UC-NRLF
$B 7ES bMfi
of the
i» i» »m i »» i iiii i i . i
BY J. LOREMZO WEH!€H
Yours Truly
J. Lorenzo Werich
Pioneer Hunters
of the Kankakee
BY
J. LORENZO WERICM
Copyright 1920
By J, Lorenzo Wcrich
All Rights Reserved
CONTENTS
CHAriER
PAGE
I.
Catching /Ay First Raccoon
9
11.
Finding The /Aissing Link
15
III.
Defeat of the Pottowattomies
21
IV.
Setting Steel Traps
33
V.
Dividing the Game
46
VI.
/Ay First Boat f^ide
62
VII.
Hunters Who Have Buckfevered
72
Vlll.
Trappers' Claims
85
IX.
Running the Ferry
101
X.
Last of the Pottowattomies
108
XI.
Home of Chief Killbuck
122
XII.
Indian Island
131
XIII.
Grape Island
141
XIV.
Barrel-House Blind
150
XV.
Draining the Swamps
174
LIBRARY
ILLUSTRATIONS
J. Lorenzo Werich - - Frontpiece
Trapping P\y First Raccoon - - - 12
Pioneer Trapper's Shanty on Little Paradise Island - 38
John Werich - - - - - 70
A Deer Hunter's Lodge on Johnson's Island - 73
Eaton's Bridge - _ _ _ 102
Interior View of Louisville Club House - - 107
Louisville Club House _ _ - 108
In Camp on Island Six to Two - - 129
A Typical Trapper's Shanty on Indian Island - 151
The Indian Island Saw /Aill - " 134
Ay Island Home on the Kankakee - - 135
The White Star _ _ _ 137
Rockville. Terre Haute & Indianapolis Club House - 139
Ruins of a Trapper's Cabin on Grape Island - 143
Some of the Traps That Were Used by Early Hunters - 146
Ay First Duck Shooting from a Boat - - 150
The Old River Bed at North Bend - - 186
The New Kankakee _ _ - 188
Camp of Logansport Hunters on Cornell's Island - 189
^. .'■j.'<-^<<
•i''. ■:•- «
I — » i — ^''
CONTENTS
CHAI-IER
PAGE
I.
Catching /Ay Pirst Raccoon
9
11.
Finding The /Aissing Link
15
III.
Defeat of the Fottowattomies
21
IV.
Setting Steel Traps
33
V.
Dividing the Game
46
VI.
/Ay First Boat F^ide
62
VII.
Hunters Who Have BucHfevered
72
VIII.
Trappers' Claims
85
IX.
Running the Ferry
101
X.
Last of the Fottowattomies
108
XI.
Home of Chief Killbuck
122
XII.
Indian Island
131
Xlll.
Grape Island
141
XIV.
Barrel-Mouse Blind
150
XV.
Draining the Swamps
174
*«*]* LiBRARY
ILLUSTRATIONS
J. Lorenzo Werich - - Frontpiece
Trapping /^y First Raccoon - - - 12
Pioneer Trapper's Shanty on Little Paradise Island - 38
John Werich - - - - - 70
A Deer Hunter's Lodge on Johnson's Island - 73
Eaton's Bridge - _ _ _ 102
Interior 'View of Louisville Club House - - 107
Louisville Club House _ _ - 108
In Camp on Island Six to Two - - 129
A Typical Trapper's Shanty on Indian Island - 151
The Indian Island Saw /^ill - " 134
A\y Island Home on the Kankahee - - 135
The White Star - - - - 137
Rockvllle. Terre Haute & Indianapolis Club House - 139
Ruins of a Trapper's Cabin on Grape Island - 143
Some of the Traps That Were Used by Early Hunters - 146
Ay First Duck Shooting from a Boat - - 150
The Old River Bed at North Bend - - 186
The New Kankakee _ _ - 188
Camp of Logansport Hunters on Cornell's Island - 189
'jf^^lj
To
The Pioneer Hunters and Trappers
of the Kankakee River Region, of many years
of faithful friendship, I dedicate this volume.
By the Author.
CHAPTER I
CATCHING MY FIRST RACCOON
REMINISCENCES
OF PIONEER DAYS ON
THE OLD KANKAKEE RIVER
CATCHING MY FIRST
RACCOON
"Oh the hunting days of my youth,
Have forever gone from me."
I was born in a log cabin on my grandfather's
farm near Valparaiso, Indiana in 1860, and
within two miles and a half of the historical
stream of which I am going to tell you. It was
whilst watching the vanishing of a great hunting
ground by the reclaiming of the Kankakee
swamp lands, or rather making a new Kanka-
kee f^iver, that involves the plot which forms
the gist of my story. I have seen the sad face
of th2 old Pottowattomie Indian who v/as driven
FiGNFF.R HUNTERS OF THE KANKAKEE
from his hunting grounds on the Kankakee, and
now we see a shadow of gloom, of sadness, on
the faces of the fev/ remaining old pioneer hunt-
ers who have spent their early years in hunting
wild game and trapping the fur-bearing animals
of the Kankakee region.
It is not my purpose to write the whole history
of this Kankakee region or to give reminiscenses
of all the pioneer hunters that have hunted and
fished on the Kankakee, in the years past, as it
would take a long time to write it, and it would
make volumes.
/Aany hunters have come here from far off
cities, Nev/ York, Philadephia, V/ashington, Bos-
ton, Pittsburg, and many near-by cities. 1 have
met and hunted with sportsmen from Europe,
and the hunters usually get what they are look-
for— plenty of game— as it was the best hunting
ground for all kinds of game birds in the United
States. This fact I know, as I have hunted as
far north as I could and yet be in the United
States, and as far south as the Gulf of Aexico,
10
CATCHING MY FIRST RACCOON
and west as far as the Rockies, and I have never
yet found a place that equalled the Kankakee
swamps, for the variety of game to be found there.
To make a long story short, in those days it
was the hunters' and trappers' paradise, and no
wonder he now feels sad at heart when he looks
over this once great hunting-ground nov/ the
home of the farmer. He can realize how the
Redman felt when he had to give up this region
to the white hunters.
V/hen about eight years of age v/e moved to
the marsh and lived in a log cabin on Bissel
Ridge. In the summer season my father ditched
and made hay. The grass v/as cut v/ith a scythe.
After being cured it was hauled out of the marsh
on a brush to some knoll or ridge and there
stacked. In the fall father trapped the fur-bearing
animals and shot game for meat, while tending
his traps. He would dress the skins at night. I
helped getting the bow-stretchers ready and in
stringing the dry hides. And v/hen snuffing the
candle, no lamps or electric lights v/ere used in
11
PIONEER HUNTERS OF THE KANKAKEE
those days, I would sometimes get sleepy and
snuff the wick a little too low and put the light
out. A few yards in front of our cabin ran a
small creek that spread out over a low marsh,
or rather a slough, as they are sometimes called,
just below our house. This formed a great
musk-rat pond and was also a great place for
wild ducks to nest and rear their young. About
a mile above our cabin was another musk-rat
pond, and this little creek was its' outlet, mak-
ing it a run-way for the rats from one pond to
another. Father gave me two or three old steel
traps which had weak springs and which I could
set without breaking my fingers, should they
happen to get caught between the jaws. I set
the traps along the creek where the rats would
stop to feed on roots and such vegetation as
musk-rats usually feed upon. 1 caught fifteen
rats that fall. One morning I went to my traps
and found a raccoon in one of them. Ay young-
est sister usually went with me to the traps and
she was with me this morning. To say we were
12
Trapping My Firjt Raccoon. This is one of the wild
animals that dwell on the edge of civilization in the wilds of
the Kankakf^e, where dwelled the author
CATCHING MY FIRST RACCOON
frightened would be putting it in a very mild
form. We iiad nothing to kill the raccoon
with, and would probably not have done so had
we something with which to do it. /Ay sister hav-
ing more courage than 1, stayed and watched
the coon whilst I ran back home for mother-
father was away tending to his traps— to come
and help kill the coon. With two big clubs my
mother and 1 soon had fAr. Coon's eaithly career
ended. It has been more than a half century
ago since this happened. I have hunted and
trapped some big game since that time, but never
became quite so excited as on the morning
v/hen I caught the first raccon.
ihe scene that morning will be forever photo-
graphed on the tablets of my memory. It was
. at this place I lived when 1 began my early hunt-
mg, commencing to realize the pleasure it af-
forded me. But of course I had no idea of the
hardships which existed in it. We resided here
about two years and a half. In the meantime
my father bought the Bissel stock, consisting of
13
PIONEER HUNTERS OF THE KANKAKEE
two-fifths of the stock in the Indian Island Saw-
mill Company. /Ay grandfather owned five
one-hundred dollar shares of stock in the saw-
mill company. This he gave to my mother.
Our next move was to the Indian Island where
I spent the next ten years of my boy-hood days.
I will tell you more in another chapter.
14
CHAPTER II
FINDING THK MISSING LINK
THE DISCOVERY
OF THE KANKAKEE BY
LASALLE, A FUR TRADER MEETING
THE POTTOWATTOMIE INDIANS AND
FINISHING THE MISSING LINK
Look at the map of Indiana and you will see,
up in the left-hand corner of the State, a small
stream rising in the southern part of St. Joseph
county, which flows in a south-western direction
and drains the counties of LaPorte, Starke, Por-
ter, Jasper, Lake and Newton. It is also the
boundary line between the counties I have men-
tioned. Years ago the Kankakee was called
the eastern branch of the Illinois river, but that
theme has been disproved. The Indian name
of the Kankakee, from the two words "The-Ak
(wolf) and "A-Ki(iand) literally means Wolf-
15
PIONEER HUNTERS OF THE KANKAKEE
Land River, from the fact that many years ago
a band of Indians of the Aohican Tribe who cal-
led themselves "wolves" when driven from their
homes by the Iroquois, took refuge on its
banks near the headwaters of the The-A-Ki-Ki.
Charlevoix, the French missionary, on his voy-
age down the Kankakee river in 1721. speaks
of the wolves. It was from some of these of
Indians, whose village was a few miles from the
south bend on the St. Joe river, and where now
stands the city of South Bend, that the mission-
ary recFuited his force for his expedition down
the Kankakee, the Illinois, and the /Mississippi
rivers. The Kankakee is the most historical
River in the state. Yet there is very little known
of its early history, only that the numerous wild
animals which made this region their home
made the Kankakee an important fur-trading
country. Occasionally a hunter's story of see-
ing or shooting a deer or wild-cat in the Kanka-
kee swamps is read in the newspapers. The
river itself, though not a long one, is beautiful,
16
FINDING THE MJSSING LINK
winding through marshes, forests, and long tan-
gled vines, among its wooded islands, with here
and there there an opening in the forest. It
spreads its channel for miles and in many places
becomes a lonely, lily-fringed lake. Its bed in
the sand and clay forms its course to within a few
miles of A\omence, Illinois, where the rock
crops out and forms a great dam across the
stream. This dam was partly removed a- few
years ago at a cost of seventy-five thousand
dollars. The Kankakee region was once a
heavy timbered country, but the forest fires have
greatly reduced its wood districts. The lofty
sycamore and the mammoth elm are still to be
found on the banks of the Kankakee, as they
were during the time when the fur-laden boats
of the French glided down the river. In the
early history of this continent it was the custom
of Spanish explorers to give it some special
geographical features by naming the place they
discovered after some Saint in a church-calen-
der, the day the discovery was made, in this
17
PIONEiiR HUNTERS OF THE KANKAKEE
manner it was no trouble to trace the exact
course of these explorers along the coast of the
continent. It was not so with the French. And
for this reason many notes of historical interest,
of the early discoveries made by the French
have never been written in history. Early in the
fall of 1679, LaSalle left the vessel at Green
Bay and coasted the shore of Lake /Michigan
until he arrived at the mouth of the St,
Joseph river. Here he built Fort LaSalle
and stayed here most all that winter on account
of the ice, to await the arrival of Tonti, an Italian
officer whom he had brought with him from
France as his lieutenant. There were about forty
in all as they left Ft. LaSalle early in the spring,
As soon as the ice had gone out of the river they
ascendedthe St. Joseph river as far as the south
bend about eighty miles, then encamped for a
time to await the remainder of the party, which
arrived in a few days. Then they took portage
across the swamps to the headwaters of the
'The-A-Ki-F<.i." (Kankakee.)
18
FINDING THE MISSING LINK
It was LaSalle's plan and idea, when he left
France and sailed from his home in Rouen to
the French possessions in Canada, to accumu-
late a fortune by trading European merchandise
to the Indians for their furs and pelts which they
got along the lakes and northern rivers. With
this object in view he explored many lakes and
rivers in what is now Indiana, and established
trading posts on the frontier. After establishing
trading posts, as 1 have said before, LaSalle
traded with the Indians such articles of mer-
chandise as guns, ammunition, knives, hatchets,
kettles, blankets and beads in exchange for their
valuable furs. This was the motto of the Indian
"You Can Do Ae Good— I Do You Good."
The Indians soon learned that tlie Frenchman
was a benefactor and not an enemy, therefore
in a few years they were carrying on a big fur
trade with the Indians on the northwest frontier.
Tradition tells us that every wigv/am in those
days v/elcomed the visit of a Frenchman. Hav-
ing carried out his plans so far successfully, this
19
PIONEER HUNTERS OF THE KANKAKEE
celebrated explorer had another object in view.
This was to find the link. which connected the
great inland seas of the north with the waters of
the gulf in the south. He had heard of that
wonderful river, "'The father of Waters." which
flowed from tne unexplored wilderness in the
north far away into the unknown Sunny South.
With this object before him he set out on an ex-
ploring expedition to find a shorter way that
would shorten the world's commerce between
the East and the West and to his idea he had
found the missing link which is our ov/n Kanka-
kee river.
20
CHAPTER ill
THE MIAMI CONFEDKRACY
THE DEFEAT
OF THE POTTOWATTOMIES
AT THE BATTLE OF TIPPECANOE
WHICH FOREVER SHATTERED THE
STRONGHOLD OF THE
MIAMI CONFEDERACY
In 1881 I made a trip to the Indian territory
and the Pottowattomie reservation in Kansas.
1 visited several tribes of Indians, at that time
the Indian affairs were under the control of the
Pederal Government. The purpose of my visit
was to find, if possible, any of the old Pottowat-
tomie Indians that at one time inhabited the
Kankakee region, that I might be able to learn
more of the early history of their hunting grounds
on the Kankakee river. 1 found two very old
Pottowattomies that claimed to have lived and
hunted on the Kankakee river in their early days.
21
PIONEER HUNTERS OF THE KANKAKEE
You can not tell how old an Indian is by his
looks unless you are acquainted with his habits,
but they are octogenarians. At any rate they
gave accounts of events that had actually hap-
pened when and where treaties had been made.
When 1 spoke of the great tragedy at Fort Dear-
born one of the old warriors arose to his feet,
threw a blanket around him and began to pace
to and fro; finally he said in a saddened voice
that he was there. 1 drew from him some facts
that I never before had heard. He told how
they felt when /Aajor Irwin passed through the
Kankakee swamps, notifying them to be ready
to start for their new home beyond the /Aisssis-
sippi river. 1 obtained much valuable informa-
tion from those two old warriors. One of them
then was a young warrior of seventeen summers.
He was with Elskwat-awa, the Prophet, when
they sent Winamac down the Wabash river to
Vincennes where they went in council circle
with Gen. Harrison. Later they both fought and
were survivors of the Battle of Tippecanoe,
22
THE DEFEAT OF THE POT TOWOTTOMIES
which forever shattered the stronghold of the
/Aiami Confederacy. Me told how the army
was encamped on a tract of marsh land near
the river, in the shape of a flat-iron, how they
were defeated. There were two men, one white
and the other a redrnan, who v/orked with all
energy to defeat the scheme of Tecumseh and
Els-kwat-awa. These were General Harrison
and the chief, Winamac. The former sent con-
stant messengers from among French settlers
of the territory through all this Kankakee region,
counseling peace, and hoped tlirough their
strength and influence to disarm all hostile feel-
ings. At the same time the latter, one of the
noblest of his race, devoted all his efforts to se-
curing peace, Sometimie in /Aay, 18H, a large
number of the Pottowattomies from this region
assembled at a place called the "Cov/ Pasture"
on the St. Joseph River, and were only prevent-
ed from joining the followers of Tecumseh and
the Open-Door by the pleading eloquence of
the venerable Winamac. A few months later
23
PIONEER HUNTERS OF THE KANKAKEE
Tecumseh departed for the South to solicit aid
of other tribes to develop his scheme for a great
confederacy, While he was gone Open Door
sent out messengers to the Pottowattomie's
lands, calling upon the natives to join his forces.
A large number of the inhabitants of the Kanka-
kee region formed in line of march and passed
down through the prairie marshes to the Potto-
wattomie Ford, crossed the Kankakee, then on
through to the Prophet's town. Winamac was
sent to Governor Harrison with a message of
peace. This is where the crafty Prophet got in
his deceitful work and was now free to effect his
purpose. As preparation was made for the war
the women and children were sent to the North
for safety. /Aany were hidden in caves in the
sand hills along the Tippecanoe River near
where the City of Winamac now stands. Others
came in large numbers to the Kankakee swamps
and remained hidden in its recesses to await the
tide of war. Hundreds of defenseless women
and children thronged to the shores of our his-
24
THE DEFEAT OF THE PO rVOWOTTOM IKS
toric river and waited many weary days of
watching and long nights of pain from hunger
and fatigue for the return of the braves, many of
whom were never to come. The result of the
Battle of Tippecanoe is well known. The be-
trayed and defeated Pottowattomies returned to
their homes. Aany regretted that act against
ihe whites whilst many others were incited by
the crafty British to a desire for revenge and
here was laid the plot for another great tragedy,
the doom of Fort Dearborn. Less than tv/o
years after their defeat at the Battle of Tippe-
canoe, the garrison at Fort Dearborn was at-
tached and three-fourths of their number killed.
The survivors surrendered with the promise of
their captors to spare their lives. This promise
was broken. Captain Wells' horse was shot
from under him. As he fell an Indian ran up
and stabbed him in the back and he died in the
arms of his Fottowattomie friends. The history
of the Fort Dearborn massacre is one of the
saddest Indian tragedies of the Fottowattomie
, 25
PIONEER HUNTFCRS OF THE KANKAKEE
lands that was ever placed on the pages of his-
tory. We will ship a period of eight years over
Pottowattomie land. No events of any great
importance occured then. Indian Territory be-
came a State, Fort Dearborn v/as again garri-
soned. The French held the ascendancy in
influence in this region and were held in the
highest regard by the Indians. In 1821 the
white hunters began to come to the Kankakee
region. The day before General Harrison start-
ed on his march up the Wabash to meet the
Prophet, two young men volunteered to join the
army, by the names of Daniel Scott and Aike
Haskins. They had a cousin in the army, an
officer named Atwood, who was wounded at the
Battle of Tippecanoe. Having a broken leg, he
was picked up and carried away to the Kanka-
kee swamps, about sixty miles distant, and was
cared for by a squaw, taking the place of her
son who had been killed. In 1821 Scott and
Haskins came north to the Kankakee region in
search of their lost relative. As there was a
26
THE DEFEAT Ox^^ THE POTTOWOITOMIKS
large estate to be settled back in Ohio it v/as
necessary to know his ^^'hereabouts. Scott and
liaskins made every effort to find him alive, if
they could, or where he v/as buried if possible-
They brought with them such trinkets as the
Indians usually wants, such as pipes, tobacco,
knives, needles, etc. They got in with the na-
tives by giving them these goods for very little
or nothing. By kindness they gained their
friendship. Scott opened a store at Bengaul but
when the English come they called it Tass-
naugh. This was the first trading post in this
region and was an ancient village v/hen the
French had established a trading post in long
years past, before even the Pottowattomie re-
volt. It was on the old Pottowattomie trail lead-
ing from the Kankakee River to the Lakes. In
the early summer, after the hunting season was
over for the fur bearing animals, the Indians
would pack their furs, then with their women
and children they would start north for the lakes
to meet the French fur trading boats which came
27
PIONEER HUNTERS OF THE KANKAKEE
down to the lower lake region to trade with
them for their furs. During the summer season
they fished and picked berries, as these were
what they lived on mostly during the heated
seasons, in the fall they would return to the
Kankakee hunting grounds where one of their
main camps was located on a long point of the
mainland or ridge that projected far out into the
swamp and near the mouth of Sandy Hook.
This place was known as "Indian Garden" and
hundreds of Indians camped there during the
hunting seasons. There was another Indian
camping ground a few miles below this on the
same side of the river known as the "Indian Is-
land," and of which 1 will speak later on. Scott
having his store on this old Indian 'trail brought
him face to face with hundreds of Pottov/atto-
mies, while fiaskins camped and hunted for
nearly two years and was the first v/hite hunter
to camp on Indian island. Scott sold his store
to a Frenchman, then he and liaskins returned
to the East. They never heard or got trace of
28
THE DEFEAT OF THE POTTOWOTTOMIES
their lost relative, As I have said before im-
mense fortunes were now made by trading with
the Indians in all parts of this country. Early in
1821 two men acting in this capacity became
well known and remarkable for their v/ealth and
influence through all the Kankakee country.
