0:21 [SPEAKER_01]: Long time listeners will know that I've been all over the country finding stories, from Florida to Washington State, from Texas to Minneapolis. 0:31 [SPEAKER_01]: All this time, there's been one at the end of my street, literally at the end of my street that I haven't covered. 0:40 [SPEAKER_01]: Two blocks from my office, a small circle, of about a dozen law cabins, marks the spot of an 1826 treaty between the Pottautomi and the Miami Indian nations in the U.S. government. 0:55 [SPEAKER_01]: One of the cabins belonged to the governor of Indiana, and another, the governor of Michigan 1:01 [SPEAKER_01]: Other dignitaries and military officers filled the remaining cabins. 1:08 [SPEAKER_01]: Two years earlier, in 1824, the Fall Creek Massacre had put the entire region on alert, and both sides were eager to avoid more violence. 1:20 [SPEAKER_01]: Directly south of here, Inc. Day, Pinnleton, Indiana, men, women and children of Asanika and Miami tribes were brutally murdered by white settlers. 1:33 [SPEAKER_01]: For the Native Americans, there was no tension between the two groups. 1:37 [SPEAKER_01]: They wanted only to hunt and reassure the settlers of their peaceful intentions. 1:43 [SPEAKER_01]: The same could not be said for the settlers. 1:46 [SPEAKER_01]: Under the pretense of looking for a lost calf, the settlers led the men of this hunting party out into the woods and slaughtered them. 1:55 [SPEAKER_01]: Then they went to the natives camp and killed the women in children. 2:03 [SPEAKER_01]: When news spread of this massacre, the American public was horrified. 2:09 [SPEAKER_01]: So horrified that four of their murderers, James Hudson, Andrew Sawyer, John Bridge Sr. and John Bridge Jr. became the first ever white men in American history, sentenced to death for crimes against Native Americans. 2:29 [SPEAKER_01]: two years later, and 60 miles north, the Treaty of the Mississina Wall was signed here in Wabash. 2:37 [SPEAKER_01]: And for a brief moment in time, peace was possible. 2:41 [SPEAKER_01]: There have been more important treaties in the world, but the Treaty of the Mississina Wall spared uncounted lives along the frontier. 2:50 [SPEAKER_01]: And had it never happened, my podcast's hometown, Wabash and Diana, may not be here 2:59 [SPEAKER_01]: The name of this little neighborhood of cabins is known as Paradise Spring, and I recently set down with a friend of ours to help us tell this story. 3:11 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm Diana Unger, and I'm the Secretary of the Paradise Spring Board. 3:16 [SPEAKER_00]: I've been on the board since 2010, and have seen a lot of changes, but a lot of exciting things, and really glad to be here. 3:28 [SPEAKER_00]: This area of Indiana was not settled at all prior to 1826. 3:33 [SPEAKER_00]: The southern part of the state was an up near Fort Wayne, but there was just natives in this area. 3:40 [SPEAKER_00]: And they wanted to get land to build a canal through here. 3:44 [SPEAKER_00]: They thought that would be a good way to get people into settle this part of the state. 3:50 [SPEAKER_00]: So in 1826, there were three commissioners that were involved in finding a place to hold the treaty, had to be a place where there was plenty of water because there was over 2,000 people here, including the natives and the militia and everything, so they needed lots of good water supply and General John Tipton found this area and this is where they decided to hold it. 4:15 [SPEAKER_01]: Without a treaty, everyone living in this area, in north and west of it, would be especially vulnerable to violence. 4:24 [SPEAKER_01]: On both sides, I asked if it was the Miami tribe, and what the native name for this place may have been. 4:31 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, probably the Miami can come in on. 4:34 [SPEAKER_00]: And that meant paradise spring or place of running water. 4:39 [SPEAKER_00]: It was just a beautiful place, very clear water. 4:42 [SPEAKER_00]: They needed plenty of flat land too, and this was all forested, but just because of the river being there and there was enough of a clearing that it didn't take probably a great deal of time, although it probably took three to four weeks at least to clear enough space and build some cabins to have the treaty. 