawns in the game. The great end to be acquired was the disposal of their rich peltries. No country was more easily accessible to the early voyageurs and French fur traders. It was bounded on the north and northeast by the chain of the Great Lakes, on the south by the Ohio, and on the west by the Mississippi. The heads of the rivers and streams that flowed into these great watercourses and lakes were connected by short portages, so that the Indian trapper or hunter could carry his canoe for a few miles and pass from the waters that led to Lake Michigan or Lake Erie, into the streams that fed the Mississippi or the Ohio. The headwaters of the Muskingum and its tributaries interlocked with those of the Cuyahoga; the headwaters of the Scioto with those of the Sandusky; the headwaters of the Great Miami with those of the Wabash and the St. Marys. In northern Indiana another remarkable system of portages appeared. The canoes of the traders were carried some eight or ten miles from the little Wabash to the Maumee, placing the command of the whole Wabash country in

This great network of lakes, rivers and portages was in turn connected by the waterways of the Ottawa and the St. Lawrence, with the great head and center of all the fur trade of the western world, the city of Montreal.

The only practicable means of communication was by the canoe. Most of the territory of the northwest, being, as General Harrison observes, "remarkably flat, the roads were necessarily bad in winter, and in the summer the immense prairies to the west and north of this, produced such a multitude of flies as to render it impossible to make use of pack horses." Bogs, marshes and sloughs in endless number added to the difficulties of travel. Hence it was, that the power that commanded the lakes and water courses of the northwest, commanded at the same time all the fur trade and the Indian tribes in the interior. France forever lost this control to Great Britain at the peace of 1763, closing the French and Indian war, and at the close of the revolution it passed to us by the definitive treaty of 1783.

The importance of the posts of Detroit and Michillimacinac, forming the chief connecting links between the northwest and the city of Montreal, now fully appears. First in importance was Detroit. It commanded all the valuable beaver country of northern Ohio and Indiana, southern Michigan, and of the rivers entering Lakes Erie and Huron. The trade coming from the Cuyahoga, the Sandusky, the tributaries of the Miami and Scioto, the Wabash and the Maumee, all centered here. The French traders, and after them the British, did a vast and flourishing business with the savages, trading them brandy, guns, ammunition, blankets, vermilion and worthless trinkets for furs of the highest value. The significance of the old trading posts at Miamitown (Fort Wayne), Petit Piconne (Tippecanoe), Ouiatenon, and Vincennes, as feeders for this Detroit market by way of the Wabash and Maumee valleys, is also made plain. A glimpse of the activities at Miamitown (Fort Wayne), in the winter of 1789-1790, while it was still under the domination of the British, shows the Miamis, Shawnees and Potawatomi coming in with otter, beaver, bear skins and other peltry, the presence of a lot of unscrupulous, cheating French traders, who were generally drunk when assembled together, and who took every advantage of each other, and of the destitute savages with whom they were trading. At that time the French half-breeds (and traders) of the names of Jean Cannehous, Jacque Dumay, Jean Coustan and others were trading with the Indians at Petit Piconne, or Tippecanoe, and all this trade was routed through by way of the Wabash, the portage at Miamitown, and the Maumee, to Detroit. The traders at Ouiatenon, who undoubtedly enjoyed the advantage of the Beaver lake trade in northwestern Indiana, by way of the Potawatomi trail from the Wabash to Lake Michigan, were also in direct communication with the merchants of Detroit, and depended upon them. It is interesting to observe in passing, that the rendezvous of the French traders at the Petit Piconne (termed by General Charles Scott, as Keth-tip-e-ca-nunk), was broken up by a detachment of Kentucky mounted volunteers under General James Wilkinson, in the summer of 1791, and utterly destroyed. One who accompanied the expedition stated that there were then one hundred and twenty houses at this place, eighty of which were shingled; that the best houses belonged to French traders; and that the gardens and improvements around the place were delightful; that there was a tavern located there, with cellars, a bar, and public and private rooms. Thus far had the fur trade advanced in the old days.

CHAPTER III

THE BEAVER TRADE

—A description of the wealth in furs of this section at the close of the Revolutionary War and the reasons of the struggle for its control.

Perhaps no country ever held forth greater allurement to savage huntsmen and French voyageurs than the territory acquired by Clark's conquest. Its rivers and lakes teemed with edible fish; its great forests abounded with deer, elk, bears and raccoons; its vast plains and prairies were filled with herds of buffalo that existed up almost to the close of the eighteenth century; every swamp and morass was filled with countless thousands of geese, ducks, swan and cranes, and rodents like the beaver and other animals furnished the red man with the warmest of raiment in the coldest winter.