They were Joseph Bailie and Pierre F. Navarre.
As there is usually in these early time stories a
little love and romance, this is what happened
to these men. In accordance with the general
custom among traders both married daughters
of native chieftans. After a time Bailie settled
on the prairie north of the river in what after-
wards was Porter county, and near the site of
where Valparaiso now stands. The place was
called Baily Town and is still a well-known
point in Porter county. Navarre settled at
/Michigan City for a time and then moved to the
banks of the St. Joseph River. fAr. Bailie, or
Bailly as he was generally called, was a native
of Prance. It was in 1822 that he first settled
in Bailly Town and for the next eleven years he
29
PIONEER HUNTERS OF THE KANKAKEE
was the only white man within the country
limits. His family consisted of a wife and four
daughters. As the years passed by he became
very wealthy, so much so that he purchased a
sloop and was thus enabled to take his children
east to give them the advantage of a thorough
education and culture. Eleanor, the oldest, took
the veil and was for many years Aother Super-
ior of St. Aary's School at Terre Haute, Indiana.
There have been many treaties made with the
Fottowattomies. one made in 1832 and one in
1836. By the former treaties the Fottowatto-
mies conceded to the United States all the
country situated between the mouth of the Tip-
pecanoe f^iver, running up the river twenty-five
miles, thence to the Wabash river, thence across
to the Vermillion river. This was known as the
St. /Aary's Treaty. By this treaty the Kankakee
region formed a part of the domain of the Fot-
towattomie Indians, although they were of the
/Miami's Confederacy and the Aiamis claimed
the land by right of occupancy. The Pottowat-
30
THE DEFEAT OP^ THE POTTOWOTTOM lES
tomies held possession when the whites began
to settle the country and it was with them that
the United States government treatied in 1836.
The remainder of the territory now was on the
Pickamick and Kankakee rivers. The Aiamis
held claim to all the territory in the northwest
part of the State. By the terms of the second
and last treaty the Fottowattomics ceded all
their lands to the United States Government and
agreed to relinquish the territory when called up-
on to do so. This was called the /^\ississinawa
Treaty and was made on the treaty grounds
near the headwaters of the Kankakee. The
Pottowattomies left the Kankakee swamps for
their new home toward the Sunset, to the land
that was given them for their own and was
theirs as long as the sun shines and the rain
falls. But their Great Pather at Washington
changed his mind and a few years later they
were removed to the Indian Territory, The War
Department allowed a few to remain, those who
had distinguished themselves as friends to the
31
PIONEER HUNTERS OF THE KANKAKEE
whites during the early Indian troubles. In 1836
a man by the name of Robinson, of French and
Indian nationality, was the chief feader, and had
absolute control over all the Pottowattomies
from the year of 1825. In 1836 he assembled
his tribes to the number of five thousand near
Chicago for the last time, fie was known to
his people as Chief Che-Bing-Way. I have
thus presented an account of the Pottowatto-
mie's land as it appeared at the time of the
whites immigration to this region.
32
CHAPTER IV
SETTING STEEL TRAPS
THE WHITE MAN SETTLING
THE COUNTRY VACATED BY THE INDIANS
AND THE FIRST TRAPPER TO SET
STEEL TRAPS ON THE KANKAKEE
The history of the region of the Kankakee
country under the Aborignies is told. The great
/"Aiami Republic fell before the Republic of the
East, and it became the obvious destiny of the
nations to yield to the strongest race. The year
"33" marked the advent of the first white fami-
lies from the East. The first settlers to arrive
were the Aorgan Brothers, Isaac and William,
who came early in the summer from Wayne
County' Ohio, and settled on a prairie, after-
wards known as AVorgan Prairie. It is on the
cast side of Sandy Hook and a few miles from
33
THE PIONEER HUNTERS OF THE KANKAKEE
the Kankakee river. Two years later my
Grandfather Dye came from Holmes County,
Ohio, and settled on a prairie on the west side
of Sandy Hook, which is now known as Horse
Prairie, He was the first white settler in what is
now Boone township. /Ay mother at that time
was only five years of age and she remembers
seeing many of the Fottowattomies. Her arri-
val in the Kankakee country antedating that of
my father is more than fifteen years. In the
next decade many settlers were found in this
part of the country. Game was plentiful and in
every cabin was found a rifle or two. From
some of these pioneer homes came the early
hunters and trappers of this story. Hence, "The
Pfoneer Hunters of the Kankakee" is the title of
my story. In the outset of this story I had in
mind only a short story of the early trappers and
hunters. But I have detoured out over more
territory than I expected. If I were to give a
graphic sketch of all the men who have hunted
and trapped on the Kankakee it would fill vol-
34
SETTING STEEL TKAPS
umes. Therefore I will speak only of a few of
the earliest pioneers. As I have said fur traders
in those early days became immensely rich and
the Kankakee Region in an early day was the
greatest hunting ground in the /Aiddle West,
especially for the fur-beaFing animals. As gold
and gems was the magnet that attracted our
Hoosier folks to the Far West, so it was the fur
trade that brought the early explorers to the
Kankakee region. The Indians caught the furs
and traded them to the new-comers for trinkets.
Then began the greatest trade that this part of
Indiana ever knew. New types of persons were
brought into existence in the new country by
the new trade and it is some of these I am go-
ing to tell you about in this new story, as the
history of the Kankakee fur trade is one of the
brightest pages of its history. In the fall of "45"
Harrison Hartz Polsom and Rens Brainard, two
young men came from Ohio with their parents.
In 1840 they settled on the prairie north of the
Kankakee Swamp. Having some idea how
35
PIONEER HUNTERS OF THE KANKAKEE
profitable a business it was trapping tlie fur-
bearing animals, they embarked in that busi-
ness. First each of them made a butter-nut
dugout. Then they wenl to a blacksmith by the
name of Alyes who had settled in this region in
the early "30" and had opened a blacksmith
shop on his homestead, and who also kept a
cross-road store a few miles east of the Indian
Town, now Hebron, and engaged him to make
them three dozen steel rat-traps at one dollar
each, and four two-spring otter traps, or wolf
traps as they are sometimes called, at three dol-
lars each. These were the first steel traps made
and set in the Kankakee country. On the first
of October they launched their dugouts and
trapping outfit off Coal Pitt Island, a small island
in the north marsh where for many years Jones
and Smith had their charcoal pits. They pad-
dled their dugouts up the marsh along the tim-
ber line until they came to North Bend. In the
early days it was called Flag Pond but was
known to the old river men as North Bend from
36
SETTING STEEL TRAPS
the fact that at this point the Kankakee flows
the farthest north of its entire course. At this
point there is an opening through the timber to
the river. They ascended the river a few miles.
When night came upon them they landed on a
small ridge near the mouth of Crooked Creek.
They soon had a frail camp and a glowing camp
fire. When they landed on the ridge Brainard
shot two young fox squirrels and with what pro-
visions they had brought with them they soon
had a good supper. After supper they gathered
up some withered herbage, spread their blankets
and lay down for a night's rest in the lone, si-
lent, solitary, stillness of the Kankakee swamps,
to be lured to sleep by the hoot-owl, the howl-
ing of the wolves and the splashing of the musk-
rats in the water near the camp. This was the
first night's experience of two of the oldest trap-
pers in years of service on the Kankakee. On
the following day they set out their traps and
looked for a suitable place to build their shanty.
/*Vr. Folsom took part of the traps and went up
37
PIONEER HUNTERS OF THE KANKAKEE
the river. Brainard took the remainder and
went down stream. They returned to camp in
the afternoon and reported their trip and pros-
pect of a building site. Brainard had found a
beautiful small island near the river on a bayou
which he thought would be a very suitable spot
for a shanty. Folsom. on his hunt up stream,
had found the material to build the shanty. He
had found an old wigwam made of puncheon
and barks, v/ell dried and smoked. In a short
time they had a cozy little trappers' shanty on
an island they named "Little Paradise," which
is yet known by that name today. This was
the first American trapper's shanty on the Kan-
kakee that I have any knowledge of. There
were a few French huts and traders' shanties
along the borders of the swamp regions for the
purpose of trading and trafficing with the Indians
and the early hunters. Twenty years prior to
the building of the shanty on Paradise Island
the fall catch of furs at Little Paradise proved a
success, The sale of furs brought something
38
« n >
- - > " » >
Pioneer Trapper's Shanty on Little Paradise Island, where
the first steel traps were set on the Kankakee in 1845
SETTING STEEL TRAPS
over one hundred and twenty-five dollars. They
invested part of the money in more traps and In
the following winter built a shanty on Little
Beach fridge in which they shantied for four
seasons. On this ridge they found a hunter's
shanty occupied by a man named Ritter, who
had built it the year before, in 1846. In 1851
Folso-ra and Brainard buiit a shanty on Long
Ridge which they used until 1866. Then they
sold out and left Long Ridge. Folsom then
went into partnership with William Granger^
They built a cabin on Red Oak. This cabin
was burned in "73." They rebuilt it the fol-
lowing year and used it until he retired from the
trapping business in 1883, having spent a third
of a century in the Kankakee swamps. Uncle
Marl Seymour, as he was called, who had been
with him for many years, continued trapping the
Red Oak ground until old age compelled him
to quit. He left his island home on the Kan-
kakee and spent the remaining years of his life
at the home of P\r. Polsom at Hebron, Indiana.
39
PIONEER HUNTERS OF THE KANKAKEE
Brainard, v/ho was with f-olsom on his early
expeditions on the river and when he sold out
on Long I^idge, built a shanty on Grape Island,
whare he trapped for several years. Then he
trapped the Little Beach ground for three or
four years. Finally he quit trapping altogether
about thirty years ago. Folsom and Brainard
were the pioneer trappers who first sat steel
traps on the Kankakee River over seventy-five
years ago, The next decade found many hunt-
ers and trappers along the Kankakee swamps.
In the fall of 1847 Aose Summers and John
Dusenberg glided down the winding Kankakee
in skiffs with a trapping outfit and landed at
Long Ridge, built a shanty which v/as the first
trapper's shanty on the Ridge. They used this
shanty for a number of years. Leaving Long
Ridge they shantied on a number of islands be-
tween English Lake and /Aomence, Illinois.
This same year Joel GfJson built a log shanty on
Long Ridge and followed the trapping business
for many years. He had two sons who also
40
SETTING STEEL TRAPS
were trappers and trapped many years after
their father had retired. There was another old
time hunter whose locks were as white as the
driven snow when I first knew him. He had
settled on Long Ridge in the Fall of 1838, and
dug a cave in the side of the Ridge where he
lived for many years. Fifty years ago this old
hunter was known as Uncie Frank Sweny. lie
was the oldest residential hunter and trapper on
the "river, having commenced hunting on the
Kankakee as early as 1833. V/illiam Bissell,
one of thepioneer settlers of Forter county, spent
much time hunting on the Kankakee in the
early days. In the early Fall of 1847 Heck
Goodridge and his brother John built a shanty
on French Island. This was the first American
trapper's shanty. The French and Indian
hunters had settled on this island many years
before the arrival of the Qoodridges and from
whence it derived its name. I will give more of
its early history later on. In 1852 John Broady
an early pioneer of this region, began trepping
41
PIONEER HUNTERS OF THE KANKAKEE
on Sandy Hook, also he trapped the Crooked
Creek Claim. Later on he owned the Indian
Garden trapping ground which he sold to Sam-
uel Irvin in the early seventies. A\r. Broady
was a very successful hunter and trapper ' He
never trapped any after selling out his claims
but continued hunting on the Kankakee up to
the time of his death which occured in 1878
from a severe cold from the effects of getting wet
by falling through the ice in a bayou, on a very
cold day whilst hunting deer, A\r. Broady was
widely - known as a deer hunter, having led
many hunting parties through the swamps in
those early days. It was about this time that
my father came to the Kankakee region and for
many years he and /Ar. Broady were hunting
partners and have been together on many deer
hunts through the Kankakee Swamps. In 1852
Gideon Alyea, son of the old trap maker, built a
shanty on Butter Nut Ridge and trapped this
ground for many years. Leaving the Butter Nut
he built a shanty on what is now known as
42
SETTING STEEL TRAPS
Shanty Island. Me also built a shanty on
Fryes Island and one on Cornell's Upp<gr Island.
He followed the business until old age com-
pelled him to retire. In 1847 William—Uncle
Bill— Adams, with his parents, settled near He-
bron and five years later he went in the swamps
as a shanty boy with /Ar. Folsom, handling furs.
Two years later he v/ent into the trapping busi-
ness for himself and in "61" he answered the
cali to the Colors and served his country up to
the close of the war. Returning home he went
into the swamps again hunting and trapping un-
til some time in the 90's, when he retired. In
1850, Isaac Cornell built a log cabin on Cor-
nell's Island for rail makers who were making
rails for him and a few years later an old Indian
lived in it and hunted game. In the early 50's
Hunter f^ice and Harman Granger built a shanty
on a small ridge lying between Red Oak and
Bucks Ridge, known as Rice's Ridge, and for
many years it was used as a trapper's shanty.
Aany years ago there were some deer hunters
43
PIONEER HUNTERS OF THE KANKAKEE
camped on this ridge and tliere was an old ca-
noe there that they would cross the river in to
hunt, as there were more deer on the north side
than on the south side. One man in the party
became dizzy-headed and sea-sick so easily
that they had to lay him down in the bottom of
the canoe and sit on him to keep him from fall-
ing out.
Bucks Ridge was for many years the home
of the Brockways. They were a very interesting
family, consisting of a father and mother, two
sons, a beautiful daughter and a little boy eight
or ten years old. They had settled there many
years before and seemed to enjoy their wild life,
as they were hunters and trappers. From them
we obtained some potatoes and corn bread.
The youngest of the hunting party fell in love
with this young damsel and we thought it was
going to be a match, but they did not come to
time. They parted with many bitter tears,
never to meet again as the mother would not
part with her darling child.
44
SETTING STEEL TRAPS
After having a good time we all returned
home, proud, with plenty of game. /Aany v/ere
the hunts I took after that. 1 have often thought
of what became of that pretty, fair-haired girl of
the Kankakee, and for all I know she may be
with the angels in Heaven, as I have not heard
from the Brockways since, In the language of
/"Aaud /Auller, "Of all sad words of tongue or
pen, the saddest of these, it might have been."
45
CHAPTER V
DIVIDING THP: game
KILLING DEER WITH PITCHFORKS
AND CORN KNIVES ON BOGUS ISLAND
. AND HOW WE HUNTED AND DIVIDED
GAME IN PIONEER DAYS
In the cold winter of 1838, many years before
Beaver Lake in Newton County, Indiana, was
drained, there was an island at the v/est end of
the lake called Sogus Island from the fact that
it was the home of the outlaws and despera-
does. Bogus Island, as this island has been
known for many years, was the last refuge of
the counterfeiters of the picturesque era of our
Kankakee life. Mere, until comparatively re-
cent years, the robber, the counterfeiter, the
horse thief, the highwayman of the swamps and
the "bad man" of the frontier found s^fe retreat
46
DIVIDING THE GAME
in this partly wooded island and in the rolling
waters of this beautiful lake. Even the Federal
officers in pursuit were baffled here, for years
the outlaws lived in safety on wild game and at
times would raid the country-side to look at a
pioneer's horse. With the draining of Beaver
Lake, Bogus Island entered upon its final des-
tiny, The island at one place was only about a
quarter of a mile from the mainland. In the dry
season the water was very shallow and all kinds
of game: deer, wolves and fox, could wade or
swim to the island. The cold winter froze the
lake over and the ice around the island was
slick and glaring, with the island full of deer,
wolf and much small game. Well all old hunt-
ers know that deer or any other cloven-footed
animal, when chased, cannot stand or run on
glary or slick ice. Consequently they are at the
mercy of anyone who comes along. Notice
was sent out far and wide over the prairies and
sand ridges and hunters' cabin along the Kan-
kakee. Allen Dutcher, f^aus Allen, Sam liar-
47
PIONEER HUNTERS OF THE KANKAKEE
rison, Bill Thayer, Sam /AcFadden and many
other pioneer hunters whose names I have for-
gotten were there. 5. L. AcFadden was there
with his father and was only twelve years old.
In his narrative of the hunt, as he related it to
me, he said: "1 will never forget it as 1 came
near freezing to death going home from the hunt
and we got so deer that we could not take care
of them or get them home as wc had no means
of conveyance in those days. We carried some
but pulled the most of them out on a hand-sled.
As I have said before, the island was alive with
deer. The hunters, trappers and squattors
gathered in with guns. The oid cap and ball
rifle were used. With dogs, clubs, tomahawks,
pitchforks and corn-knives the massacre com-
menced at early morning and at sundown the
battle closed. The crowd consisted of about
twenty-five men and boys and two women.
One of the women killed s deer with a pitch-
fork. The party in all killed sixty-five deer,
seven wolves and two or three foxes. Wolves
48
DIVIDING THE GAME
and foxes can run on giary ice so many of them
got away, and fully as many deer got away as
were killed, by slipping and sliding towards the
shore. There were so many that they could not
kill them all at once, consequently that gave
many a chance to escape. Only one man was
hurt in the fight and he would have been killed
by a big buck had he not been rescued in time.
The buck was killed with a corn knife. The
wounded hunter was placed on a litter and car-
ried to his cabin on the Kankakee at what was
at that time known as Harrison's Landing.
After years the place was called Thayers and
was near where the Grangers years after had
their trapping shanty on Grape Island. We
used to camp near their cabin on the river many
years after the big hunt on Bogus Island. That
deer hunt beat the world. Now I am going to
tell you hov/ v/e used to hunt and divide the
game. After the hunt is all over the most in-
teresting of all is the dividing of the gam.e on the
square. Sometimes there is a great deal of
49
PIONEER HUNTERS OF THE KANKAKEE
sHull-dugery in the matter and you have got to
keep your eyes skinned and look out for break-
ers. Now for the mode of dividing the spoil.
Before shot-guns were in use and rifles were all
the go, hunters' law was that the men who drew
first blood took the hide and half the meat, but
when shot-guns came in vogue and all had to
drive and shoot to kill the deer we thought that
the old law as to rifles was not just. 5o we
held a Council of War on the Kankakee one
time and, after mature deliberation, v/e changed
it and decided that in hunting altogether with
shot-guns and rifles, the man who drew first
blood was entitled to the hide but the meat and
game should be divided equally among all.
When we got ready to divide, the game is divid-
ed in as many shares as there are hunters. One
turns his back to the game and another points
at each pile in turn and also asks whose it is.
And the one with his back turnea says who is
entitled to the pile or bunch pointed at. But
sometim.es a heavy accent of signal by the one
50
DIVIDING THE GAME
who points out is understood by the man whose
back is turned. They sometimes give them-
selves the best pile of game. And 1 am sorry
to say that I have sometimes been a victim of
misplaced confidence in that way and cheated
out of my fair share of the game. But there
v/as no use to squeal about it as they would
only laugh you out of it and say that you ought
to have better luck. 1 have told you hov/ we
hilled deer and divided game. Now one great
question among us was in reference to still or
noisy hunting. The Indians alv/ays still hunt,
that is they keep perfectly quiet and motionless
and wait for the game to come along. Or they
sneak quietly upon the game. 1 learned this
mode of hunting with the Indians on the West-
ern plains, hunting buffalo and antelope in the
open country many years ago. You can hunt
with an Indian all day and he will scarcely say
a word. With over fifty years experience in
hunting both in the forest and in the open coun-
try I must say that the white man must take off
51
PIONEER HUNTERS OF THE KANKAKEE
his hat to the Red /Aan when it comes to the
scientific mode of hunting wild game. As a
matter of course in driving in thickets, marshes
and ridges we had to make all the noise we
could to get the deer out. But this was the
question. In coming in at night a majoriry of
the hunters would leave loads in .their guns, in
the day of the muzzle loader, all night and get
up in the morning before daybreak and fire them
off, wakening the whole country for miles around
for the purpose of cleaning their guns and put-
ting fresh loads in so they would not miss fire.
Whilst I contended that doing so in the morning
put every deer within hearing of the camp on
the alert and look out for danger, and the least
noise we made in the morning was the best.
But a majority decided against me but 1 never
gave up. A gun well taken care of will not .miss
fire if not shot off for a week, I never did like to
hunt with a noisy camp and 1 most always got
the most game by keeping still, One time in
moving camp two of the party decided to take a
52
DIVIDING THE GAME
near cut and hunt through the woods and join
the camp at night, But they got lost and we
fired signal guns and built a big fire. Finally
they arrived long after night, tired. and weary
and almost exhausted. Whilst the men were
lost three wild geese flew over them. They fired
several shots and succeeded in bringing down
one. After hunting for it for some time they
found it had fallen in an old deserted well of
some hunter or trapper, perhaps the only one
around for miles. They brought it into camp,
that is the goose not the well, and we moralized
on the subject. They might try for one thous-
and years to kill a wild goose and have it fall
into that well again and not succeed. Now was
it Providence or Chance that governed in this
case? While 1 want to be a Christian and be-
lieve everything that is good and true I could
understand special Providence that (hear talked
so much about. In some cases a man a half
inch too far away is killed and another half an
inch another escapes. And by the least little
53
PIONEER HUNTERS OF THE KANKAKEE
thing men and women and poor, little, innocent
children, through no fault ot theirs, are killed.
