“One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh.” — The Old Testament, “Ecclesiastes”
My Indiana roots run deep. My mother’s people were pioneers who settled near what is now Michigantown, a few miles from Frankfort. I’ve written often about the Kellys’ Old Home Place that was venerated by my grandfather’s and my mother’s generations. The house and its round barn that people came from miles away to see when it was built are gone, and all that remains today is an old country cemetery in the woods on a knoll.
Mother told many stories that were passed down by her elders. There were still Indians present when the pioneers arrived. Sometimes the Indians would come to borrow a large kettle. One of my ancestors was terrified of them when he was a boy. He’d hide under a bed and scrunch up against the wall. One old Indian knew this and would get down on his hands and knees and peer and grin at him, making him shiver and shake.
When I stand amidst the tilting tombstones and muse about those who established the Old Home Place nearly two hundred years ago I have a sense of continuity and a connection to past time. However, the time of my ancestors and the Indians whom they encountered were only a very recent chapter in the story of that place.
One of my ancestors plowed up a granite-like, stone axe head with indentations carved in each side to which a handle was lashed. We knew that the Indians had left it there, but we had no idea of its age or what it was used for until our friend, Mary Jane who is a docent at the State Museum, put us in touch with Michele Greenan, the museum’s Director of Archeology and Indiana historic sites.
Michele says that it was used to cut wood. Its age? Perhaps as much six thousand years! It dates to the Middle/Late Archaic period in Indiana that occurred from 6,000 to 1500 B.C. Native Americans were in Indiana as far back as 12,000 years ago or perhaps longer, and the Indians whom the pioneers encountered were descended from them.
What a thrill it gives me to hold in my hand such an ancient object and think about its link to my ancestors! I wonder how long it must have taken to shape it and to carve out the indentations.
Michele said, “Like all human cultures, their cultures were constantly changing and new technologies evolving.” Her words made me think. Unlike the birds and the beasts who are governed by instinct, homo sapiens — knowing man — is an inventor. There was a progression from the primitive stone tools used by the archaic peoples to the more efficient, metal implements used by the Indians of my ancestors’ era. Michele said that the native Americans quickly lost skills such as pottery making that they once had.
The Kelly family became wealthy pillars of Clinton County, but I have always wondered what became of the Indians who were there when they arrived. The answer is not a pleasant one. In 1830, a few years after my ancestors arrived, Congress passed The Indian Removal Act after contentious debate. Some Indians had signed “Whiskey Treaties” after being given alcohol; some sold their land; the remainder were forced to leave at gunpoint.
I can only imagine the anguish of those ripped from their ancestral home which I’m sure meant as much to them as The Old Home Place meant to my family. In the South the forced removal was called “The Trail of Tears.” In northern Indiana, it was called the “The Trail of Death” because so many died.
One of the Indian chiefs said after the trek to Kansas, “The government must now be satisfied. We have been taken from homes affording us plenty, and brought to a desert — a wilderness — and are now to be scattered and left as the husbandman scatters his seed.” wclarke@comcast.net