Indian Towns in Marion County

THE reference in the Tipton Journal to two Indian towns on White River between Conner's trading post and the bluffs, one in existence at that time and the other a tradition, is a contribution to an uncertain subject. The existence of a Delaware town in the north part of Marion County, near where Allisonville now stands, is recognized by Ignatius Brown and Berry Sulgrove in their histories, and the former tells of an old white woman who remained there after the tribe had left. This woman had been captured when a child, had reared a half-breed family, and her forgotten story seems to have been very like that of the more famous Frances Slocum. Very little information is to be had about this town, and it is treated, rather, as a tradition at the time of the first white occupancy. Tipton's statement, however, establishes that it was there in 1820.

The town that once stood where the river crosses the south line of the county was still more a thing of vague report. Prof. Ryland T. Brown, in the Indiana Geological Report for 1882 (see p. 97) affirms, though without giving his authority, that it was the village of a Delaware chief named Big Fire, a friend to the whites; that it was destroyed by the Madison Rangers, in 1812, in revenge for the

^∗See article on the game of Moccasin, in this number.

Pigeon Roost massacre, and that Governor Harrison had no little trouble in pacifying the chief. Incidentally it may be surmised that Tipton, who was, presumably, familiar with the local military operations of that period, and who had himself campaigned here in 1813, as evidenced by his journal, would have know of the Madison Rangers affair; and William Landers' testimony added to this pretty well negatives Prof. Brown's assertion.

In the Indianapolis News for May 4, 1899, appeared an article gleaned from C. T. Dollarhide, of Indianapolis, which recounted the tradition of the neighborhood in question as handed down by the narrator's grandfather, John Dollarhide, and other early settlers. Taken in connection with Tipton's information, and by its internal evidence of traditionary genuineness, it would seem to have more authenticity than any other statement upon the subject, and so much of the interview as has a documentary value we here repeat.

Says Mr. Dollarhide: "My grandfather, John Dollarhide, settled near the meeting point of Johnson, Morgan and Marion counties in the year 1819 or 1820. His reason for settling there was that he found a considerable area of land from which the great forest trees had been removed. This had again been covered by bushes and small timber such as the settlers called second growth. That clearing, my grandfather said, had been made by Indians, and that ground had evidently been cultivated by them. My father said that after heavy showers he and his brothers had picked up Indian ornaments of silver, such as were worn on the breasts of braves (a kind of brooch) and other trinkets. When my father was a boy this place was called ‘the battle ground’, and is so called by some old people to-day. Tradition said that some time early in this century, or at the close of the last century, a party of Kentuckians had come to this Indian settlement and murdered the inhabitants. It was said that there was at this place (the land, I believe, now belongs, in part, to the estate of the late Eli Stone) a Catholic mission of some kind, probably a Jesuit mission; but whether the Jesuits were there when the massacre took place is not a part of the tradition.

"In 1876 I became acquainted with Judge Franklin Hardin, who settled in Johnson County about 1820. When he heard my name, Dollarhide, he remarked that I must have come from the ‘battle-ground,' and I found that he had known my grandfather in Kentucky. The Judge said that a relative of his, a Major Hardin, of Kentucky, had told him of an expedition that was led against this Indian village; that there was then, or had been, a French mission there, and that the Indians had been massacred in regular Kentucky fashion. The Judge said, I believe, that his relative had told him of this massacre in Kentucky before he removed to Indiana, and that he (the Judge) had no doubt that the ‘battle-ground’ was the identical spot of which the Major had told him. The Major, it was said, had taken part in this raid, which the Judge thought took place about the year 1795.^∗

"In 1863, while making the Indianapolis & Waverly gravel road, the workmen, digging into a gravel bank, threw out a number of human bones. It is not too curious to connect these bones with that massacre. ∗ ∗ My father told me that he had found a piece of stone-work there—an arch, I believe—and that he was certain that this piece, which was skilfully cut, could only have been fashioned by a white man, and that it may have formed some part of the French mission building."†