Wabash River

“ The Wabash, a very beautiful river, rises not far from the sources of the Miami of the Lakes, and meanders through one of the most fertile districts of the west. At its mouth, it is about two hundred and fifty yards broad, and is navigable about four II.106 hundred miles. The Wabash forms the boundary between the states of Illinois and Indiana, the right bank belongs to the former, the left to the latter state. About evening, the steam-boat landed Mr. Huygens and myself on the right bank at Mount Vernon, a place established about two years ago, whence we proposed to go by land to New Harmony. ”

“ Its mouth is overlapped from three miles above to two below by Wabash island, which is five miles long and contains three thousand acres.
The Wabash is a noble river, about three hundred yards wide at its mouth, but its banks are so low, that they are overflowed up to the eves of two cabins which are just above its embouchure, at every high fresh. The inhabitants had their cattle all drowned last spring, and were obliged to save themselves by going some miles from the banks. The cabin next the point where the two rivers join, is large and has a tavern sign. ”

“ Vermillion.—A long, narrow county, between the Wabash river and the State of Illinois. The streams are Wabash, Big and Little Vermillion, and their tributaries. Surface high, rolling land, with abrupt bluffs near the streams; a good proportion of prairie and timber; soil, rich, sandy loam, and very productive. Minerals; freestone and limestone, and large coal banks.
Vigo.—The Wabash passes through it—navigable. The mill streams are Prairie, Honey, Otter, and Sugar creeks, but their waters fail in a dry season. Surface level, or gently undulating, with forest and prairies ”

“ It is this,—at about twelve miles distance is a place called Bon Pas, consisting of a tavern and two or three houses, situated upon a creek communicating with the Wabash river; to this creek, (the mud in which not always allowing boats to come up it,) as the nearest point from the English settlement to water carriage, all the corn and other exportable produce must be hauled by land ”

“ Kekionga was only a few miles from the Wabash River with the St. Lawrence-Mississippi watershed lying between the two. A shallow lake, since drained out of existence, extended southwest from Kekionga to present-day Waynedale, and was navigable by canoe during part of the year. ”

“ These tracts are on the bottoms of the Wabash, Ohio, Mississippi, Illinois, and all the interior rivers.
When the rivers rise above their ordinary height, the waters of the smaller streams, which are backed up by the freshets of the former, break over their banks, and cover all the low grounds. Here they stand for a few days, or for many weeks, especially towards the bluffs; for it is a striking fact in the geology of the western country, that all the river bottoms are higher on the margins of the streams than at some distance back. ”

“ For one who has ridden over the hills to the west and south of Purdue University, and viewed the gorgeous panorama of the Wea plain, or who has glimpsed in the perspective the wooded hills of Warren and Vermilion from the bluffs on the eastern side of the river, it is not hard to understand why the red man loved the Wabash. ”

“ The subject of a canal through this ridge was also mentioned. Indians were constantly coming and going, the women carrying the burdens of packs of skins and bark boxes of maple sugar each weighing about fifty pounds.
The next day Little Turtle and the other chiefs assembled at the home of Captain Wells, and there arrangements were made for Dennis to remain with the Indians and establish a farm. The attempt to educate the Indians to till the soil was undertaken at a point on the Wabash river about twenty miles southwest of Fort Wayne. ”

“ From Detroit the party dropped easily down the river to Lake Erie, where it narrowly escaped destruction in a blinding snowstorm. By good management, however, it was brought safely to the Maumee, up whose sluggish waters the bateaux were laboriously poled. A portage of nine miles gave access to the Wabash. Here the water was very shallow, and only by building occasional dikes to produce a current did the party find it possible to complete the journey. As conferences with the Indians further delayed them, it was not until a few days before Christmas that the invaders reached their goal. ”

