Fergus County argus. [volume] (Lewistown, Mont.) 1886-1946, 1897-01-14
REVOLVING REVELATION.
Famous Wisconsin Spring Rises
from a Graveyard.
uppoe Medicinal Waters Issue from
Ground Occupied by Old skele-
tons of W~innebaRo
Indians

The people who have for the last rs
years been deriving much real or fan
cied benefit from drinking the medi-
cinal waters of Big Indian spring, on
the farm of Hans Egerede in the town
of Springvale, Wis. are now afflicted
with qualms of the stomach that threat
EN- to couDteract all the good the spring
may have done them.
In a narrow valley of the wild region
of the southeastern Wisconsin water
shed, lies, or until the other day lay,
Big Indian spring. The country
roundabout is the hilliest and most
rugged of the central west. the pre-
cipitous hills lacking ONLY height to
give the scenery all the characteristics
of a ounta landscape. Some of the
hills are indeed quite high, rising
1000, I,2o0 and $500 feet into the
pellucid Wisconsin air. Everywhere
are the ruins of an older world, the yet
undestroyed battlements of the ancient
surface of the globe, left behind when
the rains and rivers cut down the land
and graved the valleys, for these Wis
consin mountains are not wrinklings Of
the earth's crusts, or u~pheavals of vol
canic fires like other mountains, but
fiint-capped eminences which, once part
of a general level. now tower high
above the rest Of the country, their for
mer surroundings having been washed
way.
In the very widest part OF this re-
gion. oozing out from under an i'm
mense monolith that at a distance bears
the appearance of IL rude s.mblance of
a man, is a lively little spring that, flow
ing some ~ feet deep. drops into a
nearly circular pool some 81 feet in cir
conference. "A barrier ledge dammine
back the current to form the pool.
This is the Big Indian spring. its name,
according TO the belief of the Morse
folk who make up the population of the
toy nship. being given to it on account
of the big rock at whose base the spring
arises.
But an inmate of the county poor
house. Il daft old man of unknown and
vast age. the last of the Yankee pioneers
vino first won the land from nature
and then sold out to the Norsemau and
moved on after the r%etreatipg Indian.
this old man has always insisted that
the spring got its name for some other
reason. and that it. should be Stunned
by all. His memory went no farther
than this, and though he Always strived
To remember what this reason was and
why the spring should be stunned his
aged mind could never quite call back
what he wished to know.
Ilut the reason for the name of the
spring and the reason why the waters
4 -I-.-.II l.. L.. all = ,n,tx SsnI.n-
ir"Iy apparent. The last four years
have been dry mes in Wisconsin. at
moSphcrically, not cxciscly. for the
rurmaI mount of beer has flowed. but
the ri Tfall has been deficient. This
war thc rainfall has returned to the
| normal. but the effect of the dryncss
Of Tast years has not thereby been re-
paired. Whole forests dropped their
leaves in the early summer and are now
decd. Dozens of lakelcts, some of them
"A square mile in extent, are now
marshes and even cultivated land.
Springs and wells have gone dry every
where and among them Big Indian
spring. and the real reason for its name,
long hidden beneath its cold. iron
imprcgnatcd waters. long sought i'm the
dim mind of the pauper pioneer. though
not the reason for its medicinal virtues
has been disclosed.
Big Indian spring is a CLEARINGHOUSE
Its bottom for n depth OF four feet is
go, cred with human bones, heaped
upon each other, packed down by the
infiltration of the waters, covered with
Il ligh, film of mud. Attic upper end OF
lh, ! asin there are no bones, and stand
ing there one sees that the heaps of hui
man remains rise to "A height of some
four feet above the tioor of the pool.
No single skeletons are To he dis
cerEed. All the bones lie in an indis-
eliminate mass, parts of skulls pro-
trudiag here and there. Whether this
is Il burial place of the Indians of our
own times, the Sacs and Foxes, who
were in southern Wisconsin when the
white man came, the Bjibeways and
Winnrbagoes, who preceded them, or
the Dakota Sioux, who, before Column
bus, We're Wisconsin Indians, none can
say. The old pioneer is dead and no
one can jog his f:Iltcring memory with
the recital of the late discovery. 50 who
the lead of Zig Indian spring were
when alive seems likely To forever re-
main Il mystery."hicago Chronicle.
~. S..a..