Here’s a photo of the Spokesrider from August, on a day ride from Bremen to Bruce Lake to Rochester, IN.  I picked this photo for today, September 14, because today a ceremony was held there to place a Trail of Death marker.  (The Trail of Death is also known as the Trail of Courage in local events commemorating it.)  The man depicted in the statue is Menominee, a Potawatomi leader who refused to sign the treaty by which the last remaining land in Indiana was taken from them.   He wouldn’t really have worn a headress like that, but this statue is from a time when that was the standard image of an Indian chief.

Most of the treaties the U.S. made with native peoples were honored.  Well, maybe honored is not a good word.  Let’s say the letter of the treaties was adhered to.   The dishonesty and sleaze was usually in the means used to get the Indian leaders to sign.  But in this case Menominee didn’t sign, so the U.S. simply used naked force to take his reserve and evict him from Indiana.

Here is what John Tipton, Indian agent in charge, wrote about it immediately after the roundup:

Every thing seems to justify the belief that these unhappy people will yet learn to appreciate the interest which government has ever taken in their situations, and teach themselves that a yielding compliance to such interest, will but secure the comfort and enjoyment which for years they have failed to experience in Indiana–”

–Tipton to David Wallace, September 3, 1838, Tipton Papers, Volume 3, page 690.  

Noblesse oblige, anyone?

If you google for information about it on the web, you’ll find that a lot of the writing and research has been done by Shirley Willard, County Historian for Fulton County.  She has done much over the years to raise awareness of this whole historical episode, and also to bring Potawatomi people from Kansas to meet with non-Anishinabe people for a time of remembering  at an annual “Trail of Courage” weekend.    I had an opportunity to talk with her Tuesday, and she invited me to come to the events.    But it hardly ever works for me to attend such things unless they’re really close to home.

I stopped to take a snapshot of this barn early in a ride to Bruce Lake.  It wasn’t too many miles south of Bremen.   A dog was barking somewhere in the background.

When I got back on my bike, a whole pack of beagle-like dogs came out on the road to greet me.  Suddenly I remembered.  I had been here before!  I had encountered this same dog pack last September, though the dogs were a little smaller then.   Unfortunately I didn’t stop to take a photo.  Last time I hadn’t known what to expect from them at first, but this time it was like renewing old acquaintances.   They were all as friendly as they were a year ago, and none of them had shown any interest in having a bicyclist for lunch.

Now that  I recognized that I had been here before, I had an idea of what else to expect a few miles down the road.   I’m always looking for new places to ride, but it’s pleasant to find one’s self in familiar places, too.

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.

The first time I had been to Tippecanoe, probably in 2000, it seemed I had stumbled on a place that was far away from everything else and that everything was several decades old. I’ve felt that way in a few other crossroads towns in Indiana. But this one didn’t give that impression this time. Last time there had been a small, run-down country stores with narrow aisles and not a huge selection to choose from. It’s still there and is much the same inside, except that it has recently undergone an expansion! The whole place no longer seemed like the proverbial town that time forgot. (Which brings to mind some old Bob and Ray skits, but never mind.) Other than the new addition to the store, I have no idea what made it seem different this time. It probably had a lot more to do with how my day had been going than with what the town was really like.

I didn’t see any more Amish places south of US-30. Five miles south of Etna Green I turned west on a less-traveled county road. I wanted to see the country that had been part of Che-chaw-kose’s reservation. The above-pictured place is on this land, very near the Tippecanoe River. [Edit & Note: Actually, it may be just slightly off the reservation, so to speak. See the next blog post. jbg, 22-Aug-2007]

This map is a snippet of one of many maps of Indian land cessions at memory.loc.gov. Chechawkose was a Potawatomi leader who had been granted a ten-section reservation at one of the 1832 treaties held on the Tippecanoe River. Other leaders had been granted other reservations, some of which are also shown on this map. Granting these reservations was a way to induce them to sign away the greater part of the land the Potawatomi still had had in Indiana up to this time.

But the Americans were not satisfied with that. They wanted these remaining reservations, too, and wanted the Potawatomi to agree to move west beyond the Mississippi. But Chechawcose was one of a handful of the leaders who didn’t cooperate. He refused to sell.

