The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1906-03-10
ON THE BANKS OF THE WABASH
BY PHILIP s. RUSH.

! "ON THE BANKS OF THE WABASH"
BY PHILIP s. RUSH.
What the Hudson is to eastern New
York, and the Susquehanna to Penn
sylvania, the Wabash is to Indiana.
About it cluster the legends of In
dams who occupied the country for
years, possibly centuries, Before the
French made their first incursions
into the Middle West, and all the
tales of romance and history of the
first white men who mingled among
the Miamis and the Weas. Its beauty
is of the western type, but just as
charming in its way as the wonder
full scenery of its eastern rivals.
To the traveller the Wabash is, in
deed, an interesting stream. Its fame
has been perpetuated in song, and the
deeds upon its banks have furnished
the historical novelist with material
out of which he has wrought wonder
full stories. The Indiana stream was
first used by the Indians, then by
traders and explorers who reached
the Mississippi from the Great Lakes
by crossing the portage of the Maumee
10 the head waters of the Wabash,
and then floating down the latter
river to their destination. The val
ley of the Wabash, has been the scene
Of some of the most stirring events
in American history.
The scant properties of early In
diana settlers were transported up the
Wabash on rude keel boats, then,
with the evolution of the steamboat,
the river became great commercial
highway. Fast railroads soon after
ward drove the slow, plodding steam
ers out of business and today the
river is like big playground, famed
for its history and the beautiful see
merry along its banks, where picnickers
may find the happiest diversions,
where boatmen may spend a profit
able day with their small steamers,
and where the time-honored fisher
man may fish until his patience and
bait are exhausted.
Intent upon seeing the sights of
the old river, an interesting trip may
be taken in a light draft boat, start
ing, say, at Huntington, where the
river is merely big creek, and float
ing down stream, in and out of the
tortuous yet beautiful windings to the
broad Ohio, where the waters of the
Wabash lose their identity and travel
onward to the sea. Just such trip
as this marked the discovery of the
Wabash late in the seventeenth cen
tury, when the French traders in
vaded the unbroken wilds of what is
now Indiana in search of skins and
pelts. A few years later Monsieur
DeAubry, with 400 French and In
dians, following the route described
by the traders, padded from Kaskas-
kia on the Mississippi upthe Wabash,
crossed the Maumee portage, and, in
frail little boats, eventually reached
the French stronghold of Quebec.
The visitor to-day may see traces
of the old portage, and it takes no
very vivid imagination to picture the
scenes connected with this early voy-
age on the St. Jerome, as Louis XIV
decreed the Wabash should be called.
But the modern traveller makes the
trip in his naphtha launch, and goes
many miles day, while the French
travelled in light birch-bark canoes,
or dugouts, and their speed depended
upon the strength of the oarsmen.
Passing the mouth of the Eel River,
and the city of Logansport located
there, seventy-fve miles below the
traveller reaches Lafayette, the city
built close to the site of the Tippeca-
noe battle-ground. Here, in 1871,
Gen. William Henry Harrison, after
ward President, defeated The Prophet,
brother of the great Tecumseh, in
one of the fiercest Indian battles
fought in the Ohio Valley. The old
attle-ground has been converted into
park, and its historic interest justi-
fes the wide fame it enjoys.
From Tippecanoe it is short trip
to the site of the old Indian and
French town, Ouiatanon, and another
trip of seventy miles takes one to the
ruins of old Fort Harrison, where, on
September sd, 1872, the Indians made
their last desperate stand in Indiana.
In an all-night battle Gen. Zachary
Taylor, afterward elected President
of the United States, defeated the red
men so badly that they gave up all
hope of regaining their old hunting
grounds, and tribe by tribe, trailed to
the freer prairie lands of Illinois and
the great West.
Terre Haute, which was establish
ed under the very guns of the old
fort, is situated few miles below the
fort site. Here lived Senator Daniel
w. Voorhees,, the ''tall sycamore of
the Wabash Secretary of the Navy
R.W. Thompson, "the silver-tongued
orator of the Wabash" and Paul
Dresser, whose "On the banks of the
Wabash, far away" has been echoed
and re-echoed many times in every
State of the Union.
Passing this city and Hutsonville,
the living monument to the victims
of the Hutson Indian massacre, and
Merom where sheer bluff rises Ioc
feet above the surface of the river,
Vincennes is reached. Founded in
1892 Vincennes, or Fort Knox as il
is sometimes called, naturally became
the scene of the earliest Indian bat
ties, and its part in the Revolution,
so faithfully told by Maurice Thomp'
son in his "Alice of Old Vincennes, y
solved the destiny of the Northwest
Territory. 1t was to this fort that
General Hamilton marched from De
troit to meet George Rogers Clarke
and defeat it was from this fort thai
Harrison marched to Tippecanoe il
was at this fort that the first legisla