Myra alerted me to the news about the recent flooding in Vernon and Crawford Counties, Wisconsin. Soldiers Grove is one of the flooded places.

I had ridden through Soldiers Grove on my tour of the Black Hawk War Zone in September 2004. It was on my way to Victory, where the Bad Axe massacre took place. The soldiers came through here, on Black Hawk’s trail, the day before the fighting at Bad Axe on the Mississippi River.

I did not have time to linger or see much of the town.

This bridge is where I crossed the Kickapoo River. I understand that the main business places have relocated away from the river, driven out by previous floods.

According to one of the soldiers (quoted in Crawford B. Thayer’s, “Massacre at Bad Axe”, page 132) the Army had been pushing hard by the time it reached this place:

We had now been three days in those mountains, and our horses had lived on weeds, except those that became debilitated and were left behind; for a great number had become so, and left to starve in this dreary waste.

This place was a welcome sight to them. Another later wrote (again, quoted by Thayer):

We emerged…from these gloomy forests into the gladsome light of the sun, in an open pine grove, on the bank of a fine little river, which we scarcely knew then to be the Kickapoo. No great change of circumstances ever had a pleasanter effect upon the spirits of an army; vast high prairies were before us, the sun shone brightly, and gleamed from the crystal waves of the pretty river; the refreshing prairie breeze whistled merrily through the leaves of the pines; there were indications in the enemy’s deserted camps, that we were close upon him…

Others also wrote of the pleasure of encountering prairie.

I wish I could say that the terrain had the same effect on me. But I don’t recall any prairie-looking places after I crossed the river. I remember more hills. (I think the above was taken just a few miles west, perhaps at a place called Johnson Valley.) Maybe it’s time to go back and take another look. I didn’t have the words from Thayer’s book in my head at the time.

The country does open up between Soldiers Grove and the Mississippi, though. The next day I rode on Wisconsin route 27, which sort of follows a ridge that separates the Kickapoo River from the Mississippi. There are places where one can get a sense of being on high, open ground, looking down toward the Mississippi on one side and toward the Kickapoo on the other.

But it’s about 30 miles between Soldiers Grove and the Mississippi where Black Hawk’s people were headed. It sounds as though the soldiers were referring to something right close to Soldiers Grove.

Speaking of 30 miles, it was just after 5 pm when I crossed the Kickapoo, according to the timestamps on my photos, and this was September, when the days were getting shorter. I had a 30 mile ride ahead of me before reaching the campground. I had to start riding hard, and I didn’t take many more photos. The few I have show that it was getting too dark for picture-taking. I did get to the campground before it was completely dark, though.

It was while listening to Theodore Rosengarten’s book, “All God’s Dangers : The life of Nate Shaw” that I got the idea that we should go to Alabama to see the places he told about. Myra reminded me that I had never taken her to Florida. So I devised a trip plan that included Florida (the Appalachicola region) and then she was all in favor, too.

I came to realize this was where Tecumseh had come on his famous 1811 trip to the south, so read a pile of books to learn more about the history of the Creek Indians and the Creek wars. That kind of crowded Nate Shaw out of the main emphasis for this trip. But this day, April 6, 2006, I was mostly going to visit some of the roads and places that Nate Shaw had talked about. (I had already taken photos at the Julia Tutwiler prison, where he spent about ten years of his life.)

I started at the visitor center of the Horseshoe Bend park, where the cannon in the photo is located. That’s where I had left off with my riding the day before. Myra dropped me off there, and we went our separate ways for the day, as usual. We planned to meet in the evening at a campground near Auburn.

This is where Alabama state highway 49 crosses the Tallapoosa River, including what’s left of an old bridge. The battle site on the peninsula formed by the Horseshoe Bend is off to the right of the photo.

More from April 5, 2006. This is a bridge over Emuckfau creek, quite near my destination, Horseshoe Bend National Military Park.

The actual village of Emuckfau was a few miles upstream, nearer to Zana (see the Google map below).

