On the whole, notwithstanding some privations, this early life was pleasant. Such freedom from conventionalities, such hospitality, such equality, such freedom from the tyranny of fashion, from corruption in civil government, from millionaire influence, such an aspect everywhere of true American citizenship, such an abundance of wild game and of wild fruits free for all, although there was even then some wrong-doing, it is no wonder that some look almost regretfully back to those good old days.

Pleasant and some thrilling recollections of the wild animals of the early years belong to those who were pioneer children then. It took these wild animals, especially the quails and grouse and wolves and deer, so abundant in those days, some little time to learn that some new occupants were taking possession of their haunts, and when the wolves would come suddenly, in the day time, into a field of corn, and the deer would come suddenly upon a settler's cabin, while the children were delighted, these animals were certainly surprised.

It was for the children a thrilling experience of this rich life, when in the evening, returning home from some spelling school or literary society, they heard the sudden, quick, sharp barking of the wolves. While the pioneer children were not generally timid, two or three wolves could do enough howling to quicken the flow of their blood and hasten their foot-steps. Yet it was a sound which some of the New England born children loved well to hear.

The pioneers sometimes had large "drive" hunts. A good example of these was one in White County in 1840, in Big Creek Township. The boundaries of the hunting ground were, on the north, Monon Creek;

on the east, the Tippecanoe River; on the south, the Wabash; on the west, the county line. At eight o'clock in the morning the men and boys started along the outskirts of this large area, with no guns in their hands, as they were only to scare up the game and send the deer and the wolves, from grove and prairie, inward to the center. They were to meet at two o'clock at Reynold's Grove. There scaffolds had been erected, and on those were the sharp shooters with rifles and ammunition. As that afternoon hour approached, from each direction the startled deer and frightened wolves began to appear, and soon the sharp reports of the rifles reached the ears of the distant boys and men. On every side of those elevated stands the deer fell, and when the riders and footmen reached this central place they collected fifty deer as the result of that day's chase, and found many dead wolves stretched upon the ground. How many broke the ranks and escaped no one could accurately tell.

In some of these hunts, when not carefully conducted, most of the enclosed game would escape.*

The common mode of hunting deer was not what is called driving, but what hunters called "still hunting" or sometimes called "stalking." No noise was made, no dogs were used to track them up. But some

*Deer will rush quickly by the excited hunter. I came near being run over, in my youth, by a large drove of startled deer, as I chanced to be, one day, in their runway in the West Creek woods. There was no time to count their number, but had they been crowded together like buffalo they would have trampled the young hunter under their feet. It was a beautiful and a thrilling sight, as, one after another, they bounded by, almost within reach of one's very hands. T. H. B.

times a man would mount a horse from the back of which he could shoot, and having on the neck of the horse a bell, would start up a herd of deer and follow them up with his horse and bell as best he could. The theory was, and a fact it proved to be, that the deer would in a few hours become so accustomed to the sound of the bell and the sight of the horse that the hunter could approach near enough to make a sure shot. Then he could strap the deer on his horse behind him and return to his home.

The time may come, in another generation or two, when no eye-witnesses are living, that the large numbers of deer which traditions will say were often seen together, will be counted only as hunter's tales, and not entitled to belief; but that those beautiful creatures that added so much life to the woodlands and the prairies were here in large numbers, is now beyond any question. There are some living who have seen them.

It is a well attested fact that when men were putting on the roof of what for many years was known as the "Rockwell House," in Crown Point, they saw coming out from Brown's Point, two miles northward, and passing across the open prairie to School Grove, one mile southeastward, a herd of deer, numbering, as well as they could count them, one hundred and eleven.

In 1843 and in 1844 as many as seventy deer, it is claimed, could be seen at one time on the prairies in Newton and Jasper counties; and Mr. David Nowels, one of the substantial citizens of Rensselaer, says that he has seen as many as seventy-five at one time. While not a noted hunter, as his father was, he has

killed as many as five deer in one day. He is authority also for the statement that, in those earlier years of pioneer life, good raccoon skins, black, would bring from two to three dollars each, and a good, large mink skin would sell for seven dollars, and a large otter skin would sometimes bring ten dollars. Muskrat skins were not in so great demand.*

The facts are well attested that others have seen, some of whom are yet living, from twenty to forty and fifty deer in a single herd or drove, either quietiy feeding, or in that beautiful and rapid motion which has given to us the comparison, one "runs like a deer."

Some few noted hunters were among the pioneers, equal, probably, in their success, to Ossian's "hunters. of the deer." One of these was V. Morgan, of Pulaski County, Jefferson Township. The number of deer that he killed is not exactly known, but it was estimated at four hundred. The last deer killed in that township, according to the traditions, were shot in the winter of 1880 and 1881. Of these there were only three or four.

There can be no exaggeration in asserting that some sixty and seventy years ago there were deer here not only by the hundreds but by the thousands; as there were the prairie chickens or pinnated grouse here thousands upon thousands, and wild ducks and wild geese and wild pigeons, surely by the millions.

*Conversation in a visit October 16, 1899.

CHAPTER VI.

COUNTY ORGANIZATIONS.

1. By an act of the Indiana Legislature, approved January 9, 1832, a certain area was to be from and after April 1, 1832, known as La Porte County. This area, according to the copy of the act examined, was thus described: "Beginning at the State line which divides the State of Indiana and Michigan Territory, and at the northwest corner of township number thirty-eight north, range number four west of the [second] principal meridian, thence running east with said State line to the center of range number one west of said meridian; thence south twenty-two miles; thence west, parallel with said State line, twenty-one miles; thence north to the place of beginning." The northwest corner of La Porte County, it thus appears, like that of the State, is in Lake Michigan, and it also appears that the Legislature formed into a county some land, a strip twelve miles in width which had not then been purchased from the Indians. Since that time an addition has been made to the southern part of the county and a small area has been added on the east, so that now the Kankakee River forms most of the southern and a part of the eastern boundary.

Commissioners of the new county were soon elected, Chapel W. Brown, Jesse Morgan, and Elijah H. Brown; also George Thomas was elected clerk, and Benjamin McCarty, sheriff. The commissioners