And others by the most trifling thing escape. 1
have seen the meanest and wickedest person
have a splendid and beautiful day for their
funeral and I have seen the friends of the Lord
poor and the good Christian people almost
frozen to death or drowned in burying their dead.
The great moral question with me is. was this
earth gotten up especially for the benefit of Men,
or was it only an after-thought. The revolution
of the sun. moon and stars are perfect to a
second. But when v/c come down to the lav/
governing our little Earth we ail imperfection,
one law creating, another destroying. It is noth-
ing but a war of the elements and a law of des-
truction between every living thing. There is no
safety or security in any place or thing. It is
said v/hat a beautiful act of Providence it was
that lie created one set of animals and birds to
keep one another set down or the world would
be over-run with them. This is about the way
54
DIVIDING THE GAME
with some of the human family, destroying one
another with war and miurder while Providence
with pestilence, famine and accidents keeps the
human family from over-running the earth.
I have noticed when a vessel goes down at sea,
loaded down with precious freight, that Provi-
dence alv/ays seems to be on the side of
the strongest who are good swimmers, v/hiist
the poor helpless women and little children are
lost. if Providence had anything to do with it
He would have kept the boat from going down.
Some years ago on a western railroad a pas-
senger train conveying a large number of Di-
vines to a Conference or Synod ran over some
cattle on a high grade and threw the cars dov/n
a steep enbankment. Fortunately no one was
killed and the Divines came out with a card
thanking Providence for their safety. The su-
perintendent also came out with a card and said
that if Providence had anything to do with it lie
would have kept the cattle off the track in the
fiEst place. So you see how it goes. In my
55
PIONEER HUNTERS OF THE KANfvAKEE
hunting experience for many years I have found
more special cases of special Providence for the
animals and birds than I ever saw for the human
family. Iwill tell you of a stubbed tailed brindle
dog that belonged to one of the party. Whilst
out hunting he ran the deer out of a thicket to
me and 1 did not shoot for laughing at one of
the boys who was so excited that he could not
shoot because the deer ran v/ithin a few yards of
him.. Just at that time the thought came to him
that he had left camp without any bullets. His
father was some distance away v/hen he called
aloud: "Daddy, have you got the bullets?" This
frightened the deer and he turned toward me.
The dog came up, looked me in the face as
much to say, "Aint you ashamed of yourself for
letting that deer get away?" And he turned and
left me as other friends had left me before, and
would not drive any more deer to me until I had
redeemed myself. 1 will tell you how that was
done. Another time we were out hunting and
as I was on the left flank half a mile from the
56
DIVIDING THE GAME
rest of the party I heard a noise and looking
around I saw a large buck coming straight to-
v/ard me and the dog right after him, fie came
up to within fifty yards of me and then turned
off to the left. I got up out of the grass, gave
him both barrels and sav/ every shot strike him
in the side. He ran about seventy yards and
tumbled. The dog came up and saw what 1
had done and looked me in the face and wagged
his srub-tail as much as to say, "You are a
bully boy with a glass eye and have done the
right thing this time and I will stand by you."
And he did. He stayed with me all that day.
Some say that animals have instinct only and
not sense. Talk about instinct, Here is a gen-
uine, clear, solid sense and no fooling about it.
I believe that some animals have sense and
reasoning faculties as well as the human family
and far excel them in some things, protecting
their young and obtaining food and shelter for
them. I will nov/ relate the nearest special
providence and sense in any animal that I ever
57
PIONEER HUNTERS OF THE KANKAKEE
saw. This is tlie young fawn or deer. When
it comes forth it is the most helpless thing in the
world and the least animal in the world could
kill it. And now comes the most wonderful
part of all and is true as holy v/rit. From the
time the fav/n is born until it is able to run it has
no scent or smell. All kinds of ferocious ani-
mals, wolves, wild-cats, dogs, will pass it within
a few feet and will not detect it unless they see
it. The fawn lies in the most secluded and out
of the way places imaginable, and will lie per-
fectly still all day without moving, in the same
place where its mother left in the morning. The
doe stays near and watches it all night but
leaves it early in the morning and stays away
all day, only returning at nightfall to suckle and
nourish it, knowing full well that if found near it
in day time her presence might lead to its dis-
covery. But what a wonderful provision is
providence, sense or instinct that keeps that
little helpless animal still, away from its mother
all day. You may pass within a few feet of
58
DIVIDING THE GAME
them and they will not move. Father told me
that while hunting on the North /Aarsh he
stepped over two of them in the grass before
they ran, whilst he was looking for a squirrel fox.
If you find one when very youjig you can pick it
up and carry it a short distance and then let it
down and it will follow you home like a dog and
become very tame. Another time v/e were
hunting and the dog ran a deer out of the thicket
and we all fired and wounded it, m.aking enough
noise to drive all the deer out of the country.
V/e followed the wounded deer a short distance
and got it, After hunting around for awhile we
started for camp. In the evening our route to
camp took us by the same thicket from which
we started the deer in the morning. We were
scattered out, tired and weary, taking our time
to it. One of the party was some distance be-
hind and near the thicket in the marsh. On
turning around I saw him aiming at something
ten or fifteen feet from him in the grass. Me
fired and killed what he supposed was a rabbit,
59
PIONEER HUNTERS OF THE KANKAKEE
but he came to find out that itv/as a young deer
that had hidden there all day in the grass near
the thicket where we had fired three or shots in
the morning. All this noise and firing had not
disturbed it or m.ade it move, and this is more
than a young of the hun^an family could have
done without squalling and making a fuss. So
it is with the birds. The sam.e special Provi-
dence that guides and protects the animals does
likewise to the feathery tribes. Ramibling
through the woods and over the marshes one
often finds a covey of quail or a brood of
pheasants. To see how the m.other bird pro-
tects her young; she will flop and flutter to at-
tract your attention from the young birds so that
you would think she had both wfngs broken,
fluttering just far enough to keep out of your
reach, long enough for the young birds to skulk
away and hide in the grass. Take a stroll
through the woods in the Springtime and you
will smile at the swinging birds with your wise,
amused pity, who builds her tiny nest v/ith such
60
DIVIDING THE GAME
laborious care, high up out on the moving tree
top, only to be blown av/ay by the chilly autumn
winds. But are not the homes of the human
family, the sweetest homes of our tenderest love
built upon just as insecure a foundation, hang-
ing over some mysterious depths, and rocked to
and fro only to be swept away into ruin. And
yet He who has provided a balmy South as a
refuge for the summer birds to which they can
fly, has He not provided likewise a shelter for
the human family? I might write a book on
"Special Providence for Animals and Birds" but
I will leave that for the naturalist,
61
CHAPTER VI
MY FIRST BOAT RIDE
MY FIRST FISHING
TRIP TO THE KANKAKEE
AND MY FIRST BOAT RIDE AND
EARLY EXPERIENCES WITH
A SHOT GUN
To shorten up a story that is already too long
is somewhat of a task. When I found that I
have considerable more material than 1 can in-
sert in this little book and unless 1 cut out some
of the details there is dangers of slopping over-
Therefore, 1 will have to hold myself down to
the mere facts. Since the newspapers and
magazines have been offering prizes for the best
fish stories some of the anglers have caught
bigger fish stories than they did fish. Just see
what this angling game is coming to when a man
has to make an affidavit and give advance no-
>2
MY FII^ST BOAT RIDE
[ice he is telling icie truth before he dare open
his mouth about fishing, Just because my
pencil happened to slip once when I was de-
scribing a fishing trip on the Cottenwood River
in Northern /Minnesota many years ago is no
sign 1 cannot tell the nude, naked truth if I try
hard enough, i am and always have been a
"dyed" in the v/ool crank on fishing ever since
boyhood. 1 began my first fishing in a small
creek that ran near our cabin. Ay first fishing
outfit consisted of a red v/illow pole, a shoestring
line and a bent pin for a hook. Grasshoppers,
grub v/orms and angle v/orms v/ere the bait.
Chubs and sun-fish were the kind of fish I
caught, if any. Sometimes I would go fishing
at night for cat-fish, and do very well until that
big swamp owl would hoot "Who are you," and
that would end my fishing for that night. The
summer that 1 was eight years old Father took
me wrth himi to the Kankakee. We were fish-
ing from the bank at North Bend, which I have
mentioned before Whilst we were fishing F\r.
63
PIONEER HUNTERS OF THE KANKIAKEE
Samuel Irvin, a trapper, came floating down the
river in a skiii. This v/as the first water craft I
had ever seen. r\r. Irvin landed his boat and
he and father, being old friends, sat on the bank
in the shade talking whilst I was fishing part of
the time and climbing swamp trees until I got
tired. Finally I made knov/n my desire to ride
in one of those things— the boat. Father told
me to get in and sit down in the bottom of the
boat. I did and then he got into the boat and
shoved it out into the stream. We went down
around the bend and back to where we started,
1 have often thought of sitting in the bottom of
the boat and grasping the sides so tight that I
dented the sides of the boat with my fingers to
keep from falling out v/hen there was no danger
of falling out unless the boat upset. This was
my first fishi.ng trip to the Kankakee River and
my first boat ride. Near this same place fifty
years later leather ran me on my last duck hunt-
ing trip on the Kankakee. He v/as then over
four-score years of age, yet he could handle a
64
MY FIRST BOAT RIDE
hunting boat then as well as he did when he
gave me my first boat ride. Among the earliest
recollections of my boyhood hunting with a gun
are a fev/ of my first shots, in 1869 Father
bought a nev/ hzavy number ten double-barrel
muzzle-loading shot gun. Breach-loaders were
not so numerous then as now. it was so heavy
that I could not hold it to load or shoot. Yet I
was anxious to shoot it once. One day 1 v/as
out in the woods near the house gsthering hick-
ory nuts and the dog treed a black squirrel,
father was home and I got him to let me shoot
it. lie put in a light load as the squirrel was on
a small tree and not very high up. Then put-
ting his thumb around a small bush and letting
his fingers open, lying the gun on his fingers
against the bush, which made a good rest, he
soon initiated me in the mysteries of handling a
gun. He told me to look along the barrel until
1 saw the squirrel, then to pull the trigger. This
I did. Bang! The recoil knocked me down.
V/hcn I got up my nose was bleeding quite free-
65
PIONEER HUNTERS OF THE KANKAKEE
ly, but I went and picked up my squirrel. Father
said { was initiated. 1 am sure it was a labor o
love on his part and 1 made repeated progress
under his tutorin-g. That same Fall 1 began my
practicing on v/ing shots, Near our house and
between the main land and swamp timber was
a strip of open marsh. This was a great fly-
way for ducks, from the north bend of the river
across to Sandy Hook. One afternoon 1 took
the gun out on this fly-way, hid behind some
pucker bush, shot and killed the first duck that
came along which happened to be a Grey Aal-
lard or Greenhead. 1 waded out in the marsh.
The water was about two feet deep and cold, as
it was late in November. It was the proudest
moment in my life. 1 took the duck to the
house, Father being away from home. /Aother
wanted to have it for supper but I would not
have it that way. I wanted Father to see it,
feathers and all. As I have said, it was the
proudest moment of my life when I showed the
bird to my Father, It was my first game bird.
66
MY FIRST BOAT RIDE
A\y boyish heart swelled with pride. /Ay great-
est desire had been gratified. 1 found I had ac-
quired the "knack" and from that time on I be-
came a "wing shot." I was the only boy in the
neighborhood that could shoot "flying." I was
greatly envied by my boy chums. /Aany of
them were much older than I, so much so that
one day I overheard one of our neighbors say to
his v/ife, "Werich will ruin that boy by letting him
run around totting a gun all the time. They'd a
darn sight better keep him at work doing some-
thing worth while." A few years later v/hen
breech loaders became more plentiful Father
bought one and gave me the old muzzle loader,
or rather I traded him an old watch for it. The
gun and I became inseperable and I would keep
it in the parlor if my wife v/ould have permitted
it. I thought so much of that old gun that in
1884 1 carried it across the Western Plains to
the foothills of the Rockies for the purpose of
shooting wild game, as it was the best gun to
throv/ coarse shot that I ever saw. For double
67
PIONEER HUNTERS OF THE KANKAKEE
BB and swan shot it could not be beat and for
buck shot it v/as a daisy. It would chamber
three number one buck shot and nine made a
load. Firing two shots into a bunch of ante-
lope at eighty or a hundred yards certainly made
the hair fly. Returning home the following year
"85" I cleaned up the old gun and have not
loaded it since. That has been more than a
third of a century ago. Father had promised to
take me duck hunting v/ith him in the swamps
just as soon as I could shoot "flying." Aany a
hunting trip on the Kankakee River he has
shoved me and I have v/itnessed many remark-
able shots as well as many poor ones. Father
is a man who made but little show of his emo-
tions but 1 could see a change in his eye when-
ever I made a good shot, and I knew he was as
well pleased as I was. I heard Bill Adams
whisper to Jerome Rathborn one time when
they were stopping at our place on a duck hunt:
"That boy of John's can shoot like the very de-
vil and if he keeps on improving by the time he
68
MY FIRST BOAT RIDE
is [ifleen he will be the champion shot on the
Kankakee." On my last hunting trip on the
Kankakee, Father was with me, as mention has
been made, and was running the boat, when I
made two of the most remarkable wing shots
ever made in all my hunting experience. We
were going through the mouth of old Sandy
Hook when a pair oi blue v/ing teels came fly-
ing past about tv/o feet above the water. As all
old-time duck hunters know, a teel is the hard-
est bird to hit of the duck family on account of
darting and zlgzaging in their flight. I pulled
down on them with the right barrel of the gun
as they were a long way off and to my surprise
they both fell dead. The same morning over
in Cornell's Bayou I made another wonderful
double shot. We v/ere coasting down the bayou
and Father v/as manipulating the paddle and I
the hardware when a pair of mallards rose up
out of the timber to my right. The brush was
so thick that I could not get sight of either of
them until they flew out into the opening. By
69
PIONEER HUNTERS OF THE KANKAKEE
this time they were a long way off, too far to
shoot at using good judgment, But I decided to
try them. Giving the gun considerable eleva-
tion 1 pulled the trigger and greatly to my aston-
ishment both fell, one dead, the other winged^
and before I could give the crippled one the
other barrel it skulked off in the pucker brush
and I lost it. As I have said before, my Father
was at this time over four-score years, and at
this writing, 1920. is in his nintieth year. lie
continued his hunting until the infirmities of age
removed him from the swamps. This day fin-
ished our shooting. I returned to my home in
Logansport, Indiana, and before the duck hunt-
ing season opened again I lost my right arm at
the shoulder in a railroad accident. This was
my last hunt on the Kankakee and for this rea-
son I mention this incident. The reader will re-
member in the opening chapter that I set steel
traps and caught wild game long before I was
large enough or old enough to carry a gun. hav-
ing in all spent over a half century in hunting
70
JOHN WERICH— Born in 1830. The oldest pioneer
hunter hving, now in his 90th year. Regan hunting on the
Kankakee in 1852. A few months before this book went to
press he shot and killed a tiger cat that measured forty inches
long and stood seventeen inches high, the first one ever seen
in the Kankakee swamps, supposed to have escaped from
some menagerie.
c c c
< c « o
c o » » * o •
» C C 9 « C'
MY FIRST BOAT RIDE
and trapping on the Kankakee.
CHAPTER VII
HUNTERS WHO HAVE BUCKFEVERED
GUNS
THAT HAVE SPASMS
AND HUNTERS THAT HAVE
THE BUCK FEVER
One more story and it will conclude the series
of incidents in deer hunting. But all of this is a
matter of history to the man who has tramped
the woods for years. It is only repeating old
stories to tell of the deer that ran too fast for you
to shoot. I once saw a tenderfoot hunter jump
up a deer at close range and he stood and
watched the deer until it was out of sight before
he realized he had a gun in his hands. And so
it is with others; the duck that always flew be-
hind the hunter as he sat on a musk rat house
in a slough and could not turn around, or of the
72
c
3
0)
-a
6J!
-a
a
C
o
r-
O
C
o
0)
o
HUNTERS WHO HAVE BUCKFEVERED
flock of wild geese that had lit in the pond in the
cow pasture that day he had no gun, If you
had pressed your nose against the pane and
peeped through the window of a little log hunt-
i'ng camp on an island near Sandy Hook, say
about eight p. m., on a November evening forty-
two years ago, you v/ou!d have candle-lighted
three young men sitting around an old cook
stove. Two of the men were pulling on old clay
pipes, and each was at peace v/ith the world as
far as I know. Let me introduce you to them.
In the opposite picture that guy standing by the
stove but usually sitting down in the easiest
chair (an old cracker box) to be found in camp,
and absorbing the most heat, is my friend Bill
Garrison, whom 1 brought along on his first deer
hunting expedition in the Kankakee swamps.
Leave it to "Bill." He always grabs the big-
gest potato in the dish and the huskiest wedge
of pie on the plate, and always gets the softest
seat in camp. The tall, lanky, leather-faced
gink sitting on the woodpile behind the stove,
73
THE PIONEER HUNTERS OF THE KANKAKEE
dressing a musk-rat hide is Jolly Smiih, an ail-
around camper and fur-dresser and flap-
flap flipper, head cook and dish v/asher, trapper,
fur-trader, and a good trailer. I should say off
hand that Jolly stands about seventy-three
inches in his socks, and when he stretches his
neck to rubber after game he is taller'n that.
Thzre isn't an ounce of supsrflous flesh on hiiri.
In fact, there isn't much flesh of any kind. Jolly
is so thin he would have to stand a long time in
bright sun to make a decent shadow. You can
see his back from the front if you stare hard
enough and I reckon an expectorate who would
put a little velocity int-o his work could spit a
hole through Jolly three times out of five. But
anybody who picks up Smith for a v/eak-kneed
hunter on a long run makes a mistake. On the
trail he is tougher than a boiled owl. The other
guy sitting in front of the stove with a bar of
lead, laddie and bullet molds, running bullets
that hunter is— well, I'm too modest to say who
it is. All 1 will say is that there were three of us
74
HUNTERS WHO HAVE BUCKFEVERED
in the party. 1 have already described two. so
you can draw your own conclusions as to the
identity of the third, The next morning it was
clear and cold, the shallow water around the
edges of the swamps was frozen over. We had
decided to drive the ridges so one of our party
was to take the dog and go up the river on the
south side to the flats. Perhaps I ought to ex-
plain a little what is meant by the flats. /Aany
French and Spanish words have become incor-
porated with the English in America that one
hardly knows the name of things and places by
their right names. The flats is a high, dry
swamp, that part of the swamp that is seldom
under water except in extremely high-water
times. These flats are covered with heavy tim-
ber of swamp-oak. In the Fall and early winter
they are a great place for deer to feed by noz-
zling in the leaves and snow for acorns. And
that was the head of the ridges and almost a
sure place for the dog to take up a trail. On
account of freezing up, the deer would run the
75
PIONEER HUNTERS OF THE KANKAKEE
flats and ridges and they would have to be
chased hard before they would run the low
swamps. Big Beech Ridge was to be my stand
and Garrison on the west end of Peach Island.
Smith took the dog to the flats and had no more
than got on them when the dog took up a trail.
Just after sunrise I reached the east end of the
ridge only to see two hunters coming up from
the other side. We were strangers, 1 had never
met either of them before, but I never stand on
cerem©ny with a sportsman. An acquaintance
was soon struck up between us. They were
from South Bend. Indiana, and had a camp on
Goose Island. One of the hunters was a grey-
haired man, probably sixty-five years of age,
and claimed to be an old deer hunter who had
hunted and killed deer with the Indians when
the Kankakee Swamps ^ti<zxQ yet the hunting
grounds of the Pottowattomies, Mis partner
was much younger. The old hunter was one of
those fellows that thought he knew it all and
what he did not know about deer hunting was
76
HUNTERS WHO HAVE BUCKFEVERED
not worth knowing. The young hunter looked
with great admiration upon his older companion
end would do anything that he directed. They
had sent their dogs up the swamps. They said
that all but one were young dogs and that the
old dog did not amount to much. Our dog was
a good one, the best I ever hunted with, a good
tounger and swift on the trail. They were all
the time bragging and boasting on their dog
"Spot" for being a good runner. I tried to get
them to agree with me on what would be the re-
sult if their dog should bring a deer to this point
and I should kill it, or if my dog should chase
one or more to them and if they should kill it.