General Andrew Jackson didn’t quite make it to Emuckfau, either, when he and his Tennesseans came this direction in January 1814. He had to retreat when attacked by Redstick Creeks, here and at Enotochopco. Here is one of many web sites about it.

His losses were not as heavy as those of the Creeks. Twenty of his men were killed and 75 wounded, while he claimed to have killed 189 Creek warriors.

Two months later he came back with a much larger force and defeated the Creeks at Horseshoe Bend.

I seem to spend a lot of time looking at the undersides of bridges.

Map

Unfortunately, Google maps don’t do a good job of showing rivers and streams.

This is the Wetumpka bridge over the Coosa River, facing east.

Nate Shaw (Ned Cobb) had occasion to cross this bridge when he was in prison in the 1930s and 40s. At least, I presume this bridge is the same one. The photo is taken from the Wetumpka city side of the river. The far side is the prison side, as he called it. The prison was a few miles to the north (left). He explains how the convict labor gangs worked here and there:

And at that present time we was travelin down to a two-hundred-acre field, across the river bridge and through the heart of Wetumpka city–called it the river bottoms field. Had a place there on the prison side of the river, called it the body labor field. Had a place southeast, called the Whitman field. Had a place, before you crossed the river, called the river bend. O, we worked a territory, we prisoners did; four different fields we worked in.

(This is from pages 383-384 of Theodore Rosengarten’s book.)

On my first ride to Bridgeton, Indiana, in September 2006, I rode in from the northeast. We had camped the night before at the Racoon Lake State Recreation Area. I wanted some photos to go with the story of Isaac McCoy’s Baptist Indian Mission here, from the late 18teens. I had little idea of what I’d find, so stopped here at this old iron bridge to take photos, thinking this might be the most photogenic thing I’d find that could go with the story. It turned out that there was a lot more to take photos of: A historic marker for the 1809 treaty line, a piece of road that followed the treaty line, the mill, and a covered bridge that was being rebuilt after having been burned by arsonists. And those other things were closer to the site of McCoy’s mission than this bridge, although I didn’t figure that out until some time later.

I was just now reading a description of the Big Raccoon Creek as it was at the time of the earliest European-American settlement. It made me wish I had taken better photos to accompany it. But maybe the above two give an idea. The description is in the 1880 History of Parke, on pages 6-7:

Sugar creek, through its upper course, ran, then as now, between bold and rocky bluffs, but no other creek in the county was anything like it is now. They consisted rather of long deep ponds connected by shallow ripples; and Big Raccoon, through much of its lower course, had no defined channel. Beaver dams and immense drifts obstructed its course, and for miles in a place the stream extended almost from bluff to bluff–a long swamp with a slow current. Indeed, as late as 1850, many of the creeks in the county had a more uniform volume of water in summer than now, and contained many long, deep pools joined by ripples… None of the streams rose so suddenly or so high as now, and none fell so low in the summer. … The rainfall of the year has not decreased, but it was then more evenly distributed in time. The further change is accounted for by the clearing of the land and draining of the swamps, allowing the falling rains to discharge more rapidly. Such were a few of the features of this county a hundred years ago.

This is the bridge over the Auglaize River, on the southeast edge of Buckland, OH.    Fort Amanda is just a few miles to the north, along this same river.   But I haven’t been able to find any references to this section of the river having been a major transportation route at the time of the War of 1812 or in years before or after.   I get the impression that soldiers and other travelers came up from Cincinnati by other routes to the St. Mary’s River, then overland to Fort Amanda, then followed this river north.  So I don’t have any historical anecdotes to tie to the location of this bridge.

Oh, well.  I like getting off my bike at bridges anyway to have a look around.

In my last post I mentioned the possibility of riding to Pennsylvania’s Whiskey Rebellion country by way of the Greenville Treaty Line. The above map on the left shows that treaty line as a dashed red line. Well, maybe you have to click to get a larger version to make it out. Or you can go to this site to see higher quality images of this and others of the Charles Royce maps (Indian Land Cessions in the United States, 1899) from which it was taken.

