THE PRAIRIE AND THE BUFFALO
--_The buffalo as the main food supply of the Indians._
To describe all the wonders in the interior of the northwest would be a
serious, if not an impossible task. The Grand Prairie, however, stands
alone. It was one of the marvels of creation, resembling the ocean as
nothing else did, making men who saw, never forget.
On Sunday, the third day of November, 1811, General Harrison's army,
with scouts in front, and wagons lumbering along between the flanks,
crossed the Big Vermilion river, in Vermilion County, Indiana, traversed
Sand Prairie and the woods to the north of it, and in the afternoon of
the same day caught their first glimpse of the Grand Prairie, in Warren
County, then wet with the cold November rains. That night they camped in
Round Grove, near the present town of Sloan, marched eighteen miles
across the prairie the next day, and camped on the east bank of Pine
creek, just north of the old site of Brier's Mills. To the most of them,
the sight must have been both novel and grand; if they could have known
then that the vast undulating plain before them stretched westward in
unbroken grandeur, a distance of two hundred and fifty miles to the
Mississippi river at Quincy; that these vast possessions in a few short
years would pass from the control of the savage tribes that roamed over
them, and would become the future great granaries of the world,
producing enough cereals to feed an empire, what must have been their
thoughts?
The magnitude of this great plain, now teeming with thousands of homes
and farms, is seldom realized. Draw a straight line west from old Fort
Vincennes to the Mississippi, and practically all north of it, to the
Wisconsin line, is the Grand Prairie. "Westward of the Wabash, except
occasional tracts of timbered lands in northern Indiana and fringes of
forest growth along the intervening water courses, the prairies stretch
westward continuously across Indiana, and the whole of Illinois to the
Mississippi. Taking the line of the Wabash railway, which crosses
Illinois in its greatest breadth, and beginning in Indiana, where the
railway leaves the timber, west of the Wabash near Marshfield (in Warren
County), the prairie extends to Quincy, a distance of more than two
hundred and fifty miles, and its continuity the entire way is only
broken by four strips of timber along four streams running at right
angles with the route of the railway, namely, the timber on the
Vermilion river between Danville and the Indiana state line; the
Sangamon, seventy miles west of Danville, near Decatur; the Sangamon
again a few miles east of Springfield, and the Illinois river at
Meredosia, and all the timber at the crossing of these several streams,
if put together, would not aggregate fifteen miles, against the two
hundred and fifty miles of prairie. Taking a north and south direction
and parallel with the drainage of the rivers, one could start near
Ashley, on the Illinois Central railway, in Washington county, and going
northward, nearly on an air line, keeping on the divide between
Kaskaskia and Little Wabash, the Sangamon and the Vermilion, the
Iroquois and the Vermilion of the Illinois, crossing the latter stream
between the mouths of the Fox and DuPage, and travel through to the
state of Wisconsin, a distance of nearly three hundred miles, without
encountering five miles of timber during the whole journey."
All that portion of Indiana lying north and west of the Wabash, is
essentially a part of the Grand Prairie. "Of the twenty-seven counties
in Indiana, lying wholly or partially west and north of the Wabash,
twelve are prairie, seven are mixed prairies, barrens and timber, the
barrens and prairie predominating. In five, the barrens, with the
prairies, are nearly equal to the timber, while only three of the
counties can be characterized as heavily timbered. And wherever timber
does occur in these twenty-seven counties, it is found in localities
favorable to its protection against the ravages of fire, by the
proximity of intervening lakes, marshes or watercourses." On the Indiana
side, the most pronounced of the tracts of prairie occur in western
Warren, Benton, southern and central Newton, southern Jasper, and
western White and Tippecanoe. Benton was originally covered with a great
pampas of blue-stem, high as a horse's head, interspersed here and there
with swamps of willows and bull grass, while only narrow fringes of
timber along the creeks, and some five or six groves of timber and
woodland, widely scattered, served as land marks to the early traveler.
Those who early observed and explored the grassy savannas of Indiana and
Illinois, always maintained that they were kept denuded of trees and
forests by the action of the great prairie fires. Among those who have
supported this theory are the Hon. James Hall, author of "The West,"
published in Cincinnati in 1848; the Hon. John Reynolds, former governor
of the state of Illinois, and the Hon. John D. Caton, a late judge of
the Supreme Court of Illinois. Caton's observations on this subject are
so interesting and ingenious that we cannot refrain from making the
following quotation:
"The cause of the absence of trees on the upland prairies is the problem
most important to the agricultural interests of our state, and it is the
inquiry which alone I propose to consider, but cannot resist the remark
that wherever we do find timber throughout the broad field of prairie,
it is always in or near the humid portions of it, as along the margins
of streams, or upon or near the springy uplands. Many most luxurious
growths are found in the highest portions of the uplands, but always in
the neighborhood of water. For a remarkable example, I may refer to the
great chain of groves extending from and including the Au Sable grove on
the east and Holderman's grove on the west, in Kendall county, occupying
the high divide between the waters of the Illinois and the Fox rivers.