“ The other branch of the Kaskaskia Trace passed through the northern portion of Wayne, Edwards and Wabash Counties, [Pg 40] crossing the Little Wabash and Fox some two miles above their junction, the Bonpas River, near Bonpas, and the Wabash, two miles above St. Francisville. From this ford the route led up the eastern shore of the Wabash about nine miles to Vincennes. By any route, at any time of year, the journey across Illinois was a hardship no thinking man would undergo, save only on the most important mission ”

“ As she stood there years ago her boy to greet
[refrain] :
Oh, the moonlight’s fair tonight along the Wabash;
From the fields there comes the breath of new-mown hay
Through the sycamores the candlelights are gleaming
On the banks of the Wabash, far away
[verse 2] :
Many years have passed since I strolled by the river
Arm in arm, with sweetest Mary by my side
It was there I tried to tell her that I loved her ”

“ The general face of the country approaches to a level, but some parts of it are hilly. It has a number of large, navigable rivers meandering through it to the Ohio and Mississippi, and many smaller streams, some of which run into the lakes.
The Wabash is a large river, rising near the head waters of the river St. Joseph, and the Miami at the lakes, and running in a southwesterly direction empties into the Ohio,about four hundred and seventy miles below the Great Miami river. ”

“ As a matter of fact, the whole plan of finding today five miles of low ground from any point west of the Little —abash to the east of either the Fox or the Big Muddy, is overthrown by Clark's statement in the Memoir that (on the western side of the Little Wabash) "we formed a camp on a height which we found on the bank of the river." ”

“ In 1836, the legislature of Indiana adopted a general system of public works, for the execution of which it authorised a loan of 10,000,000 dollars. The system embraces the canalisation of the Wabash and White River, the connection of the Wabash with the Maumee, and of Lake Michigan with the same river by canals, and a canal across the centre of the State from Evansville by Indianapolis to the Wabash and Erie canal. ”

“ Harmony is built on the second bottom of the Wabash, and is perhaps half a mile from the river at low water, the first bottom being about that breadth. Mosquitos abound here, and are extremely troublesome. There are several orchards in the neighbourhood well stocked with apples, peaches, &c.; and the soil being rich alluvion, the farms are productive—so much as fifty dollars per acre is asked for cleared land, close to the town. There is a great scarcity of money here, as in most parts of Indiana, and trade is chiefly carried on by barter. ”

“ C. and my son arrived on the first of October with our luggage, in three waggons, from the mouth of the Bonpas river, or rather creek; for in a dry time it hardly runs, but in the winter it is a tolerably large stream. By their account they had rather a rough trip up the Wabash. The day they left Shawneetown they did not reach the Wabash, but entered it the next day; the water was so low they proceeded very slowly. The crew of the keel-boat were mostly Canadian Frenchmen from Vincennes; they soon consumed their own provisions, likewise those belonging to Mr. ”

“ It has been thought that no stream in the world, for its length and magnitude, drains a more fertile and beautiful country than the Wabash and its tributaries.25 Emigrants are rapidly settling its banks, and a route has been projected for uniting by canal its waters with those of Lake Erie ”

“ The finest forests in America were here, filled with buffalo, bear, deer, and other game; while the Wabash furnished them fish and gave them a highway easily traversed by which to visit friends in other sections or to make raids on hostile tribes.
The traditions of the Pi-ank-a-shaws indicate that they occupied the site for more than a century before the coming of the whites. [171] Just when the first white man visited the spot cannot be determined. There is little doubt that La Salle passed up the Wabash about 1669, gave it the name of the Ouabache, and marked it on his maps. ”

“ To understand the fashion of any life, one must know the land it is lived in and the procession of the year. This valley is a narrow one, a mere trough between hills, a draught for storms, hardly a crow's flight from the sharp Sierras of the Snows to the curled, red and ochre, uncomforted, bare ribs of Waban. Midway of the groove runs a burrowing, dull river, nearly a hundred miles from where it cuts the lava flats of the north to its widening in a thick, tideless pool of a lake. Hereabouts the ranges have no foothills, but rise up steeply from the bench lands above the river. ”