But they did not want to discuss the subject so
it was dropped. A fire was built in the end of
an old butternut iog and we stood around it and
listened for the dogs. We were on the east end
of the ridge and in a hoUow. On each side of
the hollow the bluff is very steep. The hollow
was about seventy-five or eighty yards wide. If
a deer was headed for this ridg2 from the east it
77
PIONEER HUNTERS OF THE I^ANKAKEE
would run this hollow to get on the ridge. Ay
number ten muzzle-loader, loaded with buck-
shot, rested sgainst a tree. The old hunter's
gun was a double combination of shot rifle gun,
ten guage shot and 30-30 rifle. The young
hunter was using a cap and ball rifle. Their
guns were leaning against the log. We were
sitting around the fire, as it was a cold morning,
listening for the dogs when suddenly from away
off up the ridges came the silvery voice of a
hound. But only for a moment was he heard
as he crossed from one ridge to another on the
way to Peach Island. A moment and again the
bugle notes rang out and warned us that the
deer was running the north ridges and would
come to this point where we were stationed.
The music told us that the dog had reached
Peach fridge about a mile away. V/hose dog
was making the noise was the question that
none of us could tell, but each imagined that he
could diatinguish the voice of his favorite dog.
One thing 1 was sure of and that was that there
78
HUNTERS WHO HAVE BUCKFEVERED
was but one dog in the chase. About half a
mile up the swamp we heard the crack of a
rifle four times in succession. We gave up right
then and there that somebody had got our
deer and that we weren't in it. I sat down on
the log again by the fire. The dog was running
yet and I told /Ar. Spencer, as that was his
name, that there was some hope for us yet as
the dogs were still running. For the tounging
of the hound was coming closer all the time.
Just then we heard two reports of a shot gun in
rapid firing and I knew it was Garrison for I can
tell when he is shooting because he always
shoots his "second" barrel first, referring to his
quickness with his second shot. Following this
we heard the crack of a rifle and again four
shots had been fired and yet the hound was
coming on towards us. Two or three times
since the dog had reached Peach Ridge had I
urged my companions to sit down or conceal
themselves so that the deer would not be
turned. S'ut /Ar. K.now-it-alI and don't-want-
79
PIONEER HUNTERS OF THE KANKAICEE
to-takc-advise-from-a-country-greenhorn refus-
ed. 1 told him that advice from a country
greenhorn was about as good as that of a city
tenderfoot and that their actions do not show
very much skill as a deer hunter, i spoke to
them again, "Boys, that deer is coming straight
to this hollow and will be here in less than thre€
minutes. Let us act like hunters and get be-
hind the log."' Just then 1 saw the deer coming
from the other side of the ridge straight to this
stand, a big buck, and it was right upon us with-
in twenty-five yards and running like a racer,
sailing over old logs and brush with the ease of
a bird. At this I fired one barrel and at another
leap the deer was behind an old tree so I could
not give him the other barrel. The young hunt-
er grabbed up his gun and fired. The deer at
this time was less than a hundred feet from him.
lie missed fire and the deer ran around to the
other side of the ridge and while doing this the
man with the rifle-shot gun fired two shots and
of course missed. By this time 1 gave him my
80
HUNTERS WHO HAVE BUCKFEVERED
second barrel as he disappeared into a black-
berry thicket seventy-five yards away. We
all looked dumfounded while we reloaded
our guns and finally something was said about
old "Spot," But the first dog that came up was
my old dog Trump," His eyes were ablaze
with excitement and 1 called out "here Trump"
and with a look of surprise the grand old dog
recognized me. Wagging his tail he came up to
me to be approved. /Meanwhile /Ar. Spencer
had gone to where the deer had turned past us
and found great splotches of blood on the leaves.
The dog took up the trail and in a short time
brought the buck back by me at the rate of a
mile a minute. 1 v^as on the top of the slope
while the deer ran the edge of the ridge below
me. A\y fusee banged out twice. 1 held right
on that big buck at about one hundred and fifty
feet away and the buck kept right on going.
Whang-bang went the rifle-shot-gun of the hunt-
er who knows just how to do it. The deer was
not more than a hundred feet from him and not
81
PIONEER HUNTERS OF THE KANKAKEE
a ball or a shot touched him. The dog was giv-
ing him a very close chase and when his loung-
ing suddenly ceased 1 knew what had happen-
ed. A moment later I had my hunting knife
into the buck's neck long before the firstclass
deer hunter came up. Then the question was,
who shot the deer. On examining it. it was
found that he had been hit in the shoulder by
one buck shot, from my first shot, on the first
round as he was running right side to me. He
ran until he tumbled over. The three of us had
fired nine shots and I learned afterwards it was
the same deer that had passed three hunters
and that there had been ten shots fired at it be-
fore it reached us. making in all nineteen shots
in less than ten minutesand only one bullet had
pierced his hide. Bad shooting secured for us
lots of excitement and run, A reminiscence I
shall always remember. There are a class of
hunters that have a faculty of forgetting their un-
pleasant experiences and exaggerate their joys
and success. We divided the game with the
82
HUNTERS WHO HAVii: BU.CKFEVERED
Goose Island camp and returned to our camp
in the evening, but t always remembered my
poor shooting as well as the good. We moral-
ized on the question; was it a fault of the guns
or had the hunters an attack of the buck fever
or was it Providence or chance or did the guns
have spasms that governed in this case is
something that I could not quite understand.
For never before in all my long hunting experi-
ence have I seen such shooting as was done on
this hunt. I have witnessed many remarkable
shots. Geese and ducks have been pulled down
out of the sky. Deer have been shot and killed
a fourth of a mile away and many other mira-
culous shots made. I saw Father shoot and
kill a hoot-owl one night about nine-thirty when
it was so dark that you could not see the tree
that the owl was in. A big hoot-owl had lit in
a big oak tree near the cabin and commenced
to hoot "who-are-you." Father took down the
old squirrel rifle and shot in the direction from
which the sound came. At the crack of the
83
PIONEER HUNTERS OF THE KANKAKEE
rifle down came something clattering to the
ground. I took the dog and found the owl. dead
as a knob.
CHAPTER VIII
TRAPPERS' CLAIMS
TRAPPERS' CLAIMS
AND HOW THEY WERE
OBTAINED. THE BEE-TREE
SWINDLE AND HOW
IT WAS WORKED
It was away back in 1868. Think of it. Fifty
years ago when 1 made my first appearance in
the Kankakee Swamps. Since then I have
hunted in swamps and on mountains, in the big
forests and on the plains, but none clings to my
memory quite so well as when my thoughts
ramble to the days when 1 was trapping the fur-
bearing animals in the Kankakee region. There
are many very funny things happened in those
I old hunting days. I told my early experiences
I in the fi'rst chapter of this book from the angle of
a pioneer hunter of the west, although it did not
85
PIONEER HUNTERS OP^ THE KANtCAKlEE
all center in the Kankakee Swamps then as it
has in later years, for many big hunts that won
me fame was west of the /Mississippi River,
years ago. Whilst writing this story and talking
with ©Id friends I have been living over those
old days. It has freshened memories of inci-
dents that 1 have not thought of for years. In
the early 60's. during the Civil War. the price of
furs of all kinds went up. A mink hide would
sell from four to nine dollars each. A good
coon skin would bring four dollars and a half,
just as it was nailed on the shanty door, and the
fur buyer would pull the nails himself. All kinds
of furs brought" a good price and for this reason
many hunters were brought to the Kankakee
Swamps. Also many trappers were brought
here. Up to this time the pioneer trappers had
no established trapping grounds as there was a
vast territory along the river covered with water
the whole year round which furnished good trap-
ping grounds anywhere. He saw that his rights
were slipping from him and that he would soon
86
TRAPPERS' CLAIMS
be crowded out of a trapping ground. So some
of the old pioneer trappers got to'gether and es-
tablished what is known as a trappers' claim.
Some held certain claims upon rights of per-
mission, others from permission of the land-
owners, while still others had bought their
grounds. These trapping grounds or claims, as
they were sometimes called, were divided by a
line running north and south as the river is sup-
posed to flow from the northeast in a south-
western course. So the miles on the river v/ere
the base lines of the claims and extended on
both sides of the river just as far as it was pro-
fitable and ran all the way from two to ten miles
in width. Therefore there were a good many
trapping grounds lying between the Indiana
State line and English Lake. These claims
were bought and sold almost the same as real
estate and they v/ere about as strong in their
stipulation as the Clayton-Bulwort treaty. They
have brought many a trapper on the verge ©f
war. Ameng the early trappers who came in
87
PIONEfiR HUNTKRS OF THE KANKAKEE
the late fifties and early sixties were: Joshua E.
Essex, better known among the old-time hunt-
ers as "Essex, the Beehunter" from the fact that
he was one of the greatest wild bee hunters that
ever hunted the Kankakee region. He began
hunting and trapping in 185 9 in partnership
with J. E. Gilson, of whom mention has been
made. They built a log cabin on v/hat is known
as Butternut Ridge and near the Swift Cut Off.
Here he trapped for three years then went into
partnership with Charles Cassel and on Shinty
Island built a shanty and trapped three yc-'ars.
In the summer of 1862 he enlisted and was en-
rolled in Company 1, 5th Regiment. Indiana
Cavalry. He was Quartermaster Sergeant and
served to the close of the war. being discharged
on June 15. 1865, when he returned and again
went into the swamps and continued hunting
and trapping until 1880. /Aost of his time in
the swamps v/as spent in hunting bees. He be-
came famous as a bee hunter. After retiring
from the trapping business for many years he
TRAPPERS' CLAIMS
devoted his time to the bee culture, having in
the meantime invented and patented a bee hive
which he manufactured and sold. It v/as a
great improvement over the old-fashioned bee
hive. In the winter of 1867 Samuel Irvin be-
gan trapping and built a shanty on Little Beach
Ridge, Eben Buck, an old pioneer river man,
was his skinner and fur dresser. It is said that
Buck could skin and dress more hides in an
hour than any two trappers on the river. In
stretching and dressing a rat hide he was an
expert. In the fall of '71 Irvin built a shanty on
Quinn's Island on the north side of the river and
a little below the north bend. This shanty he
used for two seasons then found that he had
been encroaching upon the rights of another
trapper. Then he sold his shanty, to Bill Gran-
ger. Polsom moved it to Red Oak and placed
it on the site of the one that was burned in '73,
In the same year Irvin bought another claim or
rather two claims, the Indian Garden Claim and
the Crooked Creek Claim, This purchase ex-
89
PIONEER HUNl^ERS OF THE KANKAKEE
tended his trapping grounds up the river as far
as Crooked Creek. lie built a shanty on Indian
Garden near the mouth of Sandy Hook. Late
in the Pall of '79, after the fall catch, he sold his
claim including shanty, boats and traps to the
Sherwood Brothers, Jerry and Holland, for one
hundred and fifty dollars. He also realized one
hundred and forty dollars from one month's
trapping, thus retiring from the business after
spending twelve years of successful trapping oii
the Kankakee. The latch string of /Ar Irvin's
shanty door always hung out to all hunters and
fishermen from far and near and they were hos-
pitably treated and entertained, The Sherv/oods
trapped the ground one or two seasons, then
sold out and moved to Tennessee. Another
very successful trapper in those days was H. G.
Castle who began trapping with his cousin.
Charles Castle. They trapped in the Shanty
Island ground for several years and bought furs.
He retired in '82 and engaged in the mercantile
business at Hebron Indiana. By 1882 nearly
90
TRAPPERS' CLAIMS
all the old-timers had left the swamps. Turs
were getting cheap and hardly worth catching.
But a few years later prices began to go up and
then the younger generation took up the trap-
ping business. Now as 1 have gone to the limit
of this story or what I promised in the begin-
ning, The Pioneer Hunters and Trappers, 1 will
leave the latter day hunters for the second edi-
tion. The reader remembers 1 said that Essex
was a great bee hunter and to my mind he was.
But he had many close rivals in hunting for
wild honey. Now I will tell you of one of the
shrewdest bee hunters that ever operated in the
Kankakee Swamps, lie said that "there are
tricks to all trades" and a stunt that he puUed
off and got away with, or rather a "joke" as he
called it surely proves the assertion of good or
evil repute of past Sawyers or Sawyers yet to
grow, lienry 3. Sawyer was related io the /Ar.
Sawyer who many years ago ran the Eatons
Perry and of which 1 v/ill speak later. This young
hunter who originated in Kentucky but later at
91
PIONEER HUNTERS OF THE KANKAKEE
Big Log, Indiana, has friends who have deter-
mined that he is a natural born hunter (Ken-
tucky produces a large crop of such). Sawyer
was long armed and amiable. f^rom many
years of practice in hunting and shooting wild
fowls, deer and wild hogs and other game which
inhabitated the Kankakee region had a fairly
cerrect notion of his own about hunting, /Aany
of the sportsmen from the city would employ
him and turn over their camp to him and at
night he would teach them local geography of
the Kankakee region. In a fev/ years he be-
came known to almost all the sportsmen in the
nearby cities, The business of a guide in those
days was to push a boat through the swamps,
bayous and sand marshes with one, and some-
times two, hunters in it. At times there was
much hard work to perform, especially in the
fall hunt when the water was low. in a year or
two he grew tired of this business and his
thoughts seemed to consist as far as might be
to avoid work. And here he invented his prac-
92
TRAPPERS' CLAIMS
tical "'joke," Sawyer was struck on the idea of
bee-hunting, As he was well known by all of
the old bee hunters along the Kankakee he was
welcomed as joyously at a bee hunters cabin as
if he were a long missing brother. He was at
once made to be at home in the bee hunters
cabin on Long Ridge, whilst the old hunter en-
tered with a friendly rivalry with the young hun-
ter in the giving of advice and information. After
visiting a number of the old-time bee hunters
who resided among the sand ridges along the
river, one of them v/as Honey Bee Sawyer. He
thought he had the secret so he began looking
for wild bees that stored their honey in hollow
trees which were called bee trees. Honey sold
at a good price in those days as there were not
many hunters engaged in the business. When
Sawyer began hunting the wild bees it was in
the Autumn of "59". At that time there were
several good bee hunters in the swamp among
whom I might mention the Steven brothers,
/Aarion and Pilander, Harrison Dolson, Joe
93
PIONEER HUNTERS OF THE KANKAKEE
Cason. Mad Folsom, Charles Carmon. and a
score of others that were very successful bee
hunters. They were all old timers who had fol-
lowed the business for years. Sawyer was green
at bee hunting as 1 said before, but he hit on a
scheme that worhed and laid the old bee hunters
in the shade. He was always a lucky hunter.
Good luck seemed always at his hand. No
matter what the game was he pursued, he al-
v/ays was sure to bag it, and so the same luck
followed him iu the bee hunting business. He
found two or three trees, cut them, and they pro-
ved good, getting from sixty to one-hundred and
fifty pounds per tree. Being a good season for
honey, as there were lots of wild flowers for the
bees to work on. Sawyer concieved the idee to
mark every tree that he found that had a hole in
it, to mark them all bee trees, generally picking
on trees that were easily climbed. He had a
pair of climbers made something on the order
that telegraph linemen use. He had everything
in readiness and just as soon as the frost came
94
TRAPPERS' CLAIMS
and killed the flowers so the bees would have to
work on bait he was ready for them. As i said
nearly every tree with a hole in it had his name
on it and it is very seldom that you hear of a
marked bee tree being desturbed. Before close
of the bee hunting season Sawyer went around
lo all the trees that he had his name on, climbed
them, stuck some honey-comb inside of the tree
and smeared honey all around the hole so that
all the neighborhood bees would v/ork on the
honey, passing in and out of the hole in the
hollow tree. This the b2es will do late in the
Fall when the flowers are gone. After baiting
about sixty-five or seventy trees in this way,
having three or four live trees, genuine bee trees,
he announced his trees for sale and in a few
days he had his victim coming. Some settlers
from the ridges, hearing of the result of some of
Sawyer's bee trees, concluded there was a
chance for speculation, so some of them visited
the young bee hunter who had a shanty on
Buck's Ridge, with a view of buying some of his
95
PIONEER HUNTERS OF THE KANKAKl'K
trees. As good luck would have it, it was a
warm, sunny day in the middle of October and
the bees worked on bait nicely. Sawyer lOok
them through the swamp, over ridges and
showed them his stock of bee trees. The bees
were working strong, going in and out of the
trees, indicating a strong swarm. Sounding the
trees with the pole of an axe gave them some
idea as to the hollow V.''.-^i the tree might con-
tain. After examining the trees, mig party re-
turned to the cabin late in the afternoon-~tired,
wet and hungry. The trapper who was shanty-
ing with him had a kettle of stewed duck, boiled
potatoes, bread, butter and coffee, which made
a fairly good supper. Sawyer asked them three
dollars and fifty cents a tree and showed them
the honey that he took out of a tree that he cui.
Me said he had sold six dollars' worth of honey
and if they doubted his statement they could ask
/Ar. Smith, the man v/ho helped him cut the tree
and take the honey out. The settlers hesitated
for awhile, bui finally said they v/ould give him
96
TRAPPERS' CLAIMS
two dollars and fifty cents a tree for sixty-five
trees. There were three trees on the north side
of the river they did not want. Sawyer did not
want to miss a sale so he said that he would
cut two trees near the cabin and if they did not
g'st more than one hundred and fifty pounds
from the two trees he would take the two
fifty. And if there was more than that they
were to give him the three fifty. To tn is they
agreed. They went to cut the trees and from
the first one they Q'ot a little over one hundred
pounds of nice honey The other tree was still
better. They soon closed the deal. Sawyer
was to help them cut the trees and the tiiiie was
decided on the first freeze up v/hen the ice
v/ould carry them safely, as that would b-^ the
best time to get around in the sv/amp and get
the honey out. The bargoin was closed and
Sawyer received his money, two hundred and
twenty -seven dollars for five bee trees, whilst
the sixty trees contained nothing but tlic hol-
lows. Not a bee in the whole sixiv trees or for
97
PIONEER HUNTERS OF THE KANKAKEE
a long time afterwards. This was hnown as the
"hollow tree sale." Just before or about the
time of the first freeze Sawyer left the ridge and
a paper informing the settlers that all kinds of
things happen in the Kankakee Swamps, he
took the map of the Kankakee valley and de-
parted. A few days later the settlers came and
had a bee tree cutting. They cut several trees
and did not find any honey nor be:?3 but found a
piece of honey-comb on a string inside the tree.
This led them to believe that they had been
tr'cked. They went to their homes much wiser,
but with no honey. What they said of their ex-
perience was never knov/n. A fev/ days after
this an old bee hunter asked one of them hov/
much honey they got. fie drew a long hunting
knife and threatened the inquirer. The other
settlers were questioned not at all. It v/as one
of thp shrev/dest tricks ever pulled off in the his-
tory o'" the Kankakee Valley, liis feme as a
bee hunter went abroad all over Northern In-
diana and he was thence after knov/n as Honey
98
TRAPPERS' CLAIMS
Bee Sawyer, and this done on his achievement
is not dimmed or forgotten, father was quite a
successful bee hunter and in early days kept
the home supplied with wild honey all the year
round and from him 1 got my early training in
bee hunting. Although I never hunted for bees
very much yet it is one of the sweetest hunts
that a man can engage in. 1 never found very
many bee trees and what 1 did find I found
mostly when 1 was not looking for them. V/hen
a boy 1 used to go with Pather when he went
bee hunting In the fall of the year after the
frost had killed the wild flowers the bees would
work on bait and by putting some honey-comb,
stuck on a stick, in som.e open place, then
watch for the bees, and if there are any bees
within a half mile they will come to the bait and
after they have loaded themselves with honey
they will rise, circle around once or twice then
start straight for hcmiC. Then the hunter gets
the line on the direction of the tree. Possibly
many of you have heard the old saying.
9v
PIONEER HUNTERS OF THE KANKAKEE
"Straight as a bee line." Well, this is where
that old saying originated. A bee never flies a
crooked line to its home when loaded.
CHAPTER IX
RUNNING THE FERRY
THE PIONEER
BRIDGE BUILDERS CARRYING
THE UNITED STATES MAIL THROUGH
THE KANKAKEE SWAMPS
IN A CANOE
Away back in the chilly autumn of 1836,
George Eaton, with his family, landed on the
banks of the Kankakee River at a place known
in the early days as Pottowati.Qmie, Pord,., .He
built a log cabin on the right "-bank' of the'r'iver.
He was one of the couragepy':^', 'gi^ti^'e;i: i'^,eii\e,i^\
redeemed the country from superstition and
savagery. He began pioneer life as a ferryman
and ran what w^as known as the Eaton Perry.
He would transfer people from the Porter
county side to the sand ridges in Jasper county.
At the season of the year when the water was
101
PIONEER HUNTERS OF THE KANKAKEE
high the distance was about a mile and a half
and part .of the way was through a dense swamp
and a pathless marsh. In 1847 or 1848 there
was a United States mail route established be-
tween /Aichigan City and Rensselaer, Indiana,
and /Ar. Eaton had the contract to carry the
mail across the Kankakee Swamps. In the
winter time v/as the riveF and marshes were
frozen up it was somewhat difficult. But in the
summer season when the water was low the
mail was either carried through the swamps and
marshes on horse back or stage. In the winter
of "49" Eaton built a bridge across the river.
This was the first bridge built on the Kankakee
above /Aomcnce, 111. On the fotlowing summer
it' was burned,it 's supposed on account of it be-
ing atoll bridge. A\r. Eaton continued to run the
the ferry up to the time of his death which oc-
cured in 1851. His remains were laid at rest on
a beautiful knoll near the landing place. /Ars.