In and around all the groves flowing springs abound, and some of them
are separated by marshes, to the borders of which the great trees
approach, as if the forests were ready to seize upon each yard of ground
as soon as it is elevated above the swamps. Indeed, all our groves seem
to be located where the water is so disposed as to protect them, to a
greater or less extent, from the prairie fire, although not so situated
as to irrigate them. If the head waters of the streams on the prairies
are most frequently without timber, as soon as they have attained
sufficient volume to impede the progress of fires, with very few
exceptions, we find forests on their borders, becoming broader and more
vigorous as the magnitude of the streams increase. It is manifest that
the lands located on the borders of streams which the fire cannot pass,
are only exposed to one-half the fires to which they would be exposed,
but for such protection. This tends to show, at least, that if but
one-half the fires that have occurred had been kindled, the arboraceous
growth could have withstood their destructive influences, and the whole
surface of what is now prairie would be forest. Another confirmatory
fact, patent to all observers, is, that the prevailing winds upon the
prairies, especially in the autumn, are from the west, and these give
direction to the fires. Consequently, the lands on the westerly sides of
the streams are the most exposed to the fires, and, as might be
expected, we find much the most timber on the easterly sides of the
streams."
[Illustration: A Section of the Grand Prairie in Benton County, Indiana,
which extends west to Peoria, Illinois.]
Local observation in Benton County, Indiana, which is purely prairie
throughout, would seem to confirm the judge's view. Parish grove, on the
old Chicago road, was filled with springs, and a rather large spring on
the west side of the grove, supplied water for the horses of the
emigrants and travelers who took this route to the northwest in the
early 40's. Besides this, the grove was situated on rather high uplands,
where the growth of grass would be much shorter than on the adjoining
plain. It is probable that this spring on the west side, and the springy
nature of the highlands back of it, kept the ground moist and the
vegetation green, and these facts, coupled with the fact that the grass
as it approached the uplands, would grow shorter, probably retarded and
checked the prairie fires from the southwest, and gave rise to the
wonderfully diversified and luxuriant growth of trees that was the
wonder of the early settler. Sugar grove, seven miles to the northwest
of Parish grove, and a stopping place on the old Chicago road, lay
mostly within the point or headland caused by the juncture of Sugar
Creek from the northeast, and Mud Creek from the southeast. Scarcely a
tree is on the southwestern bank of Mud creek, but where it widens on
the south side of the grove, it protected the growth of the forest on
the northern side. Turkey Foot grove, east and south of Earl Park,
formerly had a lake and depression both on the south and west sides of
it. Hickory Grove, just west of Fowler, in the early days, had a lake or
pond on the south and west. The timber that skirted the banks of Pine
creek, was heaviest on the eastern side. The headwaters of Sugar, Pine
and Mud creeks, being small and narrow, were entirely devoid of trees on
their banks, but as they flowed on and acquired strength and volume, a
skirt of forest appeared.
The Grand Prairie, the home of the ancient Illinois tribe, the Sacs and
Foxes, the Kickapoos, and the prairie Potawatomi, was also the home of
the buffalo, or wild cow of America. No story either of the northwest or
its Indian tribes would be complete without mention of the bison. Think
of the sight that Brigadier General Harmar saw on the early prairies of
Illinois, when marching from Vincennes to Kaskaskia, in November 1787!
With him the Miami chief, Pachan (Pecan) and a comrade, killing wild
game for the soldiers; before him stretching the vastness of the
prairie, "like the ocean, as far as the eye can see, the view terminated
by the horizon;" here and there the herds of deer and buffalo far in the
distance.
For centuries before the advent of the white man the buffalo herds
roamed the plain. The savage, with no weapon in his hands, save rudely
chipped pieces of stone, was unable to reduce their numbers. With the
coming of firearms and the rifle the buffalo passed rapidly away.