To give some idea of the vast wealth of this domain in fur bearing animals alone, it may be taken into account that in the year 1818 the American Fur Company, under the control of John Jacob Astor, with headquarters at Mackinaw, had in its employ about four hundred clerks and traders, together with about two thousand French voyageurs, who roamed all the rivers and lakes of the Indian country from the British dominions on the north, to as far west as the Missouri river. Astor had established a great fur business in direct competition with the British Northwest Company and commanded attention in both London and China. The "outfits" of this company had trading posts on the Illinois, and all its tributaries; on the Muskegon, Grand, Kalamazoo and other rivers in Michigan; on the line of the old Potawatomi trail from the Wabash country to post Chicago, and in the neighborhood of the Beaver lake region in northern Indiana, and at many other points. The furs handled by them consisted of the marten (sable), mink, musk-rat, raccoon, lynx, wildcat, fox, wolverine, badger, otter, beaver, bears and deer, of which the most valuable were those of the silver-gray fox and the marten. The value of these furs mounted into the hundreds of thousands of dollars and they were originally all consigned to New York. For these interesting observations history lovers are indebted to the autobiography of the late Gurdon S. Hubbard of Chicago, who was, in his youth, in the employ of Astor, and who later in his lifetime conducted a trading post at Bunkum, now Iroquois, in Iroquois County, Illinois. It has been estimated that in the days of England's control of Canada and of all the northwest territory, that more than half in value of all the furs exported "came from countries within the new boundaries of the United States," that is, from the district north and west of the Ohio river.

Of all the fur-bearers, the most interesting were the

At the time of Braddock's defeat, Colonel James Smith, then a boy, was captured by what seems to have been a party of the Caughnawaga Indians, some of whom lived along the rivers and streams in northern Ohio. He lived among the savages for some years and was adopted into one of their families. Later in life, he left a written account of many of his experiences, and among other things he tells us some interesting things concerning the beavers. "Beavers," says Caleb Atwater, an Ohio historian, "were once here in large numbers on the high lands at the heads of the rivers, but with those who caught them, they have long since disappeared from among us." Before the Revolution, and for some years afterward, they were caught by the Indians in great numbers. Smith had a valuable friend among the Indians by the name of Tecaughretanego. He was quite a philosopher in his way, but he was rather inclined to believe, like most of his fellows, that geese turned to beavers and snakes to raccoons. He told Smith of a certain pond where he knew all the beavers were frequently killed during a hunting season, but they were just as thick again on the following winter. There was seemingly no water communication with this pond, and beavers did not travel by land. Therefore it must be that the geese that alighted here in great numbers during the fall, turned to beavers, and for proof of this assertion the Indian called Smith's attention to their palmated hind feet. The boy suggested that there might be subterranean passages leading to this pond, whereby the beavers could gain access to it, but Tecaughretanego was not entirely convinced.

In conversation with his Indian friend Smith happened to say that beavers caught fish. The Indian laughed at him, and told him that beavers ate flesh of no kind, but lived on the bark of trees, roots, and other growing things. "I asked him," said Smith, "if the beaver was an amphibious animal, or if it could live under water? He said that the beaver was a kind of subterraneous water animal, that lives in or near the water, but they were no more amphibious than the ducks and geese were—which was constantly proven to be the case, as all the beavers that are caught in steel traps are drowned, provided the trap be heavy enough to keep them under water. As the beaver does not eat fish, I inquired of Tecaughretanego why the beavers made such large dams? He said they were of use to them in various respects, both for their safety and food. For their safety, as by raising the water over the mouths of their holes, or subterraneous lodging places, they could not be easily found; and as the beaver feeds chiefly on the barks of trees, by raising the water over the banks, they can cut down saplings for bark to feed upon, without going out much upon the land; and when they are obliged to go out upon land for this food they frequently are caught by the wolves. As the beaver can run upon land but little faster than a water tortoise, and is no fighting animal, if they are any distance from the water they become an easy prey to their enemies."

