This photo was taken shortly after sunrise on Labor Day, 1999. It’s just outside of Castalia, Ohio. The farm of Orlean Putnam’s parents was somewhere in the background, and it was probably somewhere near there where the Odawa raiding party captured little Orlean and his mother in 1813. Those two were among those who were kept alive and taken to Detroit, which was then in British hands.
On my way through town, I passed a park-like place with a cannon and historical markers. It looked very interesting in the fading light, but it was getting too late in the day to stop. Little did I know at the time that it was a place where Black Hawk had been in 1813, hanging out along the edge of the Battle of Fort Stephenson. I was passing up one of the main Black Hawk stories for a story on the periphery. But the peripheral story was a good one, too.