Eaton, a woman of remarkable nerve and
strength, continued to run the ferry and deliver
102
± ^
t c cc c c
RUNNING THE FERRY
the mail on tiie south side. At times the water
was so high that it could not be carried by stage-
As 1 have said, she was a woinan of couragg and
strength and there were but few men wiio could
excel her with the oars. One morning about
daybreak two men on horseback arrived at the
ferry and wanted to be hastily transiered to the
main land on the south side. They said they
had lo be in Rennsselaer by noon, as there was
going to be a Government land sale at one o'-
clock that day and they wanted to be there at the
opening of the sale. The recent rains had raised
the v/ater in the river and marshes that one-
fourth of the way across would swim a horse.
Through the timber they could ride their horses
as the water v/as from, knee to belly deep to a
horse. Ars. Eaton told them she could ferry
them over one at a time but it would delay them
about an hour and a half or she could take them
both over e.t the same time and that there were
places thej they could swim their horses and
that they could ride their horses until the water
103
PIONEER HUNTERS OF THE KANKAK.EE
got too deep to wade then they could get Into
the boat and swim the horses alongside the
boat. They decided to go together and took
passage per "skiff and horseback riding their
horses when it wasn't too deep. In less than
an hour they were landed safely at Sand Ridge
Landing in Jasper County. This is one inci-
dent mentioned which is only one ot the many
daring feats of this kind in which lArs. Eaton
showed her skill as a boat's woman. Late in
the afternoon of the next day the sheriff of La-
porte County, Indiana, arrived in the ferry look-
ing for tv/o stolen horses taken from a farmer
near Doorville and the description of the men
and horses tallied v/ith those that Ars. Eaton
ferried across the river. There is no doubt but
that they were the men v/anted at Laporte.
The chances for getting away and hiding stolen
horses in the sand ridges on the south side of
the river v/as much better than on the north
side as the country was not so well settled.
Aany a stolen horse has been hidden away on
104
RUNNING THE FERRY
these swamp islands which were never found
by their owners. Horse stealing in those days
was a very frequent occurence. I'Ars. Eaton
died in 1857 and was buried beside her hus-
band in the family burying ground near the
landing. After the death of /'Ars. Eaton a man
by the name oi Saw/er C3.ne in possession of
the old ferry. He built a bridge in "57." As
the bridge was not substantially built the ice
and high water of the following spring took it
out. Sawyer then ran the ferry again and car-
ried mail for three or four years. He also put
up a sawmill on the banks of ihe river and did a
good lumber business. Aany of the logs he
sawed were rafted down the river. in 1860 he
sold out his business to cnus 5aum, who oper-
ated the mill and ran the ferry for a few years.
Baum built a bridge that stayed in and was
used until the close of the war when the County
Commissioners of Porter and Jasper Counties
jointly took over the bridge and made it free.
Later on they made a grade through the swamp
105
PIONEER HUNTERS OF THE ICANKIAKEE
of timber and sand as far as the timber line. It
was several years before the grade was com-
pleted across the marsh to the dry land. This
was the last of the toll gate system in Porter
County. In fact, it was the last in Northern In-
diana. When Baum built the bridge it stayed
in. This was knov/n, and is to this day, as
Baum's Bridge. And yet Eaton built a bridge
across the river at the same place fourteen
years prior to the building of the Baum's Bridge.
It was at this ford that /Aajor Irwin crossed the
Kankakee when he was giving notice to all the
Indians along the Kankakee Swamps to be
ready to leave in the early summicr for their
homes beyond the /Aississippi. Also it was at
this ford where General Tipton crossed the river
while gathering up the children of the forest to
their far-off hunting grounds toward the sunset.
In 1878 a party of hunters from Pittsburg, Pa.,
built a club house at the bridge and they put on
the river a small steamer, "Little Rhoda" which
played between English Lake and Long Ridge.
106
^ i 3 i .
>U^
RUNNING THE FERRY
There was another party of hunters from Louis-
ville, Kentucky, who built a club house at the
bridge in the fall of "78 known as the Louisville
Hunting Club with Wm. Thompson, of Louisville
as President and H. Parker Rice and Aaron P.
Perman, of Hebron, Indiana, as hunting guides
and club house managers. Parker, better
known as "Dock" among the hunting circles,
became associated with the Louisville Club in
their annual fall hunt of '76 and at that time
they camped in a cotton shanty or rag-house as
they are sometimes called, near the Prairie
Bend. The next season they built a shanty
where now stands their magnificent building
v/hich was erected in '78 by Dock Rice, archi-
tect and builder. On the following year, '79,
another club house v/as built by a hunting club
known as the "White House Club" with George
Wilcox, of Baum's Bridge, as manager and
hunting guide. In the hunting season of the
feathery tribe many are the sportsmen that
gather along the marshes of the Kankakee to
107
PIONEER HUNTERS OF THE KANKAKEE
get a shot at a web-foot duck, and many years
hunting on this stream have brought me face to
face with many good fellows that belong to the
hunters' fraternity. Some of my most pleasant
recollections that were printed on my memory
v/ere scenes around a hunters' camp. I have
often regretted I did not keep a diary for many
of the talks around these campfires are worth
recording.
H
CD
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CHAPTER X
LAST OF THE POTTO WATTO MIES
FIRING
THE MARSHES TO
DRIVE THE GAME OUT.
HOW THE INDIANS ROAST A DEER HEAD.
THE LAST OF THE
POTTOWA-TTOMiES
ON THE KANKAKEE
The readers remember that in a previous
chapter I mentioned that a few of the Potto-
wattomie Indians were permitted to remain.
Now I will teil you what became of AVingo, the
little Indian boy. One of the most wonderful
stories of all is a prairie on fire, which is one of
the grandest sights in the v/orid. 1 have seen,
in the fall of the year in a dry time, the Kanka-
kee Prairies on fire, the time of the sear and
yellow leaf when all nature is about to put off
her garb of green and put on the v/hite-snow.
The Indians sometimes would set the grass on
108
PIONEER HUNTERS OF THE KANKAKLEE
fire to drive the game out. If there is any wind
going It sweeps like a mighty hurricane and car-
ries everything before it. Sometimes you can
burn the grass around you and escape before
the raging billows of fire reach you. "One time
many years ago," says an old hunter, "Aubbee-
naubbee and /'Aingo, an Indian boy, and myself,
were out hunting in the tall grass and weeds on
the marshes about two miles from the river. We
had killed a deer and had just cut it open and
taken out its entrails and were preparing to skin
it and cut it up so that we could carry it home,
when we heard a roaring and crackling noise
west of us like the coming of a mighty storm.
Aubbeenaubbee, with terror despicted on his
face, said that the prairie was on fire and that
we must get out. As the wind was blowing
hard from that direction we knew that it v/ouid
soon be upon us and we knew that there was no
salvation for /Aingo in the tali grass as he was
small. In the twinkling of an eye we opened
out the deer and shoved /Aingo in and then
109
LAST OF THE POTTOWATTOMIES
closed it up like a clam. Aubbeenaubbee and I
then broke and ran for our lives and of all the
running and tumbling and summersaults in the
tall grass beat the world and all the rest of man-
kind. I took a straight shoot for the river but
Aubbeenaubbee took off to the left of me and
reached the pond or slough with some water
and musk-rat houses in it and he rushed in and
hurriedly tore off the top of an old musk-rat
house and jumped in and was saved. After
running hard and being almost given out of be-
ing overtaken by the fire 1 reached a creek near
the river where there was some water. I cross-
ed over and was safe on the other side of the
Jordan. Then i stood with wonder and am.aze-
ment at the glorious sight of the ocean of fire
rolling by and some deer and v/olves rushed by
me in their fright to escape the scorching ele-
ments. But 1 paid no attention to them. After
the fire had passed by it had left nothing but a
blackened pall. 1 started to find my compan-
ions and found Aubbeenaubbee with his head
110
PIONEER HUNTERS OF THE ICAN KAK.EE
stuck out of a musk-rat house, all right except
a little scorched about the head. But he was
clad to get off with that. He crawled out of the
old musk-rat house and started to look for
/Aingo as we had great fear for him, fearing that
he had been roasted alive. We found the
roasted deer and knocked at the door and to
our great delight /Aingo called out, '5it down
you are at the right door'" And we opened the
deer and behold, he was safe and sound, al-
though he said it was red-hot for him for a short
time. The deer was roasted to a nice brown on
the outside and we sat down and made a square
meal off of him. Then we cut it up and carried
it home and we had enough to eat for sometime
without cooking." The finest bill of fare that I
ever saw was to pass over the burnt district just
after a big fire had passed and you could find
all kinds of game; coon, rabbits, and sometimes
prairie chickens and ducks, nicely roasted and
many a meal have I made of them when out
hunting and hungry. 1 will tell y@u how the In-
Ill
LAST OF THE POTTOWATTOMIES
dians cooked their mgats and the way they roast
a deer head, it is the finest and most delicious
in the world. They dig a hole about a foot
square and about a foot deep and inake a hot
fire in it and keep it burning until it is nearly lull
oi red hot coals. Then scrape out the coals and
ashes. Wrap the deer head with the skin on in
wet leaves and place it in the hole and cover it
up with the hot ashes and coals and leave it un-
til it is roasted through, then take it out and the
skin will peel off and leave a clean, tender meat.
Brains and tongue are all nicely cooked and
that throws v/hale tongue in the shade. You
can cook fish just caught in the same way. You
wrap the fish in a wet paper of any kind and
lay the fish down and cover it up with hot ashes
and coals just as you would a roast potato in
the ashes. After it is done take it out and the
paper and skin peels off and leaves the juicy
meat for you to place your pepper and salt and
eat it. It is the finest thing in the world. You
just try it sometime when you are out camping
112
PIONEliR HUNTERS OF THE KANKAICEE :^
on the Kankakee and you will never get tired of |
it. One time on the Kankakee we were out \
fishing for pike and in those days we had no |
such fishing outfits as are used at the present ij
time, such as skinners, trolling hook or Johnson
grabbers or liildebrandt's spinner and many
other patented fishing hooks and artificial baits.
We had to make our lines and hooks in those
days and in fishing for pike or pickerel in the
Kankakee we had to have strong lines and stout |
hooks and bait with a big finn of one of the fish j
caught. If you haven't such a bait use a large
frog or minnow and keep it moving, as a pick-
erel seldom bites at a still bait but always takes
it on the wing and go for it like lightning and
splashes water in your face like a flying sea
horse. Then we would pull them in out of the
water. One day we caught nine pickerel that |
measured altogether fifteen feet. We cooked \
them all up for supper and with bread and but-
ter and coffee the nine of us ate them all up and
all of us said it beat the world and all the rest of
113
LAST OF THE POTTOWATTOMIES
mankind. Just think! Nine men eating fifteen
feet of fish. Another time we were fishing on the
Kankakee and caught many red^horse, buffalo,
and suckers. We ate so many fish that some of
the boys could not change their shirts for three
or four weeks. Now al! old hunters and fisher-
men know thai suckers and red-horse are a very
bony fish but just as good as any and some like
thgm best, only they are so full of bones. 1 will
tell you how we fixed them and they were alright.
Take a sucker and clean it nicely, then lay it on
the slump or log and with a sharp knife cut it
cross-ways into pieces about an eighth of an
inch long stick the pieces together v/ith cornmeal
and fry. It is alright and the bones will not trou-
ble you or get cross-ways m your throat. And
at that they are far better than German carp.
One time we were fishing and caught a lot of carp
when some guy came along and gave his idea
and directions as to planking carp. His direct-
ions were: Get a nice big carp and clean it in
good shape. Put it on a hardwood plank, salt
114
PlONEiiR HUNTERS OF THE KANKAKEE
and pepper it well, then spread a layer of butter
on the top. Cover this with strips of bacon and
cornmeal. Slip him in a hot oven and when
done to a brown take the outfit back of the shanty
and throw the fish away and eat the board. I'll
say that baked suckers and trimmings you will
find more palatable than any hard- wood board or
carp. 1 will assure you that, if none of these
dishes don't appeal to you especially, just try
something else. A\any years ago, but to be ex-
act, it was the cold winter of 1843 and the cold-
est winter ever known, there was a party of deer
hunters camping on the Kidge. The snow was
very deep and the weather so cold that it was
almost impossible to get ©ut and hunt for game.
The ice in the river was so thick that they could
not cut a hole through it with an axe so they
pulled a lot old logs on the ice and set them on
fire to mslt a hole through it. After a night and
a part of a day they got a hole through it and all
kinds of fish, pickerel, bass, salmon, and even
snapping turtles bounded out of the ice and they
115
LAST OF THE PO 1 rOWATl OMIES
had fish to last thein until the weather moderated
One old snapping turtle that came out was so
large that when they dressed and cooked it. it
made soup enough to last them a week. The
ice did not break up that Spring until away in
April. Some hunters crossed the river on the ice
seventeenth of April thai Spring. I will tell you
now of some of the Indians that were left on
the Kankakee and what became of little A\ingo.
the Indian boy. /Aingo was the last Pottowat-
tomie on the Kankakee, lie had been captured
by the Sioux and carried away to the Northwest.
The old chief, the father of Niagara, did not like
/'\ingo and was not inclined to confer the honor
on him he had so fairly made, Niagara was
his favorite child and she must be the wife of
some distinguished personage. But the old
chief was doomed to be outwitted by his daugh-
ter as many a father is in matters of this kind.
At a time when the chief was absent holding a
council with a neighborhood tribes of Sioux,
A\ingo picked out two of the chief's best horses
116
PIONEER HUNTERS OF THE KANKAKEE
on which to escape with his girl to his own
tribe. Niagara was ready and when the village
was sunk into profound sleep she met him in a
sequestered place, bringing a supply of provi-
sions for the trip. In a moment they were in
their saddles and away. They were not less
than three long sleeps from his own people and
would be followed by the Indians as long as
there were any hopes of overtaking them. By
morning, however, there would be a wide space
between them and their pursuers and would
make their escape entirely practible if no mis-
haps should befall them on the way. The first
night or next day in the evening they reached a
camp of trappers and hunters and among them
were old Kill-buck and LaBonta, Frenchmen
who were trapping and buying furs, and from
whom I obtained this narrative while camped on
the Kankakee many years. The trappers were
very much surprised to see two young Indians,
a young man and a squaw, rixle up and alight in
the midst of them, apparently much fatigued and
117
LAST OF THE POTTOWAITOMIES
way-worn. Their presence required a prompt
explanation, as tiiey might belong to some mer-
anders in that vicinity, who might give trouble.
The young Indian made the pretext of friend-
ship but he might be the spy of a hostile band
who were meditating an attack on them, but
what means this pretty young girl who is wilh
him. War parties are never encumbered with
women and the faded condition of their horses
to some extent allayed their fears, as it was
evidence that they were on a long and severe
journey. Old Kill-buck interrogated him as to
his object and destination and learned that he
was a Pottowattomie and a remnant of the
tribe of the Kankakee and Wabash Rivers, and
who had been taken captive about a year before
by the Sioux, and was carried away by themi to
their villages up in the northwest until a chance
to escape to his own tribe presented itself. The
young girl v/ith him v/as Sioux, for whom he
conceived a fondness while among her tribe.
The attachment was not only mutual but that
118
PIONEER HUNTERS OE THE KANKAfCEE
they might consumate their bliss they found it
necessary to eiope. They were now flying to
hPs native village to which another night's ride
he thought would bring them. As they seemed
very much fatigued and were out of provisions,
the party very promptly tendered them the best
they had which was consumed with good relish
by the two lovers, and after they had enjoyed a
little repose Kiil-bucH drew from them the inci-
dent and story just related. The trappers tried
to persuade them to stay until morning and en-
joy the refreshments and rest which they need-
ed so much, but he replied that they had not
slept any since they set out on their flight, nor
did they even dare to think of closing their eyes
before he should reach his own home, fie knew
that he would be pursued as long as there was
the faintest hope of being overtaken and he also
knew what his doom would be if he again fell
into the hands of the Sioux. Having remained
in the camp a short time, the two fugitive lovers
were again on the wing flying over the green
LAST OF THE POT rOWA'i' rOMlES
prairies of the Kankakee marshes by the light of
the moon. A full and beautiful moon animated
and sustained by the purity of their motive, and
the hope of soon reaching a place of safety and
protection. They said they had good horses,
good hearts, good weather, good country to tra-
vel over and above all a good cause and why
not good luck. Kill-buck learned afterwards
that they reached his home in safety and lived
happily for many years. And that was the last
that was ever heard of .'Aingo Doranto. the last
of the Pottowattomies. Lenia Leota, his sister,
was taken captive by some other hostile Indians
and carried off to the far west toward the sunset
and her fate was never known nor never will be
until the great day of judgment. But like the
stars that shed their glory ore a dark and trou-
bled sea, like some long forgotten story cherish-
ed are thou still to me. There v/ere two or three
other Indians that lived and hunted and trapped
on the river. One old Indian, Sheubana. lived
on French Island and he was related to old
120
PIONEER HUNTERS OE THE KANKAfCEE
Peashaway, who for many years lived on an
island in the north marsh near the Cumbcrtand
lodge. Sheubana and Peashaway lived on the
head waters of the Kankaiiee near English
Lake. When 1 last heard of them, the three In-
dians mentioned were the last of the Pottowat-
tomies on the Kankakee.
CHAPTER XI
HOM!{ OF CHIEF KILLBUCK
FRENCH ISLAND
FOR MANY YEARS THE HOME OF CHIEFS
SHEUBANA AND OLD KILLBUCK
WHEN SETTLED BY A FRENCH
FUR TRADER NAMED
LA BONTA
The first white man to settle on French Island
was a French fur trader by the name of LaBon-
ta. He settled here for the purpose of trading
and trafficing with the early hunters and trap-
pers who had settled along the Kankahee at
that time. As 1 have said before the War De-
partment granted a few of the Fottov/attomies,
those who had been friendly to the whites, per-
mission to stay in the KanhaKee Region, There
were two or three French families on the island
who had settled there years before and for this
reason it derived its name "French Island."
122
PIONtER HUNl^ERS OF rHt. KANKAKE?:
There were four or five Indians living on the is-
land at this time and among them lived an old
Indian and his aged squaw by the name of
Sheubane. Me was at the Pt. Dearborn massa-
cre and saved a great many of the whites, lie
was over eighty years of age when found on
this island by the white hunters in the winter of
1858 and of whom 1 obtained this narrative.
Sheubaria lived with his squaw and two little
grandchildren in a wigwam on F^rench Island
where LaBonta found old Killbuck dead in the
winter of 1857. "One day" said the hunter
"whilst a couple of us were out hunting we
passed the wigwam of Sheubana and found his
poor old squaw and the children in great distress.
They informed us that Sheubana had started
down the river to hunt and been gone for three
days and they knew thai som^ething had hap-
pened him or he would have been bach. As
they were out of m.eat and nearly starved we
fed them the best we could and called out ©11
our force and started to hunt for him. We had
123
HOMIi OF CHIEF KILLBUCK
not gone far when one of the party heard a
noise and §@ing to the spot found the poor old
Indian fast, with one leg in one of those traps
that were used in those days. In looking for
game in the woods and brush he ran against
the trap and sprung it and got caught and being
old and feeble, could noi extract himself. And
there the poor old soul had lain for three days
and nights in the cold and rain without shelter
or anything to eat, and the storm and the winds
had beaten on his aged head. V/e shed many
bitter tears over him. vs/e extracted him as
soon as possible and placed him on a litter
made of sticks and barks and carried him as
carefully and tenderly as a child to his wigwam.
One of the party on returning had killed a deer
which they carried along with them and they
placed Sheubana and the deer at the door of
the wigwam like Longfellow's Hiawatha had
placed his deer at the feet of Ainnehaha, the
Laughing Waters. It would have done your
soul good (if you had one) to have seen those
124
PIONEfiR HUNTERS OF THE iCANlvAKEE
Indians rejoice at the return of Sheubana. And
it was then I could understand that beautiful
saying in the Bible: 'TheFe is greater rejoicing
over one that is lost and found, and there is
more joy in Heaven over one sinner that re-
pents and is saved than the ninety and nine
who went not astray.' Suffice to say, they took
as good care of Sheubana as they could and
visited him every day. We had some iinaments
and salves, sticking plasters — as hunters always
go prepared for accidents and we applied them
freely and he mended quickly. But we had to
leave and before leaving we left them everything
we good spare and plenty of game. I after-
wards heard that he got well, lived and died on
the headv/aters of the Kankakee. Aay his soul
rest in peace." /Aany years ago this island was
the hiding place of a bunch of counterfeiters and
which part of the gang were captured at Bogus
Island some years ago. In the Fail of 1859
Uncle Marl Seymour was trapping the French
island ground, in the bayou between the river
125
HOMK OF CHIEF KILLBUCK
and the landing, h'c was setting a trap at an
old rat house in the bayou when he made a
discovery. In sticking a tailey stake in the old
rat house it struck something hard and sounded
hollow, like striking a stick against an old box.