The Indians caught great numbers of beavers by hunting and trapping. In the winter time when they found the beavers in their houses, they first broke up all the thin ice around about, and then by breaking into the houses, drove the beavers into the water. Being soon forced to come to the surface to take the air, the Indians commonly reached in and caught them by the hind legs, dragged them out on the ice and tomahawked them. Not only were the furs and skins utilized, but the flesh as well. Smith describes the meat as being a "delicious fare." In the days before the savages were corrupted by the French and English traders, they possessed a wonderful skill in dressing the skins of the buffalo, the bear and the beaver. Beaver and raccoon skin blankets were made "pliant, warm and durable." Says Heckewelder, the Moravian missionary, "They sew together as many of these skins as are necessary, carefully setting the hair or fur all the same way, so that the blanket or covering be smooth, and the rain do not penetrate, but run off."

In the later days, however, the beaver proved to be more of a curse than a blessing. The Indian then wore the European blanket, and bartered his valuable furs away for whiskey and brandy. The riotous scenes of drunkenness, debauchery and murder became unspeakable. To Detroit the Indians swarmed from the shores of Erie and all the rivers in the interior. Hunting for weeks and months and enduring privation, suffering and toil, they came in at last with their women and children to buy rifles, ammunition and clothing. Here mingled the Miami, the Potawatomi, the Ottawa and the Wyandot; a motley gathering of all the tribes. In the end the result was always the same, and always pitiful. The traders came with the lure of fire water, and when they departed the Indians were left drunken and destitute and often with death, disease and wounds in their midst.

Smith gives a vivid description of one of their orgies at Detroit as follows: "At length a trader came to town (the Indian camp) with French brandy. We purchased a keg of it, and held a council about who was to get drunk, and who was to keep sober. I was invited to get drunk, but I refused the proposal. Then they told me I must be one of those who were to take care of the drunken people. I did not like this, but of the two evils I chose that which I thought was the least, and fell in with those who were to conceal the arms, and keep every dangerous weapon we could out of their way, and endeavor, if possible, to keep the drinking club from killing each other, which was a very hard task. Several times we hazarded our lives, and got ourselves hurt, in preventing them from slaying each other. Before they had finished the keg, near one-third of the town was introduced to this drinking club; they could not pay their part, as they had already disposed of all their skins; but they made no odds, all were welcome to drink."

"When they were done with the keg, they applied to the traders, and procured a kettle full of brandy at a time, which they divided out with a large wooden spoon—and so they went on and on and never quit whilst they had a single beaver skin. When the trader had got all our beaver, he moved off to the Ottawa town, about a mile above the Wyandot town."

"When the brandy was gone, and the drinking club sober, they appeared much dejected. Some of them were crippled, others badly wounded. A number of the fine new shirts were torn, and several blankets burned. A number of squaws were also in this club, and neglected their corn planting."

"We could now hear the effects of the brandy in the Ottawa town. They were singing and yelling in the most hideous manner, both night and day; but their frolic ended worse than ours; five Ottawas were killed, and a great many wounded."

The marshes, lakes, rivers and small streams of northern Ohio and Indiana, and of the whole of Michigan and Wisconsin, abounded with the homes and habitations of the beavers. Behind them, as a memorial of their old days, they have left the names of creeks, towns, townships and even counties. The beaver lake region of northern Indiana has a Beaver "lake," a Beaver "township," a Beaver "creek," a Beaver "city," and a Beaverville to its credit. The history of Vigo and Parke counties, Indiana, by Beckwith, Chapter Twenty, at page 208, recites

The above regions, with their wealth of peltries, England meant to hold as long as possible against the American advance, and she succeeded in doing so for twelve long years after the Revolution had closed.

CHAPTER IV

THE PRAIRIE AND THE BUFFALO

—The buffalo as the main food supply of the Indians.

To describe all the wonders in the interior of the northwest would be a serious, if not an impossible task. The Grand Prairie, however, stands alone. It was one of the marvels of creation, resembling the ocean as nothing else did, making men who saw, never forget.

On Sunday, the third day of November, 1811, General Harrison's army, with scouts in front, and wagons lumbering along between the flanks, crossed the Big Vermilion river, in Vermilion County, Indiana, traversed Sand Prairie and the woods to the north of it, and in the afternoon of the same day caught their first glimpse of the Grand Prairie, in Warren County, then wet with the cold November rains. That night they camped in Round Grove, near the present town of Sloan, marched eighteen miles across the prairie the next day, and camped on the east bank of Pine creek, just north of the old site of Brier's Mills. To the most of them, the sight must have been both novel and grand; if they could have known then that the vast undulating plain before them stretched westward in unbroken grandeur, a distance of two hundred and fifty miles to the Mississippi river at Quincy; that these vast possessions in a few short years would pass from the control of the savage tribes that roamed over them, and would become the future great granaries of the world, producing enough cereals to feed an empire, what must have been their thoughts?

