Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 102, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 April 1916 — Page 2

Theatre Avalanche Of Troops “vszzr Swpgn On the Firing Sweep A. Line With Great «g The Germans ' JSr'M Greatest ©f all motion pictures 9 ' of the con * ,ictSee With the Eyes of the Camera . Storming Fort Novo Georgeievsk! Admission /' Th ® Fall ° f Warsaw! . r / Great Seven Day Battle! >' y // Battlefields from Aeroplane! 15 .- Von Hindenberg’s Smashing Drive! 1 ! / The Kaiser at the Front! ■</■' / X. Murderous Machine Gun Fire. and Hammering the Big Forts! Zeppelin Raids on Warsaw! Rain of Russian Shells! 2 5 Fierce Infantry Assaults! va W| Miles of Battling. Demons! Terrific Trench Struggles! t*ant« Desperate Bayonet Charges! WVI • <•» Press Photographer W. H. Durborough is seen at work in • fs/ f many scenes in the film Come in to the Band Concert Wednesday Evening, May 3, and See this Great War Picture.

EARLY PIONEERS OF INDIANA

Pioneer days in Indiana began by the settlement of Vincennes in 1702, although LaSalle in 1679, floated down our own Kankakee in boats to Lake Peoria in Illinois. Traders trailed the Wabash as early as 1700, and in 1705, 15,000 hides and skins had been collected along this river and shipped to Europe through Mobile. In 1746, 600 barrels of flour were made at the mills along the Wabash and shipped to New Orleans. Many Indian villages were scattered along the Wabash and inhabited by Weas, Piankashaws, and other tribes. In 1700 George Washington, Dr. Craik, Capt. Crawford, Joseph Nicholson, Robert Bolt, Charles Morgan and Mr. Rendon, on an. expedition down the Ohio river r killed several buffalo and surveyed some land. In 1775 Piankashaw chiefs deeded to the whites at Vincennes 37,497,600 -.cres of land on the banks of the Wabash. In 1805 they transferred 2,600,000 acres, more. In 1809 the Delaware.-, Eel Rivers, Pottawatamies and Miamis turned over 2,900,000 acres around Ft. Wayne. In 1777 George Rogers Clark made an expedition to the early settlements and saved Vincennes an I other forts from destruction by the Indians. —— On Dec. 15, 1778, Vincennes was captured by the English. Then Clam with 170 men crossed the Kaskaskia river, then on through an almost impentrable wilderness the men dragged themselves along through mud and mire, wind and falleir timber, rain and swollen rivers for two weeks, when hungry, wet and tired they ferried the whole company across the Wabash, fell upon the English, on the 24th of Februayr, 1779, and retook Vincennes. Anthony Wayne’s expedition against the Indians aided by the English was a series of hard fought battles, the Indians often resorting to “pmsohedF arrow®, the scalping knife, burning at the etc., in a continuous wild Guerrilla warfare in Ohio and Indiana. The result of this campaign was the treaty bf Green-

By John E. Alter

ville,-in which Chippewas, Ottowas, Potawatomies, Wyandots, Delawares, Shawnees, Weas, and Kickapoos signed contracts to be good and keep the peace. In this treaty sixteen reservations were ceded to the state. The Indiana territory was organized May 7, 1800, with Harrison as territorial governor. Other treaties followed in rapid succession. Illinois was cut off the west side of Indiana Feb; 3, 1809. In 1810 the population of Indiana was 24,520, having 33 grist mills, 14 saw mills, 3 horse mills, 18 tanneries, 28 distilleries, 3 powder mills, 1,256 looms and 1,350 spinning wheels, with a goodly amount of hemp, flax, wool, leather, whisky, gunpowder, grape wine,, m aple sugar and molasses. In 1811 the battle of Tippecanoe, was fought above Lafayette, between the whites, under Gen. Harrison, and the Indians, under Tecumseh and his brother, the Prophet. The Indians were defeated, with 37 killed n bach side. Next followed the war of 1812, during which the Indians took advantage and burned, and pillaged properstate of Indiana was organized Nov. 8, 1816, with Jonathan Joinings as state governor. ........ The early settlers were compelled to follow the old Indian trail? which wound around the marshes and r : ver basins and along the ridges, to keep out of the water. Roads everywhere else were hard to make, owing to the lack of drainage. Ferries were used for crossing the rivers. Bridges came many years later. The UFchigan or state, road was built in 1822, and the Cumberland road in 1828. In 1787 congress passed an ordinance declaring that religion, morality and knowledge being necessary to good government, and the happiness of _niankind, that schools and other means of education, shall be forever encouraged. In contemplating the great amount of labor expended in those early years on general and special legislation and