He removed the top off the rat house and found
a small iron box covered with rust, sand and
moss, from which rats used to build their houses.
Prom the appearance of the box it had been
hidden away in the bayou for many years and
the rats had built quite a large house over it.
In opening the box it was found to contain an'
outfit of counterfeiting tools, dyes, plates, leads
and things that are used In the making of bogus
money. Possibly this outfit belonged to part of
the gang that was captured on Bogus Island in
the early sixties. There are many dark, mys-
terious stories connected with the early history
©f this island. Aany years ago a man by the
name of Beeler was hunting in the swamips and
his dogs ran a fox into a hole on the island and
in digging out the den for the fox he dug up the
126
PIONEER HUNIKRS OF THE KANKAKEE
remains of two white men that had been buried
for a number of years by unknown hands where
history docs not reach. in the i°all of 1844 as
Rens Brainard was hunting on the river he dis-
covered the body of a man lodged against some
driftwood near the French Island Landing, tie
recognized the body as that of John Drago, a
German who lived near the island. Drago had
been murdered and two pieces of an old iron
pump tied to his body and then cast into the
river to be buried in the still waters and peace-
ful sands, with no marks of his last resting place.
i3ut the old iron pump that was used for a
weight was not heavy enough to hold the body
down to the sandy grave in which the murderer
had placed it. The body srose and lodged
against some old driftwood. Ar. Brainard re-
ported the finding of the body of a man in the
Tiver at French Island to the Jasper County
authorities who came and took up tlie body and
made a postmortem examination and found
that he had been murdered. To conceal the
127
HOMK OF CHIEF KILLBUCK
crime, the body had been sunken to the body of
the Kanhahee River. The friends of the de-
ceased soon went to work to solve the mystery
and bring the murderer to justice. Strong sus-
picion led to the arrest of a Bohemian named
V/eberon Warteno, who lived near the island.
Circumstantial evidence was strong against him.
lie' finally confessed that he comm.itied the
crime and v/as tried in ihe Circuit Court, found
guilty and was sentenced to be hung. On Feb-
ruary 26, 1886, in the court-yard at Rensse-
laer. Jasper County, Indiana, he paid the pen-
alty of the crime, thus ending the life career of
Weberon V/arteno. ihe murderer of John Drago.
About a miie and a half up the river from.
French Island and on the opposite side of the
river is a big knob, too small to be called an
island, that has more history to the square foot
than any island on the river. Having an area
of about 150 square feet and is in a dense
swamp forest about 150 yards back from the
river. It was a hard place to find for one v/ho
128
PIONEiLR HUNTKRS OK IHE KANKAKEP:
is not very well acquainted with the location.
Years ago it was known as Deserters Island
from the fact that during the dark days of the
rebellion it was a hiding place for deserters and
fugitives from justice. Along in the eighteen
nineties there was organized at Hebron, Indiana
a hunting club known as the Columbian Club
from the fact that the Columbian World's Pair
was going on in Chicago that year, so they
called their organization the Columbian Hunting
Club. There were eight charter members of the
old club, all business men of Hebron. <J. C.
Smith, president, George Gidley, secretary and
treasurer. Jerry Sherwood, George A\argison,
Chas. Ailler. Bart Siglar; L.E.Ripley and Ira
V. Fry. They built their clubhouse on the little
island that I have just described and called it
Camp 6 to 2, from the fact that there were six
democrats and two republicans. Two years
later the membership had increased to sixty-two
members, then the name was changed to Island
Sixty-two from the fact that there were sixty-
129
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3
HOMK OF CHIEF KILLBUCK
two members in the club and the big knob or
island is known by that name to this day. Of
the eight charter members of the old Columbian
Hunting Club alf have crossed over the divide
but three, Siglar. Qidley and Fry. The island
has long since been deserted as the swamp fires
swept over the island some twenty years ago
and destroyed the clubhouse', yet now and then
a camp was made on the island during the
duck shooting season, as shown in the cut. The
island 6 to 2 is pretty much like Goldsmith's
deserted village, forlorn and desolate, yet there
are many happy memories that cluster around
this little island camp of hunting days in the
years gone by.
130
CHAPTER XII
INDIAN ISLAND
INDIAN ISLAND FIRST SETTLED
BY THE WHITES. SOLD TO A SAW MILL
COMPANY WHERE THE FIRST STEAMBOAT
WAS BUILT ON THE KANKAKEE
Indian Island in an early day was known as
Aike's Island from the fact that there was a
white man by the name of A\ike Maskins who
hunted with the Indians and camped on this
island and whom I mentioned before, it was
better known as Indian Island and was for un-
told ages the hunting and camping grounds of
the Pottowattomie Indians. It is one of the old-
est inhabited islands on the Kankakee and
there was no Indian camp betv/een the head-
waters and the mouth of this historical river
that had a better fortification than Indian Island,
131
INDIAN ISLAND
Haskins Wds with General Harrison on that fa-
mous march up the Wabash and Tippecanoe
Rivers and it was this white hunter who fired the
first shot .at the Battle of Tippecanoe. On a
misty, moonlight night in November, 1811, Mas-
kins was on picket duty and as the Indians
made theis attack on the camp in the night by
crav/ling upon the sleeping army. in the early
part of the night it had been raining but along
about midnight it broke away and the clouds
v/ere thin and scattering. There was a full
moon and as the clouds were light they moved
very rapidly and at times the moon shown in its
full brightness. As the Indians had just been
supplied v/ith new guns and hatchets they were
still very bright. The Indians made their attack
about three o'clock in the morning and as they
skulked and crawled upon the cam.p Maskins
sav/ something glisten as the m.oon shone
through the thin clouds and knev/ what it was.
.He pulled his gun to his shoulder, took aim at
the glistening ©bjcct, pulled the trigger, and an
132
PIONEER HUNTERS OF i'HE KANKAKEE
Indian bounded up out ©f the grass and yelled.
This aroused the others and the battle began
and the result of that shot is well known. The
reader remembers i told in a previous
chapter what brought liaskins to the Kankakee
Swamps. In 1854 Aaron Broady Sr., and his
son, John, entered the land. The land of which
the island was originally a part belonged to the
State and contains one hundred and twenty
acres. The island itself only contains about
thirty-five or forty acres. In the early days be--
fore the country was drained it was surrounded
by water nearly the whole year round and the
only way of getting to the island was with boat
or by wading in from the north side. In the dry
season when the water v^as low you could drive
in with a team but in the winter season when
the marshes were frozen up, getting in on the
ice was the best time. The Broadies each built
a log cabin and cleared up afeout ten acres and
put it under cultivation. The island at that time
was heavily timbered. The Kankakee swamps
133
INDIAN ISLAND
were originally covered with a heavy timber,
hard wood. On the dry land v/as found many
varieties of oak and hickory, while on the bot-
tom or swamps which were covered with water
is the white and black ssh, red and white beech
sycamore, elm, soft maple, white coUonwood,
white and yellow birch, and three or four veri-
ties of swamp or water oak, whilst on the ridges
is found the white and black walnut, three spe-
cies of dry land oak, sassrjfras. paw-paws, waw-
hoe, prickley ash, red haws, iron wood and dog
wood. Aost of this timber was valuable saw
timber and on this island was a good site for a
saw mill. So in 1866 a company was organ-
ized and known as the Indian island Sawmill
Company. It was made up of prairie farmers
who owned swamp lands. They bought the
island from the Broadies. paying them five
thousand dollars in cash for it and in the win-
ter of '66 when the marsh was frozen up they
put the sawmill on the island and soon had it in
operation. Pirst they sawed the lum.ber to
134
PlONtSR HUNTERS OF TH K KANKAfCEE
build the mill and to put up a house for the mill
boss and his men to live in. The house was
built of white oak throughout except the floor
and that- was of white ash. The building is six-
teen by thirty-four feet, one story, and is box
sided with one by twelve inch white oak siding.
The house his never been painted and is in
good condition and in use at this writing. 1920.
Several years ago there was a lean-to built on
the east side of the house and in this building is
where 1 spent ten years of my boyhood days.
The mill business was good. In the winter
Vv'hen the swamps were frozen up thousands of
logs were brought to the mill and sawed into
lumber. But getting the lumber off the island,
was somewhat of a task as there were only cer-
tain times of the year that it could be hauled
out to the dry land. In 1868 John Bissell and
Ira Cornell, two of the heaviest stockholders in
the I. I. 5. A. Company, built and put on the
river a steamer. The White Star, for the purposr
of transporting lumber and cord wood down io
135
INDIAN ISLAND
/Aomcnce, Illinois, and other points along the
river where there was sale for their product. The
island is about one hundred rods from the river
and in order to get the steamer and flat boats
from the island to the river they had to dig a
canal eighteen feet wide and four feet deep.
Pether was put on the job as superintendent and
with 3 gang of men with shovels dug what was
Known then and is to this day as the Bissell-
Cornell steamboat canal. Adison E. Buck, of
Hecron, Indiana, was the master boat builder.
For several trips up and down the river Pather
was the pilot and John Bissel, captain. The
freighting business on the KanHakeedid not pan
out just as expected and in the early seventies
the steamer and flat boats or .scowes, as they
were called, were sold to a Aomence party and
fitted out for a pleasure boat. In '71 Pather
bought the Bissel stock in the I. I. 5. A'\. Com-
pany which contained two-fifths of the shares in
the company. The reader remembers that it
was here where I left them in the opening chap-
136
PIONEER HUNTERS OF THE KANKAKEE
tcr of this story and it is only rigiit and proper
that I take them with me to my island home on
}he Kankakee. It was way back in the hazy
and smok@y old days of October, in 1871, those
days that now seem to belong to another cen-
tury and another manner of living, These were
the days you could hardly see the sun on ac-
count of the dense clouds of smoke that would
settle over the lowlands and thousands of acres
of Kankakee marshes and swamps were on fire
not only here but thousands of acres elsewhere
were burning and not only the prairie, marshes
and forests, but cities and towns were passing
away in smoke. The year '71 was known as
the dry season. The river was very low, the
lowest it had been for years. The swamps and
marshes in many places had dried out and the
filling of sell-moved earth of past centuries that
had washed in from the highlands, sediments
and decayed vegitation. This took fire and
burned everything down to the sub-soil. Thous-
ands of acres of marsh land were burned out in
137
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INDIAN ISLAND
this way, leaving deep holes covering an area of
two to twenty acres in a place and from one to
five feet in depth and when filled with water
made many small lakes and ponds. The day
we moved to the island, October 9, was the hot
day in Chicago, the great Chicago fire. It was
on this island that many scenes of my boyhood
experiences were painted on memery's canvas,
as it was here that 1 began my early experiences
hunting with a shot gun. During the early
seventies and eighties this island v/as a great
camping ground for hunters coming from far and
near. I have met with hunters from all parts of
the country who came here to shoot wild geese
and duchs. In the Fall of '75, li. J. AcSheehy,
of Logansport, Indiana, made his first hunting
trip to this island and the acquaintance of this
newspaper mian grew into inseperable friend-
ship. It was A\i. AcSheehy and his party that
brought the first breech-loaders to the island and
the next year his hunting partner, the late John
Condon, a millionaire rece-trecU man of Chica-
PIONEER KUNTKRS OF THE KANKAKEE
go, brought to our place the first air pillows that
1 ever sav/. It was in a hunting boat on the
Kankakee marshes and near our place that 1
first met one of Indiana's most famous writers,
General Lew Wallace. He was with a party of
Indianapolis hunters and was stopping at the
Indianapolis. Terre Haute and Rockville club
houses at Baum's Bridge, I might mention
scores of Indiana hunters who have at some
time in the years past hunted on the Kankakee.
Getting logs out of the swamp was very un-
certain owing to various conditions of the
swamps. Sometimes the swamp would freeze
up early in the winter with high water and be-
fore it froze solid the water would leave the ice
making it shelly and when the ice was in this
condition it was dangerous getting around v/ith
a team. Under these conditions logging was
•
no good that winter. Finally Father sold the
saw mill to some parties in Valparaiso and they
moved it to the big v/oods near Chesterlcn, In-
diana. About 25 years ago Father sold the
139
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INDIAN ISLAND
island to /Ar. Henry Kahler, of Chicago, who
fitted up the place for a hunting and fishing re-
sort. In 1908 a party of Chicago sportsmen or-
ganized what was known as tlie Kankakee Val-
ley Hunting Club with Frank Nahser, president.
Dr. p. A. Hoffman, vice-president, and Henry
Stevens, secretary and treasurer. The club
leased the hunting rights on several thousand
acres of sv/amp land and built their clubhouse
on Indian Island, where some of the members
of the club made hunting trips to this place
every year until the swamps were drained and
duck shooting became a thing of the past. Then
they sold the club house and it was taken down
and moved away.
140
CHAPTER XIII
GRAPE ISLAND
TRAGEDY ON GRAPE ISLAND.
A TYPE OF TRAPS THAT WERE USED
BY THE PIONEER HUNTERS FOR CATCHING
WILD GAME BEFORE STEEL TRAPS
WERE INVENTED.
The history of Grape Island is a history with a
dark page in it. Grape Island, as well as many
other swamp islands, never made any perma-
nent settlement but it was inhabited by hunters
and trappers during the hunting season. The .
island was first inhabited by white men as early
as 1844 by a man named Allen Dutcher; who
built a shanty and hunted wild game and caught
the fur bearing animals in rude traps. A few
years later he used steel traps, f^any other old
time hunters have made this island their tem-
porary home during the trapping season. The
141
GRAPE ISLAND
tragedy on Grape Island put a dark page in its
history, as there was one of the most cold-blood-
ed murders committed on this island that was
ever knov/n in the history of the Kankakee
Swamps. Early in the fall of 1876 John France
and James Cotton, two trappers, had bought or
traded for the Grape Island trapping ground.
They built a log cabin, using green cottonwood
logs and they covered it with a board roof. Prior
to this, for many years they had been trapping
the soi:th marsh below Long Ridge. Their grub
box was getting low, so l'\r. France went to
Hebron, Indiana, to get grub-supplies and he
stayed at Hebron over night. The next day he
returned to the island and found the cabin burn-
ed. The roof and part of one side and end was
burned. On investigation he found everything
inside burned and among the ruins he found the
charred body of his partner. There was found a
bullet hole in his skull, indicating that he had
been murdered and the cabin set on fire to cover
up the crime and destroy all trace of evidence.
142
PIONEER HUNTERS OF THE KANKAKEE
And as I said, the logs were green, therefor the
cabin did not completely burn down. The pur-
porter of this dastardly crime was never appre-
hended. /Aany theories were advanced for the
motive of the crime but no facts, and it was the
general supposition that he was murdered for to
obtain his money, as they had recently sold their
furs. They had chosen this particular time while
one was absent from camp. Now 1 will tell you
how the Indians and old pioneer trappers made
^their rude traps in early times. They would take
a small log, eight or ten inches in diameter, and
fifteen or eighteen feet long and split it about ha if
or two-thirds of the way. Place the log on the
run-way on the banks of a creek or river or
wherever game is likely to pass and then take
another small log or heavy stick for weight and
it on top of the split pole and then about two
feet from the end where the game is to be
caught. Drive dov/n two stakes, one on each
side of the pole to keep it in place, and two
m.ore at the other end the same way, and for
143
1,-
r«)r^^
Ruins of a Trapper's Cabin on Grape Island where
James Cotton was murdered and burned
February 7, 1877
CJRAPE ISLAND
the same purpose. They then made a common
stick trigger out of v/ood like you use to set
quail traps, only much larger, called a figure 4.
Then raise up the end of the split stick the ne-
cessary heighth. set the trigger and place the
bait on the long stick and woe unto the wolf.
fox, wild-cat. coon, mink or any other animal
that takes hold of the bait or touches the trig-
ger, for that springs the trap and down comes
the upper sticks on the lower stick which is
kept in place by the stakes en each side and
catches the victims between them. That rude
trap was rightly named when it was called a
"Dead Fail" for in the morning you will find your
game dead without the use of a club. We gen-
erally find no cause of blame or negligence on
the part of the trap, but generaliy find the victim
was either deaf, dumb or blind, and no cause to
run in the way of a trap. We exonerate all that
is attached to the traps from our blame for their
sad misfortune. Another mde trap that was
used for catching wild game without the use of
144
PiONKER HUNTERS OF THE KANKAKEE
spring or trigger in those early times was to cijt
a hole in a hollow tree about fifteen inches from
the ground large enough for a lynx, wolf, fox ;jr
wild-cat to put his head in. Cut a crevice ten
or twelve inches long below sloping almost to a
point at the bottom, then hang your bait in the
hollow the hole and wait for the results. /Ar.
Lynx, wolf, fox or wild-cat comes along, puis
his head in the hollow for the bait and as he
comes down to get the bait his head and necH
comes down the crevice. In the morning yo i
will find your game dead without the benefit <:-4
clergy. Another was the snare trap, or swing-
ing trap, as they were sometimes called, were
among the first used on the Kankakee in early
times. They would take a sapling and bend t
so as the top would reach the ground and :-!
was held in that position by means of one stick
trigger. A stake was driven in the ground and
squared on two sides. One side of the slick
had a notch cut in so as to fit on the square
side of the stake, the other end was fastened to
145
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PIONHKR HUNTIiRS OK THF. KANKAKEK
the sapling by a hook notch. The bait was fast
to the trigger so it could not be moved without
pullinc the stick out of the notch in the stake.
To the sapling they would fix their snares made
of buck-skin strings, such as was used in those
days. Then they would make quite a number
of loops and place them all around the bait, so
as the game could not get the bait without put-
ting its head through one or more of the snares;
and woe unto the wolf or any other animal that
touches the bait, for that pulls the stick out of
the notch in the stake that holds the sapling and
v/hen you return you will find your game swing-
ing in the air several feet above the ground as
shown in illustration. One more of these fa-
mous old-time game catchers that was used on
the Kankakee long before steel traps were in
use or even thought of were what they called a
game-pen. It was built of logs-- top, sides and
bottom. It was built in a side hill or bluff, up to
the level of the ground. Then they had a trap
door on top. The top of the pen was covered
146
PlONhhH HUNTI.RSOI'' IHK KANKAKhh
with leaves or grass to hide suspicion and over
the door ihey hung up the bait, usually a piece
of venison, When a hungry woli. lynx or fox
came along they would stop to feed on the bait
and they would have to pass over the trap door.
When they were about to take hold of the veni-
son the game would step upon the door, It
would turn and down they went into the pen. in
early times when there was plenty of such game
along the Kankakee swamps it was not an un-
common thing to take three or i(jur wolves out
of the pen at one time and sometimes a mixed
lot of game is caught, such as wolves, foxes and
wild-cats. /Aany years ago some trappers had
a trap of this kind on a little island in the North
/Aarsh and they took out of the pen at one time
two wolves, three foxes and a wild-cat. in an
early day it was said that a few panthers v/ere
caught in this v/ay on the uplands, as the pan-
ther did not inhabit the swamps on account of
the water, as they were not much for water.
But a number were caught in the big v/oods near
147
GRAPE ISLAND
Lake /Michigan. V/hen the steel traps came in
use the old rude traps were almost forgotten and
are remembered as a thing of the past. About
thirty-seven years ago I built and used a pen
trap on the foot-hills of the Rochies to catch
mountain lion and bear. I also built and used
a dead-fall on the KanxHahee to catch a red fox
that was so cunning 1 could not catch it with a
steel trap. All old trappers know that a fox is
the most cunning animal in the world to catch
in a steel trap. 1 will tell you how v/e used to
catch wild turkeys in a trap. We would build a
pen out of poles eight or ten feet square and
two feet high, and cover it with poles and brush.
But before building the pen begin about ten feet
from one side and dig a trench, tapering it under
the edge of the pen just deep enough for the tur-
key to get in by stooping down. You continue
the trench on inside of the pen a couple of feet
until the trench is not more than six or eight
inches deep at the end. You then scatter corn
in the trench to the end and around in the pen.
148
GRAPE ISLAND
The turkeys come along and see the corn. They
start in the trench, eating as they go along,
and stooping under the edge of the pen and
jumping up on the high part for the corn and
there they are. The poor simple things never
think of jumping down and passing out again as
they came in. There you have them. 1 must
say that I never could see much providence,
sense or instinct in this matter and it is a worse
case than any of the traps in the business that I
know of.
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CHAPTER XIV
BARRiX-HOUSE BLIND
SHOOTING
DUCKS FROM A
BARRELHOUSE BLIND. THE
FIRST TUB SHOOTING ON
THE KANKAKEE
MARSHES.