4:59 [SPEAKER_00]: There was three commissioners there, General John Tippedon, 5:03 [SPEAKER_00]: And then Governor Lewis Cass, he was the governor of the Michigan Territory and then Governor Ray from Indiana was there plus a lot of the chiefs. 5:13 [SPEAKER_00]: They wanted to get all of them to come out here for this treaty. 5:17 [SPEAKER_00]: General Tipton was also the Indian agent in this time. 5:21 [SPEAKER_00]: So he knew a lot of the chiefs and the tribes and everything. 5:24 [SPEAKER_00]: So they had a lot of people come here for this treaty. 5:34 [SPEAKER_00]: Chief Legro, that's what Legro is named after. 5:37 [SPEAKER_00]: Chief Richardville was very important. 5:40 [SPEAKER_00]: Menteo, I believe. 5:42 [SPEAKER_00]: Chief God, for I was there, there was several of them. 5:45 [SPEAKER_00]: That pot of water me and the Miami were the main ones. 5:48 [SPEAKER_00]: The we nation was here and there was also some other smaller tribes. 5:53 [SPEAKER_00]: So there was a lot of people that they had come here because they wanted to be safe to build a canal through here. 5:58 [SPEAKER_00]: When they built this, they didn't expect this to be there for a long time. 6:02 [SPEAKER_00]: It was just some cabins to build for the governors to stay in. 6:07 [SPEAKER_00]: They had the militia at some place. 6:10 [SPEAKER_00]: They had traders that came there. 6:12 [SPEAKER_00]: So there was about 10 buildings and 15, 20 years, 30 years or whatever. 6:18 [SPEAKER_00]: They just rotted away because they weren't taken care of. 6:21 [SPEAKER_00]: later on then this the big four railroad came into this area and they back in the from the time that the cabins deteriorated until the 1980s this was just an abandoned railroad yard. 6:43 [SPEAKER_01]: Looking at Paradise Spring, you would never guess it had been left to rot. 6:48 [SPEAKER_01]: I had no idea it had deteriorated to that degree. 6:56 [SPEAKER_00]: It was just a sender patch and everything. 6:58 [SPEAKER_00]: And then in the 1980s, a principal from O.J. 7:01 [SPEAKER_00]: Neighbors, David Saadervick, had been reading about the story and saw the importance of this site and thought they needed to preserve it. 7:10 [SPEAKER_00]: So they got a lot of other people from Wabash involved the Mayor Dallas Winchester at that time, Phil Magner, Bob Madden, just a lot of citizens worked long and hard to try to restore this thing. 7:24 [SPEAKER_00]: At first it was just all private, they asked for donations, they probably had a lot of companies that donated money after they heard about the importance of it because if it wasn't for that treaty or that spring there on the hillside, Wabash may never have been built here. 7:41 [SPEAKER_00]: It was the beginnings of a settlement after the treaty was over and there was some other early settlers around here. 7:47 [SPEAKER_00]: After the treaty was over, most of the people left, but if you saw this as an opportunity to start settling here and they actually lived in the cabins, they had a post office in one of them, Anna, which was one of the earlier 8:04 [SPEAKER_00]: people, he and David Burr had worked to establish the town of Wabash, get it by some land and platted out for that. 8:13 [SPEAKER_00]: And he's actually considered an early founder of Wabash, Hugh Hannah. 8:19 [SPEAKER_00]: But the Samuel McClure family, he had brought a wagon load of apples from Ohio. 8:25 [SPEAKER_00]: These traders, they saw this as a way to 8:27 [SPEAKER_00]: come and maybe sell some of their produce their first and things like that, but he came and saw the land and then he decided the next year to bring his family back here and they lived there at the cabins for a short time until they could get a place so they could build their own place to stay. 8:49 [SPEAKER_00]: Dr. James Ford, the Ford meter box industry here in town, their ancestor was an early settler here. 8:56 [SPEAKER_00]: He started his practice here. 8:58 [SPEAKER_00]: It's one of the largest employers here in town. 9:01 [SPEAKER_00]: It's Alan Manchester Avenue, and Dr. Ford, he was also, he went to fight in the Civil War also. 9:09 [SPEAKER_00]: And so his wife had the responsibility of raising the family and taking care of everything. 