THE REPUBLICAN, RENSSELAER, IND.

on the judicial adjustment of egal questions, it would be unjust to forget the labors which have been performed by superintendents of public instruction, by legislative committees, by state conventions, county meeting’s, township meetings and school district meetings, by the various religious denominations which have founded seminaries, academies and colleges; by preachers of the gospel and by many pr vate citizens whose almost forgotten names ought to be kept fresh in the memory of the people of Indiana. The following officers did valiant service before 1812 in defending the early settelrs against the Indians: Wayne, Harrison, Vigo Dubois, Laplante, Conner, Brouil-lette,-Prince, Gibson, Jennings, Wilson, -Boyd, Miller, Wells, Spier, Spencer, Barton, Guiger, Peters, Daviess, Snelling, Posey, Clark, Cook, Crogan, Boyd, Bartholomew, Floyd, Decker, Hawkins, Larabee, Prescott, Brown,* Allbright, Warren, Robb, Scott, Wilkins, Hurst, Taylor and Adams. These men, together with the. -soldiers under their command, suffered untold hardships and many lost their lives by the bolod-thirsty savages. Block houses were-built, forts erected, log cabins barricaded, rifles kept loaded and ready and many other devices of preparedness against the treachery of the redskins. Great .speeches were delivered, and fine promises made by wily chiefs, only to be broken at the first opportunity. Worrten were tomohawked, men burned at J he stake and children carried away into the woods. All these hardships atrocities were borne by our anc .s----tors that you and I might, in pejee and happinoss, raise our -flocks djil gather our bwn fruit unmolested by man or beast, at our owm homes -n old Indiana. The only drawback to settlement atjd social progress. Wolves howled around the cabins on cold winter nights, killing lambs and pigs and sometimes attacking men, women or

1 children; wildcats screamed through the lonely woods on dark nights and the echo of their piercing cries rolled far down the river bottoms like ■ ghouls in revelry, causing one’s hair I to rise in fright. The desolate cry of the hoot-owl was not soothing to the lone housewife who waited the homecoming f her husband frm the distant fort at midnight. There were venomous rattlesnakes and copper-heads, water blue racers, black racers, milk snakes, whip snakes, house snakes, vipers, glass snakes and garters, gliding through the weeds and grass, over the leaves, up the bushes and vines and even crawling into the houses, cellars and beds. Myriads of frogs croaked in the rivers and marshes, tree -frogs, green frogs, small frogs, large frogs, brown frogs and bull frogs. The marsh waters teemed with tadpoles, frog and fish spawn, snails, leeches and crawfish. The streams were full of pike, pickerel, red horse, suckers, sunfish, cats and dogs. The surface of all bodies of water was covered with mallards, canvas backs, speartails, wooddlucks, widgeon, white breasted fish ducks, blue and green winged teal, geese, brants, Joons, mud hens, coots, rails and quick divers. Prairie chickens cackled and crowed on the prairie, cctton tails ran riot in every thicker and across the moor, groundhogs burrowed in the ground, hedgehogs hid in the hedges and heather, possums prowled among the poultry, wolves would worry the lambs, bears bothered the bees and caught the calves, wolverines wanted the turkeys the (worst way, hawks harried the hens, weasles, skunks and badgers came as thieves in the night and carried away the young brood; blackbirds pulled up the corn, cutworms cut it off, ware worms wired it, gruo worms grubbed it, and the crows L ook the rest. There was but little drainage and- many crops drowned; the fields often being too wet to cultivate, and the teams swamped down in "the fields in harvest time. 2 Grain was threshed by hard knocks -with the- flail or on anold horsepower thresher, or tramped out with oxen. Com was dropped by hand in furrows made by a man with a sing e shovel plow drawn by a single horse