Of course you remember where the last chap-
ter ended. /'Rethinks I hear some old-time
hunter say; "You bet I do." These reminis-
cences of deer hunts related left enough old
time recollections to keep me from forgetting a's
long as 1 live where the last chapter ended. It
happened during the winter hunt of seventy-four
and the story of what transpired and some other
experiences have been told in trappers' shanties
and in hunters' lodges. As 1 have promised at
some time to tell you how we shot geese and
ducks on the open marshes, so here goes. /Ay
i50
BARRliL-HOUSE BLIND
first duck shooting trip to the South /Aarshcs
was made in October, 1872. As a boy of
twelve years 1 had done a little shooting in the
ponds and on fly-ways at our island home but
never had been out on a big hurt like this be-
fore, as 1 termed it when any mention was made
of this trip, 1 found the hunting entirely differ-
ent on the big, open marsh than what I was
used to around the island. Ducks were not
very plentiful on the marsh that fall so .my first
hunting trip was of short duration. A year or so
after this I was sitting in a trapper's shanty be-
hind a stove, it was a cold winter night, listening
to hunters' yarns and stories, told by a party of
deer hunters who were in camp on the island.
They were spinning hunters' yarns and discuss-
ing the excellent hunting conditions of the Kan-
kakee region, as two members of the party were
old-time hunters of the swamps for many years.
While the old story-teller had stopped to get his
wind. Bill Jones, a marked hunter, turned to me
with the question: "liow would you enjoy a duck
151
IMONM.R HUNTKRS ()K IHK KANKAKLh.
hunt on Wolf Lake just as soon as the ice goes
out?" In less than ten minutes the trip was all
arranged and the start was to be made as soon
. as the ice was out of the marshes. V/olf Lake
was noted for its early duck shooting on account
tliat the ice goes out sooner than it does on the
shallow v/ater marsh, as the winter snows and
soft winds will soon melt it out long before it
does on the shallow water where there is more
grass and willows frozen in the ice that holds it
down under the water so that the sun and winds
never touch it. It is a long time going out.
These marshes have attracted the attention of
sportsmen from all parts of the country who
would pilgrimage to this region year after year
to shoot geese and ducks, It was very seldom
that a mistake was made by coming to this
place for successful duck shooting. The hunters
pulled down their birds with distressing regular-
ity, although it is practically prairie shooting
which is so deceiving to the novice. From this
fact that in later years the shooting is done from
152
PIONELR HUN'rKRSOF THE KANKAKhfc.
a portable blind called a sink-tub and which is
commonly called tub-shooting rather than from
a boat or a blind. In the fall shooting there is
plenty of grass, flags and marsh willows growing
in the shallow water marshes for a blind but
when the marshes froze over the grass is set on
fire by hunters to drive trie game out and after
the fire has run over the ice covered marshes
everything is burned off slick and clean above
the ice so in the Spring shooting there is nothing
for a blind. As the days of the long, cold winter
were passing and the clear, sunny days of
Springtime had come and melted the ice out oi
the marsh I began to get restless, more so as the
days lengthened into Spring. I knew well it was
the call of the wild, as it gets hold of me about
every Spring and Fall and when I was a boy it
got me oftener than that. Finally I hit upon the
absolutely right thing in my estimation; a practi-
cal, sensible sink tub. It consists of a kerosene
barrel by sawing the top of the barrel off at the
bulge. Then I went to a blacksmith shop and
153
barri'X-housp: blind
had two rings made and bolted to the barrel for
stake rings and with two stakes four or five feet
long with hooks on driven in the ground and
then hooked into the rings on the barrel to hold
it down, just leaving the top of the barrel high
enough above the surface so that the water
could not splash over, in case the water was
shallow a hole was dug to lower the tub to the
water level. If the water was not too deep the
hunter would wade out to his blind, otherwise he
would be rowed out in a boat. In shooting from
a sink tub blind one has to shoot over decoys
and a hunter with a good call and a bunch of
decoys was pretty sure of a string of birds to
take to camp. 3y the time the ice was out of
the marsh I had everything ready for the start.
The ice usually goes out about the tenth to the
twentieth of /Aarch. Sometimes it is earlier
than that and sometimes later, finally the day
for the start came. We made camp on a small
island in the marsh near a large island called
Round Grove and near a large, open body of
154
PIONELK HUNTERS OF THE KANKAKEE
water called Goose Pond, which bordered on the
swamp timber line. After supper 1 set my bar-
rel house blind and had all made ready for the
morrow. I lay down on a marsh hay bed to
dream of the long line of quacking ducks com-
ing to the decoys. I was up early the following
morning. Placing a dozen wood decoys in a
basket with my powder flask and shot pouch
and with my No. 10 double barrel muzzle loader
on my shoulder 1 departed for the blind which I
reached before sunrise. In going through the
marsh to the blind I ran across the remains of
an old blind that had been used the year before
with a stake driven in the ground and a half cir-
cle board. Part of the head of a nail keg was
nailed on the stake still standing. With my
hatchet 1 cut the stake off at the water's edge
and put it in my barrel house blind, It fitted
nicely and made a good seat. 1 placed the de-
coys about twenty yards in front of the blind.
Stepping inside the barrel I picked up my old
fowling piece, placing caps on the tubs, snapped
155
iBARRlt:L-HOUSE BLIND
them to make sure that the tubs were clean and
dry. 1 always did this before loading a gun that
had not been used for sometime. Then care-
fully loading with four drams of powder and one
and one-eighth ounce of No. 6 shot I was set
for whatever came along. As the sun arose
ibove the timber of the swamp and over the
marsh horizon like a big ball of brass, the spike-
tails and wegians began to fly in countless num-
bers. A few shots had been fired on the marsh
a mile or so above where I was by some camp-
ers on Round Grove. This put the ducks to
flight. It was quite interesting to watch these
movements among the thousands of spikes and
wegians. I heard the quack of two green-
heads. It took me some time to locate them
among the spike-tails and wegians. But an-
swering my call they decoyed nicely and as they
poised in the air before alighting they made an
easy mark and they both came tumbling down
at the first shot. Shortly after this a flock of
canvas-backs came over the decoys, leaving
156
PlONEhR HUNTERS OF THE KANKAKEE
three of their number behind. 1 did fairly well
after my return to the blind on the second morn-
ing, for 1 had a double shot at a bunch of pin-
tails. Then while my gun was empty there
came to the decoys the largest flock of black
ducks I ever saw. Without exageration 1 believe
there was over a hundred of them. They lit
among the decoys and all around my sneak
barrel, some within twenty feet of where I sat
with an empty gun. Imagine, if you can, how
queer 1 felt while sitting there like a bump on a
log. Those that lit close by eyed me anxiously.
Finally 1 began very carefully to load the gun.
I got the powder in all right but did not have
room enough in the barrel to get the ramrod out
and get the wads down on the powder without
exposing my arms above the barrel. Those
near me gave the warning signal and took
flight. In a moment all were gone. 1 finished
loading but never fully recovered over my mis-
hap of losing the best chance I have ever had
in ^11 my hunting experiences for a big shot at
157
BARRliL-HOUSE BLIND
black ducks, Shortly after this a large lone
duck came from the direction of the swamp
timber and came over in the decoys and as he
poised and curved his wings to light I let him
down with the first barral and when I waded out
to pick him up I found a duck unknown to me.
It was a large brown bird with a large flat bill,
looking very much like a spoon-bill. None of
the hunters on the marsh that saw it could tell
the name of the duck. The morning of the
third day was rough and cold, the wind was
blowing strong from the northwest and not many
ducks were seen out on the open marsh in
stormy and windy weather for they would stay
in or near the timber. Yet I had fairly good
shooting for two or three hours in the morning.
As I was sitting in my sink barrel blind thinking
how much more comfortable it was than stand-
ing in the water in a grass blind all day, I heard
a loud "swish" of wings. Looking out I saw five
large ducks over the decoys. 1 arose, gave
them the right barrel and two fell dead and a
158
PlONKhR HUNTERS OF I'HE KANKAKKh
clean miss with the second. 1 waded out and
piclied up two black ducks and here is where I
discovered that there are two varieties of black
ducks just as surely as two and two make four.
By ten o'clock it was getting very rough. The
waves would splash over the top of the barrel.
I gathered up my decoys and made a bee-line
for camp. 1 had in all forty-six ducks and in
that number there were eight varieties of the
duck family. /Aany of the varieties that 1 killed
then are now extinct. I would never believe
that in fifty years those great myriads of migra-
tion ducks could have been exterminated. In
years gone by 1 have often wondered where so
many species of the duck family sprang from,
so much more so than the dry land birds. The
book name of many birds is derived from habits
and their dress, as the green-head mallard, the
spike-tail which has only two long pointed
feathers in their tail. The wood-duck, some-
times called the tree-duck from the fact that
they build their nests in old snags and hollow
159
BARRb:L-HOlJSE BLIND
trees and sometimes they are called the nut-
hatch, but 1 have never heard where she got the
name. But like any hunter who kills a duck
and does not know the name of it he can offer a
guess. The wood-ducks build their nests in
hollow trees. Sometimes the flying squirrel or
wood-mice will carry a few butter-nuts or beach
nuts in a wood-duck's nest to crack at his leis-
ure and perhaps some early observers found
these nuts in a wood duck's nest and jokingly
accused the duck of trying to hatch them. I
have come to the conclusion that this is the
way that so many new names of ducks have
sprung up in later years. A few days later we
broke camp and moved out of the marsh,
scarcely a duck was to be seen. This was the
first portable blind or tub-shooting ever done on
the Kankakee. A year or so later there were
scores of sink tubs in use but of a different type.
They were made of galvanized sheet iron most-
ly instead of an old kerosene barrel, and while I
do not want to claim anything new in shooting
160
PlONEhR HUN'lhRS OF THE KANKAKLL
from a blind, for that mode of hunting is as old
as man, only an improvement of the system
during those early days. They were many
marked hunters and very few of their names I
can recall except the Cannons. Roots, /Aore-
houses, Starkeys and scores of others whose
names 1 have forgotten. Harry, my half broth-
er, was a star wing-shot and last but not least
were the Qilson boys, cd and Billy, who were
believed by many to be the best shots on the
river, i remember one time, many years ago,
before breech-loaders came in use, one of them
killed one hundred and ninety ducks and eight
geese in one day's shooting using a muzzle
loader. It was during the early seventies that
Kankakee region reached the zenith of its glory
as a hunting resort. /Ay first shooting was done
from a boat. In some seasons we would have
splendid shooting and in others not so good,
this depended on the weather conditions. The
marshes seemed to be the natural feeding
grounds, especially for the diving ducks. But
161
BAF<Ri':L-f{OUSK iJiJND
the dredging of great ditches through the low-
lands letting the water off caused the glory of
the Kankakee AXarshes to depart. 1 only wish
1 had the abiiiiy to describe and make you feel
the beauty of these marsh islands to those of
my readers who may not have seen them. Pic-
ture the prairie marshes for miles and miles iii
length and from two to twelve miles in width
and dotted v/iih hundreds of small islands and
ridges containing from one-half to twenty acres.
The one that we were camped upon contained
about four acres. The lofty sycamore with its
white bark can be seen for miles as they rose
above the mammoth oak and down from its
limbs dropped ropes of creeping grape-vines.
v/hile there were many others covered with huc-
kleberry bushes. There were many different
species of birds which inhabited these islands.
Among the game birds were several species of
the snipe family which nests and rears its young
during the nesting season. The wood-duck also
also inhabited these islands and a half dozen or
U)2
PIONEER HUNTERS OF THE KANKAK iCK"
more other varieties of ducHs nesting on or near
an island. Also, in early times it was a great
nesting place for wild geese and for this reason
a portion of this great marsh in northern Jasper
County along the Kankakee Swamp timber was
known as Goose Lake but generally known
among the latter-day hunters as Goose Pond,
where thousands of geese would flock to roost
at night; and in the morning they would leave
for the feeding grounds, usually on some farm-
er's wheat or cornfields. When they would rise
from the water the air was filled with birds and
the flop of their wings as they rise have the
sound of an express train rumbling ov^r a
bridge. Now 1 have tried to picture this great
pond at twilight or daybreak. It stands out in
memory as one of the most beautiful I have
ever seen in a country abounding in marshes, a
lake where the surroundings were not marred
by man and given over to the wild things that
love the silent places. Another time I was out
duck hunting and we had in camp a hunter of
1 63
n.\Ri<i:L-i{Oi?sr: Bf.iND
many years experience but when he came to
camp in the evening his strinq would show only
a few birds and when asked what was the rea-
son he said he didn't know unless it was that
the feathers carried away the birds. This hap-
pened to m.e many times and "Understand, old-
timers. I am not telling you that every shot i
fired biought down a bird." Not by any means.
for many were the foxy old birds that 1 shot at
and missed or as the old-time hunters termed it,
another case where the feathers carried away
the meat. As times passes and years unfold, it is
a matter of intense interest to the water-fowl
hunters hov/ certain varieties of duck grow
scarce and others come into prominence, which
in early years was unknown to the hunting fra-
ternity. This is remarkably true of several
species and particularly applies to nearly every
variety of large kucks known in the Kankakee
River Region. As I have said, many varieties
of ducks, plentiful fifty years ago, are now almost
exterminated and where we ran our boats over
164
PIONEER HUNTERS OE THE KANKAKEE
the marshes and where I sat in my kerosene
barrel blind and shot ducks almost fifty years
ago now stands the farmer's house in the corn-
fields and the scene of those by-gone days still
clings to my memory. How often do my
thoughts drift back to those camp days. What
a lot more fun can a fellow have in a hunter's
lodge or trapper's shanty costing about fifteen
dollars amidst its natural surroundings, than in
a ten thousand dollar mansion with its artificial
environments. Every hunter has a hobby and
some have two, as it was with me in my youth-
ful days, It has been said that hobbies belong
to the human and are a part of the Creator's
birthright. The human nature glories of pos-
session, both good and bad and all valuable. It
has been said by scholarly m2n that hobbies of
sane men often discount the dreams of an idiot,
nevertheless we have them just the same. I
loved hunting with a gun on the waters and dry
land, I also enjoyed fully as well hunting with
a good dog on the ice. Now before breaking
165
IJARRKL-llOUS!'; lUJND
Ccunp and leaving the Kankakee hunting
grounds to the agriculturist, which is now pass-
ing into its third stage of development. I want to
tell the readers ot another type of hunters
known as the fur hunters, and their hunting out-
fit consisted of a good dog or two, an axe, a
shovel and a rat spear. I have told the reader
how we hunted the deer, shot the wild geese,
trapped wild animals. Now I will relate how we
hunted the ring-tail, raccoon, mink and musk-
rat, and occasionally an otter but not very often
as they stay close to deep water. If there was
snow on the ice the coon and mink were
tracked to their dens and the musk-rat was
speared in his house with a long two-pronged
spear jabbed through the house where the rats
'Stayed during the day. But the coon and mink
were mostly hunted with dogs. Scores of fur
hunters who hunted the swamps with dogs
never hunted with a gun at all and the hunter
who owned a good coon or mink dog in those
days had something that was valuable, One
1^6
PIONEER HUNTERS Oh THE KANKAKEE
time whilst in camp on one of those swamp
islands quite near our camp was a half-breed
Indian's hnt and with the hope of securing e few
matches I called at his hut and found that he
was the owner of a very valuable coon dog.
judging from the number of hides that 1 saw
sticking around in the hut. Not seeing any dog
around 1 inquired what kind of a dog he hunted
with, lie said that he had an imported coon
dog from /Aissouri. Now believing that many
of my readers who are lovers of a good dog will
be interested with the true meaning of a good
coon, dog I will briefly relate fhe story told by
the owner of the dog "Auck." as that was his
name. He was a black-tan English fox hound
and was born in the Ozark /fountains in south-
ern /Missouri and in those days the /"Aissouri
mountains were alive with raccoons and hunting
coons was sort of hereditary with A\uck. When
but a few days old and before his eyes had
opened he and his two brothers were bought by
a Kankakee hunter and brought to the Kanka-
167
BARRKL-HOUSt. lU.liND
kee Swamps and turned over to a bull bitch to
be mothered and cared for. With their keen
scent of inheritance and the viciousness of their
foster mother they were made the most famous
hunting dogs that ever hunted in the Kankakee
Swamps and those puppies with no pedigree
other than that of a /Missouri hound, sold for
one hundred and fifty dollars each. Their quali-
fications, nerve and size for the hunters of coon
and mink in the swamps on the ice in those
days made them valuable not only for coon and
mink hunting but they were trained for other
game— deer, wolves and loxes, One of them
fell into the hands of a noted deer hunter. Ed
/AcNeel. and when the dog was eleven years
old he refused an offer of two hundred dollars,
offered by some /Michigan deer hunter who
wanted the old dog to train some young ones.
1 have an old note book made of hunting events
of years ago. Its covers are tattered, dirty and
faded, and on the outside shows plainly upon
its shabby service the ravage of time and evl-
168
PlONliER HUN'JERS OF THE KANKAKEE
dence of wear and tear. But its pages are full
of happy memories of by-gone days and recol-
lections stir me as 1 open the old book. What a
blessed gift is memory of all the many gifts of an
all-wise, beneficient Creator, The gift of mem-
ory I believe to be the most precious of all, A
person may lose his possessions, be deprived of
sight or the loss of a limb but once having seen
and enjoyed these things the memory will re-
main whilst life and intellect last and can be re-
called at most any time. When 1 turn over the
dim and faded pages 1 am back again in the old
Kankakee Swamps. What events in hunting
you can remember, Friend Hunter. What glor-
ious happenings occured when you were present
to behold them. Every hunter keeps in his
memory to the last some wonderful performance
of the hunting grounds. He has only to shut his
eyes and see again the shots or catch, just as it
was made, even though it might have been forty,
fifty or even seventy-five years ago and the
smallest details of the great achievements will
169
BARR't^.-HOnSK BLIND
never pass from his recollections. Every old-
lime hunter has a string oi such memories to
think back upon. What were the most wonder-
ful happenings of all. it has been said, that the
hunters love best the trapping side of hunting.
While this might be true from the financial side
yet ask any old timer to tell of five great events
of happenings of things he saw and four of them
will be tales of hunting with the gun. Think it
over and see if it isn't strictly true. The mem-
ory of hunting glories lingers longer and the
thoughts of many great shots made will come
sooner to the recollection than any achieve-
ment made with the rod or traps. The hunters
who were there (I wasn't) have always claimed
thai the greatest of all rifle shots ever made in
the Kankakee Swamps was made on Long
Kidge about fifty years ago by a hunter named
Hall, who is now dead. Mall was a native o^
Jasper County and a deer hunter by trade. Me
and Harrison Dalson hunted deer together a
great deal and were together on the day that
170
PIONEER HUNTERS OF THE KANKAKEE
Hall made the great shot. Two deer came
dashing by liall, running in opposite directions,
and when they came opposite of each other
Hall took aim and fired. The ball passed
through the body of the first deer Hilling it in-
stantly and struck the other deer under the
shoulder between the first and second ribs and
lodged near the heart and a few bounds more
and it fell dead. A few days later /Ar. Dalson
was out hunting in the swamp when he came
upon two big bucks fighting. They had locked
their horns so tight together that they could not
separate themselves, he shot one and knocked
the other in the head with his hunting axe. He
hung them up and went home and told Hal!
that he no longer had the best of him, for he
had killed two deer with only one shot. Hall,
wouldn't believe it at first but when he could not
find any bullet hole in one of the bucks, only
where it had been hit on the head with the pole
of an axe. Yet he was entitled to claim the
champion shot having killed his two, running
171
BARRKL-HOUSt BLIND
with one bullet. /Aany years ago Father Hilled
two, a doe and a fawn, at one shot. They were
standing still. lie had trailed them into a red-
brush thicket where the brush was so thick that
one could not see only a short distance. The
red-brush is a species of scrub-oak that grows
on the sand ridges. They hold their leaves on
all winter, making it a great hiding place for
deer. Looking under the bushes Father saw
what he thought was a deer's legs but could
not see any part of the body. Raising the
trusty old rifle to his shoulder he aimed where
he thought its body v/ould be and fired. At the
crack of the gun away bounded a deer. He
went to where he thought the deer was standing
and there lay one too dead to kick. To solve
the mystery he looked at the tracks of the one
that ran away and discovered great splotshcs of
blood on the snow. Following the trail thirty-
five or forty yards he found the doe kicking her
last kick. The bullet had passed through the
fawn and lodged in the shoulder of the doe. As
172
PIONEER HUNTERS OF THE KANKAKEE
they stood side by side, only a few feet apart,
they were Killed by the same bullet. The inci-
dents just mentioned are only a few of the mem-
orable shots. What hunters have seen such
doings, or rather, where is there any hunter who
never saw things just as wonderful?