So the American agent in charge of Indian removal, Abel C. Pepper, found some other men to sell. Not that they had any authorization to do that, but they were in debt to traders. Neither Pepper nor any of the other Americans involved was very fussy about legalities or details of who was authorized. Chechawcose and some of the other refusers then threatened to kill the men who sold the land out from under them, but the removal operation proceeded.

The source for this is R. David Edmunds’ essay in the book of George Winter’s art (Indians and a changing frontier) that I referred to in an earlier blog article.

I looked to see if James Clifton had had anything to say about Chechawcose in his book, The Prairie People. He didn’t, but the book contains a reference to an earlier holder of that name, from the time of the Fox wars in the early 1700s. According to the index, the name means Little Crane. And it’s true that Potawatomi names that have the “ose” ending as rendered in English usually are diminutive forms of a name. For example, Ogema (leader, chief) vs. Okemos (little chief). An Okemos gave his name to a town just outside of East Lansing, Michigan. I’m not sure in what sense he was “little” — whether it referred to physical stature or what.

On workdays I wouldn’t ride on CR-22, but I took advantage of low traffic to ride the windy, rolling road to Goshen. I happened to see a log cabin as I was leaving town, and stopped to take photos. I must never have taken that route out of town before. I’ll have to find out if there is any interesting history associated with the building.

The afternoon route took me through Amish country to Nappanee. There were lots of smiles and waves from the buggies today. The rest of the afternoon was through mostly new country for me, on roads I had never before ridden. I went around the south side of Plymouth on roads that had less and less vehicle traffic. At one place a pack of hound dogs came out to bark at me from all sides. A few miles later I rode past a farm where the roadsides were edged with flowers. Perhaps the farm wife didn’t think the corn and soybeans were pretty enough in themselves. I wondered how she convinced her husband to put up with the slight inconvenience of having to plant, cultivate, and harvest around them.

Mind you, I realize I’m stereotyping here. I don’t know for a fact that it was a wife who planted them. I mean, it could have been a woman who ran the farm while her good-for-nothing boyfriend planted flowers when he should have been working on his Great American Novel. Or it could have been the man who planted flowers so he could avoid going in the house to listen to his wife nag him about how he ought to be expanding the operation. But given the realities of farm life, I’ll put my money on a traditional farm couple who like each other well enough to indulge each other.

I stopped in Culver to get a bite to eat at a Dairy Queen – the only choice available as far as I could tell. I regretted my choice of burger most of the rest of the evening — too heavy and greasy. I still had almost 20 miles to go to the Tippecanoe State Park. The sun was getting low as I headed west-southwest towards Ora. In a couple of places I found myself on gravel, which I probably could have avoided if I had had better maps. The first stretch of gravel was on open prairie country. The 2nd was in heavily wooded country near the Tippecanoe River, with trees arching over the road. The sun was down by then, and I thought of those stories from out west where wildcats have found bicycle riders to be an entertaining type of prey.

Ora was the kind of place that… Well, while I was trying (unsuccessfully) to call Myra, an expensive-looking car from the west stopped. A man of about my age, but perhaps more of a country club type, asked for directions. For some reason people think bicycle tourers know the local directions, even when they are in strange country and are on the verge of getting lost themselves. There wasn’t much light left, I still had several miles to go, and wasn’t even sure where I needed to go (which was why I was trying to call Myra). But I decided I may as well be helpful. I told the guy I had come from Culver, but he probably didn’t want to go the way I had come. He said he would be glad if he could find Culver; he had been there before and would know where to go from there. He got out and we studied the map together. After he got an idea of where to go, he gave the town a quick lookover, which could be done right from where we were standing. North Carolina used to have places like this before it got all developed, he said, somewhat wistfully. We visited a few minutes longer, and then we each took off in our separate directions.

I then followed winding back roads that took me to Hwy 35, finally. It wasn’t really that many miles, but riding in the dark in strange country sometimes makes the distances seem longer. I headed south, still not sure where to get into the park. Here on Hwy 35 there was traffic, but my main concern was finding the park. Finally I got in touch with Myra. I still had trouble understanding where to go, so she drove out to the highway to pick me up. I had ridden about 90 miles for the day.