driven with one line. These primitive citizens took the Lord at His word when He told Peter in the vision to eat of all manner of beasts and fowls, and call nothing unclean; for they ate .squirrels, rabbits, deer, buffalo, groundhog, coon, possum, beaver, snapping turtles, frogs and even dogfish. They had but few cases of consumption in those days, no pallagra, cholera, leprosy or cerebrospinalmenengitis; an occasional case of milk-sick was reported but it was usually 50 or 60 miles further down the river. But they burned with fevers and shook with chills, and while miasma, malaria, intermittent fever and ague w r ere the chief afflictions of our Hoosier predecessors, they often had attacks of mumps, measles, chickenpox, nettlerash, scarlet fever, erysipelas, boils; bunions, carbuncles, ringworms, mange and the seven-year itch. Notwithstanding all these afflictions they were happy, cheerful; kind, neighborly and contented and swallowed large ’oses of quinine and calomel which iwere considered a panacea for all the ills of life. There was no end of work, mopping timber, making rails, posts, slats, sawlogs for lumber,, grubbing, trimming, sprouting, fencing, burning brush, plowing, marking, furrowing, dropping, covering, cultivating with one horse, wedding and hoeing. Plenty of seed com must be saved for all the bests, one grain for the blackbird, one for the crow, one for to cutworm and two left to grow. They also grew sorghum and made molasses. Think of the plowing, harrowing, planting, cultivating, - thinning, succoring, weeding, hoeing, cutting, grinding, boiling, skimming, straining, purifying and barreling. Then too the taping, piping and saping of the maple trees for syrup and maple sugar, then the boiling, evaporating, measuring, caking, licking the pan and pulling taffy. - Just think of the poor old tiller of .the soil, how’he’d hustle and tod while the sun would boil, down through .his .straw hat, which had been made three years before by his good wife, plodding all day long, no bicycle, no motorcycle, no auto cut; he must walk all day, everywhere and back, heavy

cowhide shoes or go barefooted among the snakes and briers. And yet he enjoyed life amid all these sad scenes of turmoil and tribulation. There came many glints of sunshine pouring down through the rifts in the clouds of discouragement, that tended to lift the sorrows and lighten the trials of these early veterans of the wilderness. Indiana teemed with untold varieties of wood, vines and plants. Festoons of flowers fileld the dense thickets, elegant roses bloomed on every hillside, wild crabapple blossoms spread their sweet-scented aroma through the copses in every direction on the gentle zephyrs of springtime; may apple, lady slipper and wild genaniums covered the glens and the glades were strewn with wild daisies, pinks, huckleberries and the twelve-Gods-of-the-mea-dow. The ponds and lakes were bordered with water-cress, pickerel bloom, pond lilies, and water 1 flies. All these, I say, had a tendency to gladden the hearts of those early pioneers as they earned their bread by the sweat of their brows. Then again, think of the (golden grain in harvest, the -.ribs of corn in autumn, the buckwheat cakes and slapjacks, the hog and hominy, boiled ham and potatoes, cabbage, beets, onions, pumpkins, squashes, water melons and a hundred other gladsome substitutes, roasted rye, corn and acorns for coffee, red root leaves, spice wood, sage and sassafras for tea. Every Hoosier from the lakes to the Ohio river realized that there was no excellence without great labor; that ’tis better to wear out than to rust out; and to labor than to loaf. May we ever keep a fresh green pot in our hearts sacred to the memory of the pioneer settler. May "we always follow in'the trail blazed through the wilderness and across the prairies by those brave-hearted patriotic Hoosiers who were bom and raised in those leaky old log cabins along the Wabash and other rivers and plains of Indiapa.zz.

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