In the seventeenth and the early part of the eighteenth centuries the
buffalo ranged as far east as western New York and Pennsylvania, and as
far south as Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia. Father Marquette, in
his explorations, declared that the prairies along the Illinois river
were "covered with buffalos." Father Hennepin, in writing of northern
Illinois, between Chicago and the Illinois river, asserted that "There
must be an innumerable quantity of wild bulls in this country, since the
earth is covered with their horns. * * * They follow one another, so
that you may see a drove of them for about a league together. Their
ways are beaten, as are our great roads, and no herb grows therein."
Of the presence of large numbers of buffalo, that resorted to the salty
licks of Kentucky, we have frequent mention by both Humphrey Marshall
and Mann Butler, the early historians of that state. In the year 1755,
Colonel James Smith mentions the killing of several buffalo by the
Indians at a lick in Ohio, somewhere between the Muskingum, the Ohio and
the Scioto. At this lick the Indians made about a half bushel of salt in
their brass kettles. He asserts that about this lick there were clear,
open woods, and that there were great roads leading to the same, made by
the buffalo, that appeared like wagon roads. The wild cattle had
evidently been attracted thither by the mineral salts in the water. In
the early morning of June 13, 1765, George Croghan, an Indian agent sent
out by William Johnson, of New York, to report to the English government
conditions in the west, coming into view of one of the fine large
meadows bordering on the western banks of the Wabash, saw in the
distance herds of buffalo eating the grass, and describes the land as
filled with buffalo, deer and bears in "great plenty." On the 18th and
19th of the same month, he traveled through what he terms as a
"prodigious large meadow, called the Pyankeshaw's Hunting Ground," and
describes it as well watered and full of buffalo, deer, bears, and all
kinds of wild game. He was still in the lower Wabash region. On the 20th
and 21st of June he was traveling north along the Wabash in the vicinity
of the Vermilion river in Vermilion county, and states that game
existed plentifully, and that one could kill in a half hour as much as
was needed. He spoke, evidently, of the large variety of game before
mentioned. The whole of the prairie of Illinois, filled with an abundant
growth of the richest grasses, and all the savannas north of the Wabash
in Indiana, that really constituted an extension of the Grand Prairie,
were particularly suited to the range of the wild herds, and were the
last grounds deserted by them previous to their withdrawal west, and
across the Mississippi.
The economical value of the herds of buffalo to the Indian tribes of the
northwest may be gathered from the uses to which they were afterwards
put by the tribes of the western plains. "The body of the buffalo
yielded fresh meat, of which thousands of tons were consumed; dried
meat, prepared in summer for winter use; pemmican (also prepared in
summer) of meat, fat and berries; tallow, made up into large balls or
sacks, and kept in store; marrow, preserved in bladders; and tongues,
dried and smoked, and eaten as a delicacy. The skin of the buffalo
yielded a robe, dressed with the hair on, for clothing and bedding; a
hide, dressed without the hair, which made a tepee cover, when a number
were sewn together; boats, when sewn together in a green state, over a
wooden frame work; shields, from the thickest portions, as rawhide;
clothing of many kinds; bags for use in traveling; coffins, or winding
sheets for the dead, etc. Other portions utilized were sinews, which
furnished fibre for ropes, thread, bowstrings, snow shoe webs, etc.;
hair, which was sometimes made into belts and ornaments; "buffalo
chips," which formed a valuable and highly prized fuel; bones, from
which many articles of use and ornament were made; horns, which were
made into spoons, drinking vessels, etc." The Rev. John Heckewelder, in
speaking of the skill of the Delawares of Ohio, in dressing and curing
buffalo hides, in the latter part of the eighteenth century, says that
they cured them so that they became quite soft and supple, and so that
they would last for many years without wearing out.
All at once, and near the beginning of the last decade of the eighteenth
century, the buffalo herds east of the Mississippi, suddenly
disappeared. George Wilson, in his history of Dubois County, Indiana,
says that, "toward the close of the eighteenth century a very cold
winter, continuing several months, froze all vegetable growth, starved
the noble animals, and the herds never regained their loss." This
statement is borne out by the testimony of the famous Potawatomi
chieftain Shaubena, of northern Illinois, who says that the trade in
buffalo robes east of the Mississippi ceased in about the year 1790;
that when a youth he joined in the chase of buffalos on the prairies,
but while he was still young, they all disappeared from the country. "A
big snow, about five feet deep, fell, and froze so hard on the top that
people walked on it, causing the buffalo to perish by starvation. Next
spring a few buffalo, poor and haggard in appearance, were seen going
westward, and as they approached the carcasses of dead ones, lying here
and there on the prairies, they would stop, commence pawing and lowing,
then start off again in a lope for the west." It is true that
Brigadier-General Josiah Harmar, in marching from Vincennes to
Kaskaskia, in 1787, gives a striking account of the early prairies,
"like the ocean, as far as the eye can see, the view terminated by the
horizon," and describes the country as excellent for grazing, and
abounding with deer and buffalo. Pachan, or Pecan, a famous Miami
chieftain from Miamitown, and an Indian comrade, supplied the military
party with buffalo and deer meat on the march out, and on the return.