9:15 [SPEAKER_00]: here, they are just a very important family here in town. 9:19 [SPEAKER_00]: They ended up the place that they built their cabin after they left Paradise Spring. 9:24 [SPEAKER_00]: They found out that Chief Charlie, one of the Indian chiefs, it was actually his land that they were on. 9:31 [SPEAKER_00]: So then they had to move three miles west of Wavash, close to Rich Valley. 9:37 [SPEAKER_00]: And they were there. 9:38 [SPEAKER_00]: And started their farming operation for a while and oh, I have another little story. 9:44 [SPEAKER_01]: I just thought about I asked Diana to clarify which tribes she was referring to 9:52 [SPEAKER_00]: It was probably the Miami's, because the Miami's were here in Wabash and south of the river. 9:58 [SPEAKER_00]: When they came to the treaty, that's where their camp meant was on the south side of the river, and then the Potawatomi are up north a little bit farther. 10:06 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to back up and tell you another story. 10:08 [SPEAKER_00]: Another thing that we found out that was that in 1820, the first business was established in Wabash, and it was a mill that the government built for the Indians. 10:20 [SPEAKER_00]: so they could bring their grain there to have it ground. 10:24 [SPEAKER_00]: And it was just a crudely built mill and it was west of Wavash and it was on Mill Creek. 10:31 [SPEAKER_00]: Since they built the mill there, then they decided to name the Creek Mill Creek because there was a mill there. 10:38 [SPEAKER_00]: So that was a place for the Indians to build. 10:40 [SPEAKER_00]: And like I said, Jonathan Keller was the last miller that they brought here to run the mill. 10:46 [SPEAKER_00]: And he had a daughter, I believe it's Elizabeth, 10:50 [SPEAKER_00]: hold me to that for sure. 10:52 [SPEAKER_00]: And then she married the McClure boy. 10:55 [SPEAKER_00]: And I maybe it was Joseph. 10:57 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not sure. 10:58 [SPEAKER_00]: But they're wedding. 10:59 [SPEAKER_00]: They had to find someone to marry them. 11:02 [SPEAKER_00]: Wabash was not a county at that time. 11:05 [SPEAKER_00]: It was Cass County and Grant County were the two counties. 11:08 [SPEAKER_00]: And they went over there to Grant County and they found a justice of the piece to 11:13 [SPEAKER_00]: come to the area to marry them. 11:16 [SPEAKER_00]: He gets to the brides, a family's home, and he says, I can't marry you. 11:21 [SPEAKER_00]: I've crossed over into the other county, so this is out of my jurisdiction. 11:25 [SPEAKER_00]: So the whole wedding party gets on horseback and rides a mile to the east so they can get married. 11:33 [SPEAKER_00]: So we reenact this story during our little 11:36 [SPEAKER_00]: play that we do. 11:37 [SPEAKER_00]: We used horses a couple of times. 11:40 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't think we're going to do that this year. 11:43 [SPEAKER_00]: We're getting ready for founders festival and it'll be an all-day event. 11:47 [SPEAKER_00]: We'll have different things going on. 11:49 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't think we'll be using the horses this year, but that was a cool thing to do. 11:53 [SPEAKER_01]: I asked Diana how they went about restoring cabins that old. 12:01 [SPEAKER_01]: She said they just found new ones on other lots, and moved them here to reconstruct the original camp as accurately as possible. 12:10 [SPEAKER_00]: Like I said, for a while, nothing was there. 12:12 [SPEAKER_00]: It was just in the abandoned railroad yard. 12:14 [SPEAKER_00]: Then in the 1980s, they went ahead and started reconstructing the cabins. 12:19 [SPEAKER_00]: Different people contacted them and said, oh, I've got an old cabin on my place. 12:24 [SPEAKER_00]: So a lot of things were donated that way. 12:27 [SPEAKER_00]: For a while, we didn't do re-enactments in the 1990s. 12:31 [SPEAKER_00]: They had several. 