!73
CHAPTER XV
DRAlNIN(i TIll^: SWAMPS
WHERE THE
IN(^.ENlJ^r^■ oe has
DEFEATEi) THE DESIGNS OF NATURE
BY ERASING THE KANKAKE SWAMPS OFF THE
MAP. THE OLD RIVER AND THE
ONCE FAMOUS HUNTING
(GROUNDS A PAS'E
MEMORY
It is not my purpose to write the story of the
reclaiming or rather, the story of the new Kan-
kakee f^iver. as it is a history in itself, in our
childhood we were taught by our teacher and
the geography that this vast region was a great
swamp and by the term "swamp" it means a
low depression in the earth's surface and this
was filled with water and mud and by applying
the term "swamp" this vast Kankakee Region
made a very large mud-hole. This teaching
was a great hinderance to the settling up of this
country and many men and women still cling
174
PIONEER HUNTERS OK 1 HE K:aNKA[CP:E
tenaciously to that teaching. Up to a quarter
of a century ago any mention of the Kankakee
Swamps called up visions of a region of limit-
less extent of swamps and marshes, uninhabited
and desolate, a country always associated with
tales of suffering and death, of unfriendly sav-
ages and wild animals. For years this country
was passed over by hunters and prospectors
and was considered worthless, but the marvel-
ous transformation which has taken place in the
last three decades in the land of silence and
sunshine, furnishes one of the most interesting
and inspiring pages in the history of our great
Kankakee development. The Kankakee swamp
is vanishing from the map. its boundaries have
shrunken and it is no longer presenting a for-
midable barrier to the growth and progress of
northwestern Indiana. There was at that ti.me
several hundred thousand acres of this water-
soaked, craw-fish country that has been re-
claimed by means of dredging, that are now
producing bountiful harvests. Every year hun-
17.S
DRAINING 1 HK SvvAMPS
dreds of people are residing on farms now that
a few years ago were musH-rat ponds. Years
ago tt was a very common thing to hear of
some Eastern speculator being taken in by one
of those swamp-land swindlers. They would
plat out a tract of swamp land, go East to find
their victim and trade or sell a tract of this land
to some speculator. One /'Ar. Jones, of Dayton.
Ohio, was taken in by some swindler in this way
and when he came to look for his land he could
not find it as it was covered with water from one
to five feet deep and the way that Jones told it
was more amusing than true. Jones said he
was a victim of mispleced confidence. He had
traded for a tract of land on the Kankakee
River and was making a trip down the river in
search oi his land. He said that it had two
good houses on it and was near a town. I
should judge from his description of the country
that he was looking for his farm. That the town
and houses must of been musk-rat houses and
the town must have been a rat-town. I would
176
PIONEER HUNTERS OF THE KANKAKEE
term it such from the inhabitants of the place as
I have experienced just such a joke myself
many years ago whilst I wasan overland freight-
er on the western plains. We would work this
gag on the tenderfoot that would come along
inquiring if there were any settlements or set-
tlers living anywhere near, The answer was
most always in the affirmative and if they would
go to such and such a place there was quite a
settlement and a large town. The tenderfoot on
going to the place directed would find it inhabit-
ed by a lively little four-footed tribe known as
prairie dogs. (I have hunted for these towns
myself.) This is about such a farm that /Ar.
Jones had traded for instead of two good farms
and houses. They were musk-rat houses. It
was in sixty-nine (the wet season) when Jones
made his trip down the Kankakee and the re-
sources of tlie country were not so well de-
veloped then as they are now, and his story of
what he saw is more amusing than jest, so far
as the truth is concerned, fie says Indiana is
DRAININCJ ll-IE SWAMPS
a delightful country or will be when it is finished.
The State is big enough and a considerable por-
tion of it has a good foundation. What it wants
is building up. There is plenty of water and
sand, pucker-brush, roots and cotton trees,
swamps and marshes and a wonderful vegeta-
tion of grass and vines and wild flowers. What
it wants is more land, at least what a Hoosier
calls land. But it is coming on. Thousands of
acres of this Kankakee /Aarsh where the musk-
rat houses used to stand now stands the golden
grain shocks. Wnat the change that will be
made in the next quarter of a century is I leave
to the reader to guess at, /Ar. Jones then goes
on to say that he did not trade for a musk-rat
town or a cotton-wood grove, Being discour-
aged because anyone could have a town who
would take a boat and go out in the swamp
with a surveyor and make a map of a musk-rat
pond, big house and population. The White
Star was making a trip up the river to Baum's
Bridge when she met /Ar. Jones, the Ohio land
178
PIONEER HUNTERS OF THE tCANKAKEE
speculator, who was sailing over the marshes
hunting for his farm. The steamer had struck a
snag and the crew was at work getting loose
when Jones and his party came up. He began
telling the crew how tired he was of water and
marshes and more water and scraggley brush
and more water. Finally he bluffed the captain
of the White Star by saying: "Coptain, what is
the average price of land up in this part of the
country. By the gallon, 1 think." .^r. Jones
was tired of his Kankakee land speculation
when he made his trip down the Kankakee.
Aany other Easterners have been taken in the
same way by buying or trading Kankakee land
without seeing it and when they come to look
for the land it is out of sight, covered with
water. Sometimes this region was called "the
land that God forgot to finish." To my mind it
was finished just as the Almighty intended it to
be, it was left for man to finish. And now 1 am
going to tell you in part how it was done. 5y
the ingenuity of man, assisted by the State gov-
5 79
DkAINMNC; ll-H': SWAMPS
eminent, is due the credit of erasing the swamp
from our map and converting the counlry, which
God forgot, into pleasant places for the habita-
tion of man. At this time there was between
four and five hundred thousand acres of this
land practically water-soaked and v/orthless.
Now it is drained by these engineering workers.
This work of the State f^eclaiming Service af-
fords many examples of man's audacity of de-
feating the designs of nature, This draining
movement originated way back in the early
fifties when the Governor of Indiana recom-
mended a bill to the Legislature for the redeem-
ing of the sv/amp lands along the Kankakee
Valley. That it was the State's duty to the
great agricultural class of the 'Kankakee Valley
that the farmers of this region have contributed
a greater service to the people of the state than
can ever be repaid. The landowners themselves
in an overgight of the law regarding the sale and
drainage of swamp lands have willingly bought
and paid foi these lands and then taxed them-
180
PIONEER HUNTERS OF THE KANKAtCEK
selves for the drainage besides. Article Eight,
Section Two of the Constitution for the State of
Indiana which is as follows: "All lands that have
been or may be hereafter gianted to the State
where no special purpose is expressed in the
grant and the proceeds of the sale thereof, in-
cluding the proceeds of the sale of the swamp
land granted to the State of Indiana by the act
of Congress on the 28th day of September,
1850." In the same section implies that the
swamp lands were granted to the state on con-
dition that the money derived from the sale of
those lands be used in the drainage of the same.
That part of the contract, sorry to say, has never
been carried out. As I have said, all great
movements have their beginning. So it was
with the drainage of the Kankakee Swamps. In
the early fifties a bunch of men, afterwards
known as the Kankakee Swamp Land Swind-
lers, went into an agreemeni with the State
Authorities at Indianapolis to drain a certain
amount of the Kankakee marshes by digging
181
DRAlNINCi THE SWAMPS
big ditches and emptying them in the river and
they were to take a certain percent of the land
drained for their pay. They dug a few small
ditches on range and section lines, reported
same to the state authorities and received their
land grants for several thousand acres of swamp
land without ever draining an acre of the land.
They sold and traded great tracts of this land to
Eastern speculators who never saw the land be-
fore buying it and in some instances they never
saw it after buying it. As mention has before
been made, when they came to look for their
nev/ possessions it could not be found on ac-
count of being covered with water. The specu-
lators could see no future for such a desolate
region and never paid the taxes. The lands
were sold for taxes. The counties held the tax
sales and very little of it was ever redeemed and
the land went back to the State. Occasionally
in later years some of these tax title deeds and
swamp land sv/indlers' deeds are heard of in the
district courts. The state issued the land grants
182
inONKER HUNTERS OF THE KANKAICEE
in good faith but the ditch makers did not fulfill
their part of the agreement. In 1834 the State
Authorities ordered a swamp land ditch com-
missioner to be appointed and Aaron Lytle, of
Valparaiso. Ind,, was appointed to this position
and was the first ditch commissioner for this
district. After serving about a year and a half
he resigned and Ezriah Freeman was appointed
his successor. Commissioner Lytle had a few
ditches surveyed out and dug. They were sold
out in sections and half sections just as much as
a contractor thought he could construct. State
Ditch No. 1 on the north side of the river was
the first ditch dug and an Irishman by the name
of /AcDugal contracted for the first two mile sec-
tions and John Broady of Three f\ivers, /Michi-
gan, bought the third and half of the fourth sec-
tions one and a half miles. State Ditch No. 2
was run farther east beginning at the river and
running up old Sandy Hook to where it inter-
sected with Ditch No. 1 near an island called
Bridge Island. I might explain here why it de-
183
DRAINING THE SWAMPS
rived that name is from the fact that at this
place is where the first wagon road crossed
Sandy MooH, Early in the seventies a wagon
bridge was built across the East Channel of
Sandy Hook from the main land to the Island, a
little over five hundred feet long, Previous to
the building of the bridge the channel was ford-
ed during low water and footmen crossed the
channel in boats. Getting back to the subject,
these ditches were dug by hand with pick and
shovel and were twelve feet wide for the first
three miles then eight feet wide to the source.
The two ditches that 1 have mentioned were the
first Stale ditches dug in the Kankakee Valley
They were practically a failure. At the lower
end where they emptied their waters into the
Kankakee they filled up on account of bach
water when the river was high and the ditch
was of little use at all. as they had to be cleaned
and recleaned every few years costing the land-
owners several thousand dollars at each opera-
tion which means that these people have spent
184
PIONEER HUNTERS OF THE KANKAKE!'
nearly one hundred thousand dollars of their
own money without as yet realizing the desired
benefit. /Aost of these settlers bought this poor,
wet land with limited capital and are improving
it under hard conditions. Legally and by all
rights the State owes to the land-owners of the
Kankakee River Region every dollar that has
been spent in the reclaiming of these lands. As
I have said all great improvements have their
beginning. So in the summer of eighty-six was
the date of the digging of the Cass and Single-
ton big ditch in Lake County and it was the first
dredge ditch dug for the reclaiming of the swamp
region. Since that there have been many
ditches constructed on both sides of the river
running parallel with the stream One of great
importance was the drainage of English Lahe
some years ago, Three years ago was com-
menced the reclaiming ditch, the new Kankakee
River, by straightening the old river which was
so crooked in its course that it almost crossed
itself. In a distance of forty miles, straight line,
185
» J J 3 O
DRAINING THK SWAMPS
it ran near one hundred and fifty miles, under-
mining big trees along its banks tliat would tum-
ble down in the river and v\^ash out great holes
in one place and fill up in another, making it a
slow, sluggish stream, In high water it would
spread out over the swamps and marshes for
miles on each side of the river, Since the con-
struction of the big ditch the water is all confined
to this channel, if some of these swamp land
speculators could return to this region they
find what they were looking for fourty or fifty
years ago. The large land owners such as
Cass & Singleton. Gifford, of Kankakee City,
Illinois, and Nelson Morris, the Chicago meat
packer, and many others who owned large
tracts of swamp lands were strong in favor of
draining whilst many others were opposed to
tiic movement, especially the huuters and trap-
pers who said that it would ruin their business,
that the Kankakee Swamps were more valuable
for their furs than they were for their agricul-
tural purposes. The money that was brought
186
PlONtLR HUiNTERSOF IHE KANKAK,«L
into this country for tlie sale of furs amounts to
between sixty-five and seventy-five thousand
dallars every year, that the revenue for furs
alone from 18 50 to 1900 amounts to over
three million dollars. Furs vary greatly in
price from one year to the next. Sut only dur-
ing the fifty years was there one good prime rat
hide brought in selling for thirty-three cents. In
those days a musk-rat hide would brin^^ from
three to ten cents a hide. Father predicted that
the day would come when a good prime rat
skin would sell for a dollar. Fifty-two years
later in 1920 his prediction came true, when he
saw good prime rat skins sell for four dollars
and ten cents apiece. In those days it took n
rat skin to buy a common sewing needle. A
French fur trader by the name of Cuttauh from
Detroit, /Aichigan, used to buy furs in this re-
gion and he told the trappers' wives that they
had better buy in a good supply of needles, as
the needle-maker was dead and that they would
not get any more needles very soon. Upon the
• 187
fi^ssicr=asfr-|s^a-
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\^
4- -:^^
.•^n -^
^^
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X
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c
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<*•
O
o
E
a>
a;
cz
C
re
DRAINING THE SWAMPS
strength of this statement he traded thousands
of needles to the squaws and the wives of the
vyhitc hunters, in exchange he gave them a
needle for a rat skin. This vast region that
was considered worthless has made many a
man a small fortune. The best figures obtained
for (he am )U':( of furs caught and sold by the
hunters and. trappers of the Kankakee Swamps
betv/^een the years of '18 50 and 1900 was ap-
proxlmatciy three million, seven hundred and
iiily thousand dollars, an average of seventy-five
thoLisand per year. Whenever there was a bill
up before the legislature for an appropriation for
the drainage of th2 swamp lands there was al-
ways enough to oppose it and cause its defeat
rip,c\ yet the water soaked lands weie doomed.
Finally ihe fatal day came. A big dredging ma-
chine was set to v/ork In the river a few miles
above f3a urn's Bridge and excavated a great
ditch of one hundred and fifty feet in width
through the dense forest. Hence the new Kan-
kakee f^iver. The game had become almost
188
PlONhER HUN'l ERS OF THE KANKAKEE
extinct long before the water ever flowed in the
new river. The last deer that was killed in the
swamp, to my knowledge, was killed by E, D.
Salsberry, a Panhandle railroad engineer of Lo-
gansport, Indiana, in his Fall hunt of 1880.
Salsberry and his party were in camp on Cor-
nell Island and one morning he and ike Shaw,
another Panhandle engineer, were going to the
South /Aarsh for a day's shooting and in going
through the swamp timber a deer ran, across the
trail and Salsberry shot and killed it. usin? small
bird shot. And two months later Father killed
one on the North /Aarsh. These were the last
deer ever seen alive or dead in this part of the
swamp region. The story of the Kankakee
country is a story of evolution in the develop-
ment of a country richly endowed by nature,
and a story of neglected opportunity, neglected
in some instances not from lack of appreciation
but from man's natural inclination to follow
along the lines of least resistance. Nature has
done so much for this favored country that the
189
Camp of Logansport, Ind., Hunters on Cornell's Island
on the Kankakee in 1880
Left Camp — H. J, McSheehy, John Condon, Sam Doll,
J. B. Messinger. Right Camp — Ed Salsbury, Ike Shaw
DRAINING THE SWAMPS
struggle for existence which called forth man's
best energies, eliminated. It was easy to live,
to understand the slow development of this re-
gion and to appreciate the rapid progress of
later years, We must understand its geographi-
cal location, its topographical formation and the
conditions controlling its destiny. Way back,
nearly a century ago, when /Aajor Long ex-
plored this Kanhahee region, in his report he
gave it the name "Kankakee Swamps." The
term caught the fancy of the public and has
been set in type for it ever since and it is impos-
sible to estimate how potent a factor the phrase
has been in retarding the growth of this coun-
try, Here, as well as in most all new territories,
the hunter followed close on the foot-steps of
the pathfinders and here, indeed, was the Hunt-
er's Paradise, Imagine, if you can, an area of
several hundred thousand acres of swamp and
marsh land and abounding with wild game of
all kinds and the river alive with fish of the best
varieties found in the States. While the deer.
190
PIONEER HUN'lERS OK IHt KANKAKKL
wild-hog, turkeys, geese and ducks made the
hunters meat; the otter, mink, musk-rat. raccoon,
wolf, fox. lynx and wild-cat were the fur-bearing
animals. It surely was the home of the hunter
and trapper. This was the condition of the re-
gion when the f^edman left it and the white
hunter built his cabin on the wooded islands
and the shores of the Kankakee. Yet many of
the readers wonder why white men with their
families lived in so secluded a spot. Could the
hearts of the hunters ask for more; could nature
more bountifully bestow her gifts? That he
should look with disapproval on the swamps is
no small wonder. But by and by the man with
the hoe came and looked upon the country and
it seemed to him that this swamp region was
too good to be given over to the musk-rat and
the raccoon and to the exclusive use of the few
men who did not own them and this is what
brought about the reclaiming movement. Un-
der the new conditions, with the advent of the
Swamp (Qifford) f^ailroad. the Kankakee swamp
191
DRAINING THE SWAMPS
country passed into its second stage of develop-
nncnt and m many places the "hoodooed" craw
fish flats of the Kankakee region is now the
Kankakee Valley corn fields. The reclaiming
of the Kankakee swamps cast a shadow of
gloom and sadness to the few remaining old-
time hunters who have spent their early years
hunting and trapping on the Kankakee river.
They feel pretty much as did the Indians when
they had to give up their ideal hunting grounds
to the whites. The pioneer hunter saw the
French fur-trader and the Indian go, then they
saw the wild game go and now what is left of
their number have seen the vanishing of the
Kankakee swamps. In the language of the
poet "There is a magical tie to the land of our
home, which the heart cannot break though the
footsteps may roam." Yes, indeed, the ties that
bind us to the land of our birth are truly magi-
cal. 1 often find this so when I am visiting my
old home. I am naturally attracted to the
scenes that 1 loved so well when a boy. 5o it
192
PIONEER HUNfERSOK I'HK KANKAKKh
was with the Indians that once inhabited this
region. The reader remembers that mention
was made in a previous chapter of my visit to
the Fottowattomies in the Indian Reservation.
One old warrior, Chief Nae-nee-be-zho, narrates
the sadness and sorrow of his people. Me spoke
of the whites, of the white man's hunting ground
and their destiny. He told how they would van-
ish and be no more. He said in part, "Oh,
Great Aaster. the pale-face comes and the f^ed-
man is driven from the face of the earth. The
land that was ours is gone from us and the
rocks are our bed and the leaves are our cover.
We sigh in vain for yesterday, we have no hope,
no comfort for tomorrow, all our greatness is
gone and the f^edman's days are but few, 1
return to the land of my Father, 1 gaze on the
placid river. Oh that 1 might die and sleep
here where the great Waubonsie breathed the
air, beneath the same trees which have shelter-
ed him. Oh where are the friends of my Father.
where is the war chief Waubonsie, /Aeltontonis
1V3
I) R A i M N r 7 ' r r I ! s vv a m i 's
and many others? Oh, could I stand where my
tribes once roamed. But no vestige of the pow-
erful Pottowattomies remain. The lakes and
marshes and the Kankakee River, which my
canoe was want to glide; knows not the dip
of the Redman's paddle. Where once I moored
my canoe to the shore of Lake ./Michigan now
the great steamers are at anchor and the dip of
the Redman's paddle is heard no more. No
more does the flint-tipped arrow fall the deer
and the woodlands resound no more with his
bounding step upon the brink of the river. But
now comes the pioneer's cow in its stead. The
majesty of nature is dwarfed and humbled in
the marsh of the white man and on his trail is
naught but nature's ruins. I gaze on the camp
of the white man and hear him call it Chicago.
Oh Nau-nee-bo-zho, forgive the cruel pale-face
for disturbing the peace of the great Shaubanee,
whose home was along the Kankakee f^egion.
I seek for the wigwam of my people and find in
its place the houses and barns of the white man.
194
PIONEER HUNTERS OF 1 HE KANKAKEE
Again, if they would turn to the spot where the
great Chiefs held their councils and where the
pipe of peace was smoked by the great warriors
they would find cities, towns and villages. The
brick walls rise on the spot where once the
deer-skins were spread and the great oak tree
had been taken away. The memories of the
Redman have been buried beneath the white
man's axe, trowel and plow. Nau-nee-bee-zho
could not understand why they were banished
from the land that the great master gave them
unless it was for the treachery of Nau-non-gee,
or the murderer of Red Bird, on the trail that
run from Pottowattomie Ford on the Kankakee
(Eaton's Ferry) to Lake /Michigan. Oh memo-
ries of the Kankakee, which was the ideal hunt-
ing ground of my sire, are so shattered, all
about me is desolation and I turn from the
scene which 1 sought to return to the land of the
setting sun. The pale-face has no love fer our
memories and our traditions he regardeth not.
Sad is the heart of the Redman. Years and
195
DRAININCJ THE SWAMPS
years ago when this old Indian moved his beau-
tiful squaw to French Island, now the home of
the white man, and in the same swamp where
the young papoose paddled his log canoe is
now the Kankakee corn-fields. Where the war
dance made the air ring is now heard the brass
band playing "Just As The Sun Went Down."
And the tolling of the bells in the towers tells of
the departure of the Redman who worshipped
the Great /Aaster. In the quiet groves where
the sky and the trees were not shut out to the
f^edman, nature is the highest art. He would
sit in his canoe with Okemoes and his little
papoose floating between the banks over the
silvery waves of the river. He saw in the Great
/Aaster everything. There was no black smoke
from the railroad locomotive and traction en-
gines; no fences to mar the beautiful land which
the Great Father had given to them. As I was
about to leave their lodge and bidding them
good-bye. one of the old warriors rose to his
feet, threw a blanket around him and passed to
196
PlONtER HUiN'lERS OF THE KANKAKEE
and fro, saying in a low, sad tone: "Oh gone are
the days of my youth and memories of my peo-
ple and the beauties of ouf beautiful land are
forever buried. /Ay Father and myself are for-
gotten, and the Land of Liberty shall know us
no more." When 1 visit the scenes of my boy-
hood where 1 played with the pebbles and sand,
where years before played the little papoose
with his canoe and paddle, and when I recall
some of my early adventures of hunting and
fishing, the most pleasant recollections of all
was my boyhood days in my island home on
the Kankahee.
End.
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