“ We were very hard pressed, as I understood it later, but I was too young and too dreamy to feel the pinch of poverty. This lower Wabash valley is an Egyptian realm—not very cold in winter, and drowsy with heat in summer. Corn and wheat and hay and melons grow here in heavy, plethoric fashion. Rains come infrequently, then only in deluging storms. The spring comes early, the autumn lingers until quite New Year’s time. In the beech and ash and hickory groves are many turtle doves. Great hawks and buzzards and eagles soar high in the air. ”

“ In a little less than forty leagues, the canoes floated past the confluence of the Ohio, then called the Wabash. Its banks were tenanted by the peaceful Shawanees, who had quailed under the incursions of the Iroquois.
“The thick canes now began to appear so close and strong that the buffalo could not break through them; the insects became intolerable, and as a shelter against the sun of July, the sails were folded into an awning. They had now left the region of prairies, and forests of whitewood, admirable for their vastness and height, crowded even the skirts of the pebbly shore. ”

“ The most considerable rivers intersecting this section of country are the Muskingum, Sciota, Big Miami, and Wabash, all of which, in the spring season, are navigable two or three hundred miles from their mouths.
The valleys of these rivers give place to many extensive and fertile bottoms well adapted to cultivation, and producing the necessaries of life in great abundance and variety. ”

“ At the time this immense cypress swamp is flooded, it exhibits the appearance of a vast number of large trees, standing in a lake, or a bay of the sea. The name of black river, at the distance of sixty miles, is changed, and it is then called the Washata river. Here the course of the river tends to the westward, and the land becomes sufficiently high to admit of cultivation near the bank of the river. At the mouth of the Washata, and near lake Cattahoola, is a small settlement, where the settlers have raised an embankment to prevent inundation when the water is high. ”

“ It was declared to be the worst flood known in Wabash since 1883; and rain was still falling. Hundreds of residents of the lowlands abandoned their homes. Interurban traffic was paralyzed.
ALARMING CONDITIONS
Reports on the following day were still more alarming. The worst conditions prevailed in Kokomo, Wabash, Peru, Logansport, Lafayette and Terra Haute. Thousands of people all along the Wabash were crying for food and shelter.193 Wabash, Kokomo, Peru, Logansport and Lafayette were entirely cut off from communication with the outside world. ”

“ The small prairies bordered with shady groves, the patches of blue-grass, and the sweet waters of the springs, were great attractions. The banks of the Mississinewa, Wild Cat, Pine Creek, Vermilion, and other tributaries, were formerly noted hunting grounds. George Croghan, who described the Wabash as running through "one of the finest countries in the world," mentions the deer as existing in great numbers. On the march of General Harrison's men to Tippecanoe, the killing of deer was an every day occurrence, and at times the frightened animals passed directly in front of the line of march. ”

“ Numerous islands have to-day beautified the Ohio. Despite their inartistic names, Diamond and Slim are tipped at head and foot with charming banks and willowed sand, and each center is clothed in a luxurious forest, rimmed by a gravelly beach piled high with drift and gnarled roots: the whole, with startling clearness, inversely reflected in the mirrored flood. Wabash Island, opposite the mouth of the great tributary, is an insular woodland several miles in length. ”

“ It is, in fact, nothing but a bed of very soft and rich land, and only wants draining to be made productive. We soon after came to the banks of the great Wabash, which is 48 here about half a mile broad, and as the ferry-boat was crossing over with us I amused myself by washing my dirty boots. Before we mounted again we happened to meet with a neighbour of Mr. Birkbeck's, who was returning home; we accompanied him, and soon entered into the prairie lands, up to our horses' bellies in fine grass. ”

“ Besides the Gobard and Hawash, no other river enters the Abhibhad Lake, although the extensive plain to the south, as far as the hills of Hurrah that form the water-shed of the river Whabbee, is drained by a stream, the waters of which flow close to the western side of this lake, through Killaloo to the Hawash. ”