Sketches in Duneland

by Earl H. Reed

Red Owl’s prowess as a hunter, his skill in the rude athletic sports of the village, displayed on his frequent visits during the wooing, had won the admiration of the old warrior. Among the many bundles of valuable pelts that were borne along the Great Sauk Trail to the traders’ posts, the largest were usually those of Red Owl. The fire-water of the white man did not lure him to disaster as it did many of his red brothers. He always transacted his business quickly and returned from the posts with the ammunition, traps and other supplies for which he had exchanged his furs.

For a year he quietly accumulated a secret hoard of selected skins, which he laid before the door of the fond father as the marriage offering. The lovers disappeared on the trail that was to lead them to their home. For five days they travelled through the dunes and primeval forests. They came down the trail that crossed French Creek, climbed out of the ravine, and entered the village of Red Owl’s people. The wigwams were scattered along the stretch of higher ground among the trees. Omemee was cordially welcomed and soon grew accustomed to her new environment.

For many years the young men of the tribe had trapped muskrats, beaver and mink along the creek and in the swamps beyond its headwaters. Small furred animals were abundant for many miles around, and, during the fur season, the trappers were dispersed over a wide extent of territory.

When “Peg Leg” Carr came into the dune country the only human trails he found were those of the red men. He came alone and built a cabin on the creek not far from the Indian Village. Peg Leg may have still cherished a secret longing for human society which he was not willing to admit, even to himself. He had abandoned his last habitat for the ostensible reason that “thar was too many people ’round.” He came from about a hundred miles back on the Sauk Trail. After a family disagreement he had left his wife and two sons to their own devices in the wilderness, and was not heard of for nearly ten years. He suddenly appeared one morning, stumping along the trail, with his left knee fitted to the top of a hickory support. The lower part of the leg was gone, and he explained its absence by declaring that it had been “bit off.” The time-worn pleasantry seemed to amuse him, and no amount of coaxing would elicit further details. There was a deep ugly scar in the left side of his neck. His vocal chords had been injured and he could talk only in hoarse whispers. He said that his throat had been “gouged out.” Somebody or something had nearly wrecked Peg Leg physically, but the story, whatever it was, remained locked in his bosom. He admitted that he had “been to sea,” but beyond that no facts were obtainable.

After a brief sojourn at his old home he shouldered his pack and started west. When he arrived at French Creek he spent several days in looking the country over before deciding on the location of his cabin. He was a good-natured old fellow and the Indians did not particularly resent his intrusion, even when he began to set a line of traps along the creek. The small animals were so numerous that one trapper more or less made little difference, and he got on very well with his red neighbors. They rather pitied his infirmities and were disposed to make allowances. He was over seventy and apparently harmless.

When the old man had accumulated a small stock of pelts it was his custom to carry them to a trading post located about forty miles back on the trail and exchange them for supplies for his simple housekeeping and other necessities. These trips often consumed ten days, as his loads were heavy and he was compelled to travel slowly. On his return, when he came to the rude log bridge over which the trail crossed the creek in the ravine, he would sometimes wearily lay his pack down and pound on the timbers with his hickory stump as a signal to those above. He was unable to reach them with his impaired voice. Somebody in the wigwams usually heard him and came down to help the exhausted old trapper carry his burden up the steep incline. After resting awhile he would trudge on to his cabin.

A few years after the advent of Peg Leg a troop of soldiers arrived and built a fort. For strategic reasons the commander of the government post at Detroit decided to keep a small garrison at the end of the lake. A spot was cleared on the bluff and two small brass cannon were mounted in the block-house inside the log stockade. The tops of the surrounding trees were cut away so that the guns would command the trail from where it entered the north side of the ravine to the point at which it disappeared around a low hill south of the fort.

The French Creek Trail was a branch of the Great Sauk Trail, which was the main thoroughfare from the Detroit post to the mouth of Chicago river. It was joined near the headwaters of the St. Joseph and Kankakee rivers, in what is now northeastern Indiana, by another trail that followed the north banks of the Kankakee from the Illinois country. The sinuous routes had been used from time immemorable. They were the established highways of the red men and the arteries of their simple commerce. Thousands of moccasined feet traversed them on peaceful errands, and grim war parties sometimes moved swiftly along the numberless forest paths that connected with the main trails. There was a net-work of these all through the Indian country. Trees twisted and bent in a peculiar way, which we now often see in the woods, were landmarks left by the makers of various small trails that were travelled infrequently.

Soon after the fort was built at French Creek, Pierre Chenault came and established a trading post near the village. He was followed by a number of settlers who built log houses along the edge of the bluff. The red man’s fatherland was invaded. The civilization of the white man—or the lack of it—had come, with its attending evils of strong waters and organized rapacity. The waves of an alien race, with strange tongues and new weapons of steel, had broken over him. His means of subsistence dwindled. His heritage was passing to the sway of the despoiler.

The Indians loitered around Pierre Chenault’s trading post, bartered their few valuables for fire-water, and neglected the pursuits that had made them happy and prosperous. Chenault was a half-breed. His father belonged to that hardy race of French-Canadian voyageurs who had broken the paths of the wilderness in the north country, and penetrated the fastnesses of the territory of the Great Lakes and the Mississippi. His mother was an Ojibwa on the south shore of Lake Superior. He was about forty, with a lean and hardened frame. His straight black hair was beginning to be streaked with gray, and fell to his shoulders. Piercing eyes looked out from under the heavy brows with an expression of low cunning, and his face carried the stamp of villainy. He was a mongrel, and in his case the mixture was a failure. He inherited the evil traits of both races and none of the virtues of either.