Notwithstanding these facts, the story of the terrible winter and the
deep snow as told by Shaubena seems authentic, and while scattered
remnants of the great herds may still have existed for some time
afterward, the great droves stretching "for above a league together,"
were seen no more.
The great snowfall was the culminating tragedy. In order to secure
whiskey and brandy the horse tribes of the prairies had slaughtered
thousands, and bartered away their robes and hides. What distinguishes
the savage from civilized man is, that the savage takes no heed of the
morrow. To satisfy his present passions and appetites he will sacrifice
every hope of the future. He no longer cures the skins and clothes his
nakedness. He thinks no longer of husbanding his supply of meat and
game. He robs the plain, and despoils every stream and river, and then
becomes a drunken beggar in the frontier towns, crying for alms. The
same thing that happened on the plains of Illinois at the close of
eighteenth, took place on the plains west of the Mississippi in the last
half of the nineteenth century. The giant herds melted away before the
remorseless killings of the still hunters and savages, who threw away a
meat supply worth millions of dollars in a mad chase for gain and
plunder, and no one took a more prominent part in that killing than the
Indian himself.
"When the snow fall was unusually heavy," says William T. Hornaday, "and
lay for a long time on the ground, the buffalos fast for days together,
and sometimes even weeks. If a warm day came, and thawed the upper
surface of the snow, sufficiently for succeeding cold to freeze it into
a crust, the outlook for the bison began to be serious. A man can travel
over a crust through which the hoofs of a ponderous bison cut like
chisels and leave him floundering belly-deep. It was at such times that
the Indians hunted him on snow-shoes, and drove their spears into his
vitals as he wallowed helplessly in the drifts. Then the wolves grew fat
upon the victims which they, also, slaughtered without effort." This is
probably an accurate description of what took place east of the
Mississippi river about the year 1790, and left the bones of the herds
to bleach on the prairies.
However the facts may be, it is certain that at the opening of the
nineteenth century the buffalo were practically extinguished in the
territory of the northwest. A few scattered animals may have remained
here and there upon the prairies, but the old herds, whose progenitors
were seen by Croghan were forever gone. In the month of December, 1799,
Judge Jacob Burnet was traveling overland on horseback from Cincinnati
to Vincennes on professional business, and while at some point north and
west of the falls of the Ohio, he and his companions surprised a small
herd of eight or ten buffalos, that were seeking shelter behind the top
of a fallen beech tree on the line of an old "trace," during a snow
storm. This is one of the last accounts given of any buffalos in
Indiana. On August 18th and August 27th, 1804, Governor William Henry
Harrison, as Indian agent for the United States government, bought a
large tract of land in southern Indiana, between the Wabash and the Ohio
rivers, from the Delaware and Piankeshaw tribes. The right to make this
purchase was disputed by Captain William Wells, the Indian agent at Fort
Wayne, and by the Little Turtle, claiming to represent the Miamis, and
it was claimed among other things, that the lands bought were frequented
as a hunting ground by both the Miamis and Potawatomi, and that they
went there to hunt buffalo. The truth of this statement was denied by
Governor Harrison, who said that not an animal of that kind "had been
seen within that tract for several years."
Traces of the old buffalo wallows are occasionally met with, even to
this day. The great animals "rolled successively in the same hole, and
each carried away a coat of mud," which, baking in the sun, served to
protect them against the great swarm of flies, gnats and insects that
infested the marshes and prairies of that early time. One of these
wallows, in a perfect state of preservation, exists in the northwest
quarter of section thirty, in township twenty-five north, range six
west, in Benton County, Indiana. It is several yards in diameter,
hollowed out to a depth of four or five feet, and its periphery is
almost an exact circle. It is situated on a rather high, springy
knoll, commanding a view of the surrounding plain for several miles.
A great number of Indian arrow heads have been picked up in the
immediate vicinity, showing that the Indiana had previously resorted
thither in search of game.
[Illustration: A typical buffalo wallow on the Donaldson farm in
Benton County, Indiana. Photo by Heaton.]