In late August, 2005, as Hurricane Katrina was heading toward New Orleans, I did a ride to the area in the rectangle bounded by white. The right hand map shows this area in greater detail. It’s from “Ohio County Maps” published by Thomas Publications. That book of maps is an excellent resource for my type of riding. It shows all the minor county roads, and also shows the Greenville Treaty Line. There are places where modern roads follow the treaty line. I wanted to visit a couple of them.

Two small segments of treaty line roads are on either side of the Great Miami River. The small “horizontal” jog shown on the highway sign above is one of them. I was on the north side of the line. On the other side was land that the Shawnees and other Great Lakes Indians were forced to cede to the United States after the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794.

That jog was on the road in the foreground of this photo that leads to the right. The covered bridge is how I crossed the Great Miami River, from west to east. It’s not such a large river this far upstream. On the other side, I rode up the hill out of the valley, turned to the right, and then right again.

Here there was another segment of treatyline road. The ceded area was on the lefthand side. Of course, it’s all ceded now.

That wasn’t my only stop of the day. I had other places to visit further down the Great Miami. It was already late in the day when I was at the point in this photo. By the time I got to my final destination, the sky was starting to fill with clouds pushed north by the hurricane. But that was the end of the trip (a 3 day outing). We drove home, and the next day listened to the news of dikes giving way in New Orleans.

In the map above, I’ve circled the site of Fort Recovery near the western edge of Ohio. It’s where St. Clair’s defeat took place in 1791. (Harmar’s defeat took place in 1790, near Fort Wayne, Indiana.) In 1794 General Anthony Wayne defeated the Indian coalition at Fallen Timbers, in the circled area towards the top of the map. The 1795 Treaty of Greenville was signed at Greenville, at the circle south of the treaty line.

I’d like to follow the treaty line east as well as roads will allow. One nice thing about that route is it will take me to Amish country in Holmes County, which includes the town of Millersburg. Then I’d ride to Stuebenville, which has a connection to Bezaleel Wells, then west to Whiskey Rebellion country, including the area where Bezaleel Wells’ father had a distillery.

Another trip I’d like to do someday would be to the Seven Ranges, the area bounded by a blue dashed line. That’s where the Rectangular Survey System got its start. Some of the bugs in the surveying system were first worked out there. By the time the State of Ohio was surveyed into square mile sections, the technology and techniques were quite a bit better than at the beginning, but they still left lots of room for interesting misalignments that give me excuses for more bike rides and photos in Indiana and Michigan.

Before Patrick Marantette set up the trading post on the Nottawasepe reservation near what is now Mendon, he had operated a trading post for his in-laws at present-day Coldwater, Michigan. There had been a reservation near here, set up as part of the 1821 Treaty of Chicago.

The Chicago Road runs through this spot. At one time it crossed the Coldwater River on the older bridge shown in the foreground; now it crosses on the bridge in the background. This road was also known as the Sauk Trail because Black Hawk’s people used it as their route from the Mississippi River to Fort Malden in Canada. The trading post was on the right-hand bank of the river as seen in this photo, possibly very near the older bidge.

Marantette claimed to have met Black Hawk on his trip through in 1825, when he was 18 years old, and to have done $600 in business with him. Records kept by the British Indian Agent at Fort Malden show that Black Hawk did indeed make the trip that year.

The reservation went away when Americans thought it was bad for the land business to have Indians living right on the major thoroughfare from Detroit to the west. So the Potawatomi people were induced to give up this reservation, as well as a number of other small ones, and swap the land for a consolidated reservation at Nottawasepe. The trading post followed them there.

This photo was taken on a day ride on October 22, 2005.

This is a photo looking north from the south edge of Tippecanoe, taken on my first visit ever to the area in summer 2000. I remembered the railroad tracks, which seemed to serve as a giant speed bump for the road into town. It’s as if the railroad grade didn’t deign to run at the same level as the town.

I’m sure there’s a good reason for that. There’s a river nearby that has to be crossed, and I suppose the higher the grade level, the better. But it reminds me of my first impression of the town.