12:32 [SPEAKER_00]: very big reenactments it was very neat about 2015 we started to try to do reenactments again they're not a huge thing like 1812 but we mainly concentrate on the signing of the treaty we tell the story of that and last year we started opening the settlers cabin the second 12:58 [SPEAKER_00]: And it's the cabin that's down the hill just tucked away. 13:01 [SPEAKER_00]: A lot of people don't even know it's there. 13:04 [SPEAKER_00]: But it's a beautiful shady spot. 13:06 [SPEAKER_00]: And we are there to tell the story and just show people what it was like at that time. 13:11 [SPEAKER_00]: And we're going to have an important sign dedication that day to show the location of this spring. 13:18 [SPEAKER_00]: We do an old-fashioned Christmas event too down there and have father Christmas come. 13:23 [SPEAKER_00]: So it's the night of the kickoff for the holiday season. 13:27 [SPEAKER_00]: I think it's called Jingle Jubilee in November. 13:30 [SPEAKER_01]: I asked Diana to say more about the canal and what followed the treaty. 13:35 [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, they wanted to get the land so they could build a canal. 13:39 [SPEAKER_00]: It turned into not being a very reasonable money-making scheme. 13:44 [SPEAKER_00]: Water wasn't high enough, but for about 20, 30, 40 years or whatever the canal brought visitors or not visitors, but people to settle here. 13:54 [SPEAKER_00]: They were coming from the east or coming up from the south part of the state. 13:59 [SPEAKER_00]: But then the railroads, more popular, it was more economical to travel that way a lot faster. 14:06 [SPEAKER_00]: So the canals died out, also the inner urban. 14:10 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if you're familiar with inner urban thing. 14:13 [SPEAKER_00]: It was an electric line through the city. 14:15 [SPEAKER_00]: So that's how they got around and they'd go from different towns to it. 14:20 [SPEAKER_00]: And so it's 14:21 [SPEAKER_00]: Pirate Ice Cream is very important part because of the treaty and canal, the inner urban and the railroads. 14:29 [SPEAKER_00]: So there was a lot of history there. 14:32 [SPEAKER_01]: I gave DNA the opportunity to say more about her organization and the work they do. 14:38 [SPEAKER_00]: A lot of the signs that are there on the cabins, they'll be informational signs. 14:43 [SPEAKER_00]: So if people have the time, they can just go down there and read about the whole thing. 14:48 [SPEAKER_00]: We have brochures, we have a website to tell them about it. 14:52 [SPEAKER_00]: The school kids, especially we want to tell. 14:55 [SPEAKER_00]: In 2013, we were blessed to receive a sizable educational grant from a woman that loved Paradise Spring. 15:05 [SPEAKER_00]: And she just decided to leave us some money before that. 15:08 [SPEAKER_00]: They just scraped and scraped. 15:10 [SPEAKER_00]: I thought of one other thing. 15:11 [SPEAKER_00]: Since we do have this educational grant, we also started offering scholarships. 15:17 [SPEAKER_00]: to Wobbash County seniors in order to qualify, they have to write an essay about Paradise Spring. 15:24 [SPEAKER_00]: There's a different emphasis every year, and the guidance counselors have the information about that, and then they can submit the essay, and one winner is chosen from each school, and they have to read their essay, and it's recorded, and then we go ahead and play it during the founders' fest. 15:46 [SPEAKER_00]: Our website is www.paradicespring.org, and it's Paradise Spring. 15:54 [SPEAKER_00]: It's just singular, no S on the end. 15:57 [SPEAKER_00]: So Paradisespring.org. 15:59 [SPEAKER_00]: And yes, they want more information or one donate, that would be great too. 16:04 [SPEAKER_00]: Just like I said, the second Saturdays of that's from April through October. 16:10 [SPEAKER_00]: We're down at the settler's cabin. 16:13 [SPEAKER_00]: Have that open from 930 until noon. 16:16 [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you, Deanna, for joining us. 16:18 [SPEAKER_01]: Thanks to the rest of you for listening. 16:21 [SPEAKER_01]: And if you ever do make a visit to Paradise Spring, make sure to reach out to me ahead of time. 16:26 [SPEAKER_01]: So I can meet you there, or have you into my studio, for coffee.
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