The magnitude of this great plain, now teeming with thousands of homes and farms, is seldom realized. Draw a straight line west from old Fort Vincennes to the Mississippi, and practically all north of it, to the Wisconsin line, is the Grand Prairie. "Westward of the Wabash, except occasional tracts of timbered lands in northern Indiana and fringes of forest growth along the intervening water courses, the prairies stretch westward continuously across Indiana, and the whole of Illinois to the Mississippi. Taking the line of the Wabash railway, which crosses Illinois in its greatest breadth, and beginning in Indiana, where the railway leaves the timber, west of the Wabash near Marshfield (in Warren County), the prairie extends to Quincy, a distance of more than two hundred and fifty miles, and its continuity the entire way is only broken by four strips of timber along four streams running at right angles with the route of the railway, namely, the timber on the Vermilion river between Danville and the Indiana state line; the Sangamon, seventy miles west of Danville, near Decatur; the Sangamon again a few miles east of Springfield, and the Illinois river at Meredosia, and all the timber at the crossing of these several streams, if put together, would not aggregate fifteen miles, against the two hundred and fifty miles of prairie. Taking a north and south direction and parallel with the drainage of the rivers, one could start near Ashley, on the Illinois Central railway, in Washington county, and going northward, nearly on an air line, keeping on the divide between Kaskaskia and Little Wabash, the Sangamon and the Vermilion, the Iroquois and the Vermilion of the Illinois, crossing the latter stream between the mouths of the Fox and DuPage, and travel through to the state of Wisconsin, a distance of nearly three hundred miles, without encountering five miles of timber during the whole journey."

All that portion of Indiana lying north and west of the Wabash, is essentially a part of the Grand Prairie. "Of the twenty-seven counties in Indiana, lying wholly or partially west and north of the Wabash, twelve are prairie, seven are mixed prairies, barrens and timber, the barrens and prairie predominating. In five, the barrens, with the prairies, are nearly equal to the timber, while only three of the counties can be characterized as heavily timbered. And wherever timber does occur in these twenty-seven counties, it is found in localities favorable to its protection against the ravages of fire, by the proximity of intervening lakes, marshes or watercourses." On the Indiana side, the most pronounced of the tracts of prairie occur in western Warren, Benton, southern and central Newton, southern Jasper, and western White and Tippecanoe. Benton was originally covered with a great pampas of blue-stem, high as a horse's head, interspersed here and there with swamps of willows and bull grass, while only narrow fringes of timber along the creeks, and some five or six groves of timber and woodland, widely scattered, served as land marks to the early traveler.

Those who early observed and explored the grassy savannas of Indiana and Illinois, always maintained that they were kept denuded of trees and forests by the action of the great prairie fires. Among those who have supported this theory are the Hon. James Hall, author of "The West," published in Cincinnati in 1848; the Hon. John Reynolds, former governor of the state of Illinois, and the Hon. John D. Caton, a late judge of the Supreme Court of Illinois. Caton's observations on this subject are so interesting and ingenious that we cannot refrain from making the following quotation:

"The cause of the absence of trees on the upland prairies is the problem most important to the agricultural interests of our state, and it is the inquiry which alone I propose to consider, but cannot resist the remark that wherever we do find timber throughout the broad field of prairie, it is always in or near the humid portions of it, as along the margins of streams, or upon or near the springy uplands. Many most luxurious growths are found in the highest portions of the uplands, but always in the neighborhood of water. For a remarkable example, I may refer to the great chain of groves extending from and including the Au Sable grove on the east and Holderman's grove on the west, in Kendall county, occupying the high divide between the waters of the Illinois and the Fox rivers. In and around all the groves flowing springs abound, and some of them are separated by marshes, to the borders of which the great trees approach, as if the forests were ready to seize upon each yard of ground as soon as it is elevated above the swamps. Indeed, all our groves seem to be located where the water is so disposed as to protect them, to a greater or less extent, from the prairie fire, although not so situated as to irrigate them. If the head waters of the streams on the prairies are most frequently without timber, as soon as they have attained sufficient volume to impede the progress of fires, with very few exceptions, we find forests on their borders, becoming broader and more vigorous as the magnitude of the streams increase. It is manifest that the lands located on the borders of streams which the fire cannot pass, are only exposed to one-half the fires to which they would be exposed, but for such protection. This tends to show, at least, that if but one-half the fires that have occurred had been kindled, the arboraceous growth could have withstood their destructive influences, and the whole surface of what is