A couple of weeks ago I found a description in the Marshall County history that was published in 1881. I had to laugh, because if you had shown me that description with the name of the town blacked out, and asked me which town in the area it was describing, I would without hesitation have told you “Tippecanoe”. Except that now in the 21st century it was too worn out and run down to be wicked any longer.

A writer for one of the local county papers, in 1872, described Tippecanoe Town… ” … The town enjoys the reputation of being somewhat wicked, but it is no more, perhaps, in this respect, than many other places that might be mentioned possessing superior advantages. Of all the inhabitants, there is not one man that makes any profession of religion. There has never yet been a house of worship erected in the place, or in the township, either, I am told. There are one or two schoolhouses where a few people assemble to worship their Creator. ….” While there was some truth in the writer’s statements, yet his opinions were undoubtedly warped by personal feelings. The people of Tippecanoe Town and the inhabitants of the township generally, are as moral and upright and as intelligent as are usually found in localities somewhat isolated from the benefits of an advanced civilization.

What a slam, eh? The county history writer distances himself from the popular prejudice against the town, but can’t help repeating it, anyway. (Nor can I, for that matter.) And such a polite way of saying the people are stupid, backward, uncivilized, and immoral!

Now why did Tippecanoe look to me like a town that once had a reputation like that? I’ll bet the above photo doesn’t give that impression to anyone else, even though it’s a reminder for me. My ride through there this summer certainly didn’t give that impression.

Maybe there are several factors. For one, there is another spot on the map, just to the north, called “Old Tip Town.” That’s where Tippecanoe was in the 1870s. It later moved a mile south to be next to the railroad when it came though. A name like that evokes a certain image.

And maybe it was also some of the places I had been riding through before I got there.

Here I had happened upon an old church cemetery. The foundation of the church was still there, as were the concrete steps leading up into it, all overgrown with vegetation. A marker said, “Former site of Saint Paul Evangelical Lutheran Church Toisa / 1853 1931.” It put me in a ghost-town frame of mind.

And somewhere between that cemetery and Tippecanoe, I came across this bridge. No, it’s not one I rode across. I presume that’s the Tippecanoe River flowing under it, but I don’t remember just where this bridge was. Was it at Old Tip Town? I didn’t see anything like it when I was there this time. I suppose it didn’t have a great future ahead of it back in 2000, so maybe it no longer exists.

The cemetery and bridge could easily have given me the impression that I was in an old, decrepit corner of Indiana. But what about the “once-wicked” part? I guess I don’t have a good excuse for that.

Just a bit further west from the River’s Edge Farm, the road crossed the Tippecanoe, the 2nd of many crossings for me that day. I stopped to take some more photos of the area that had been part of Chechawkose’s reserve.

There was not a lot of traffic on this road, but a car came by every couple of minutes. One pickup slowed down and almost stopped. When I was able to, I turned around to look. Usually it’s someone asking if I need help. This was a man with close-cropped hair behind a rolled-up window. He didn’t look like someone who was going to offer some friendly assistance. We looked at each other briefly, and then he sped up and drove off, leaving me to look at the big confederate flag on his rear window.

I’ve been studying that map of Indian reserves more closely, and now it looks like I may not have been taking pictures of Chechawkose’s reserve. As best as I can now tell from that map, I was traveling on the northern boundary of the reserve. I should have been taking photos on the other side of the road — the south side. But the sun was already low enough in the sky that it would not have made for good picture-taking in that direction. These photos are probably of the land just off the reservation to the north. I’m glad I took them anyway.

Not that the actual boundary meant much. While they were living here the Potawatomi people didn’t have any reason to restrict their activities to the land inside the boundary, and the American settlers had no intention of allowing the boundary to keep them from taking the land inside it. I’m not sure if this particular reserve was even surveyed. Some of the similar reserves further upstream in Kosciusko county were surveyed and have left marks on the landscape to this day. (I have photos about it from a bike outing in Fall 2006.) So far I haven’t found any such marks for the reserves in Marshall and Fulton counties. But I still have a lot to learn about them.