nificent features of the landscape, are restricted and hardly adequate as a means by which the imagination can reconstruct the gloomy, intricate forest depths through which the pioneer forced his way to his wilderness. home.

Of coal and mineral deposits, Cass county has none. Borings for gas have not resulted successfully, although about twenty years ago a company at Dowagiac sunk a drill over nineteen hundred feet below the surface. From an early day the manufacture of brick has been carried on, but brick kilns have been numerous everywhere and furnish no special point of distinction.

The most important of nature's deposits are the marl beds. This peculiar form of carbonate of lime, now the basis of Michigan's great Portland cement industry, the total of the state's output being second only to that of New Jersey, was known and used in this county from an early day. The plaster used in the old court house was made of marl lime. Many a cabin was chinked with this material, and there were several kilns in an early day for the burning of marl. A state geological report states the existence of a large bed of marl at Donnell's lake east of Vandalia, Sections 31 and 32 of Newberg, the marl in places being over twenty-five feet in depth. Just north of Dowagiac, in the lowlands of the old glacial valley is said to be a deposit of bog lime over six hundred acres in extent and from eighteen to twenty-eight feet deep. Harwood lake, on the St. Joseph county line, is, it is claimed, surrounded by bog lime. About the lakes east of Edwardsburg are marl deposits which were utilized for plaster from an early day. But as yet these deposits have not been developed by the establishment of cement plants, and that branch of manufacture is a matter to be described by a future historian.

CHAPTER II.

ORIGINAL INHABITANTS.

It is asserted that when the first white men settled in Cass county, they had as neighbors some four or five hundred Indians. So that, although we make the advent of the white man the starting point of our history, yet for hundreds and perhaps thousands of years there has been no break in the period when the region we now call Cass county has served as the abode of human beings.

The lands which we now till, the country dotted over with our comfortable dwellings, the localities now occupied by our populous towns and villages, were once the home of a people of a different genius, with different dwellings, different arts, different burial customs, and different ideas; but they were human beings, and the manner in which our interest goes out to them, and the peculiar inexpressible feelings which come to our hearts as we look back over the vista of ages and study the few relics they have left, are proof of the universal brotherhood of man and the universal fatherhood of God.

Almost all of the Indians living here at the coming of the white settlers were members of the Pottawottomie tribe. And they were the successors of the powerful Miamis, who had occupied the country when the French missionaries and explorers first made record of its inhabitants. This shifting of population had probably gone on for ages, and many tribes, of varying degrees of barbarism, have in their time occupied the soil of Cass county. The Pottawottomies were destined to be the last actors on the scene, and with the entrance of the white man they soon passed out forever.

But during the first three decades of the nineteenth century they were the possessors of this region. The ascending smoke from the wigwam fires, the human voices by wood and stream, were theirs. They were the children of nature. The men were hunters, fishers, trappers and warriors. Their braves were trained to the chase and to the battle. The women cultivated the corn, tended the papooses and prepared the food.

And yet these people had attained to a degree of approximate civilization. Though they wrote no history, and published no poems, there

certainly were traditions among them, especially concerning the creation of the world. Though they erected no monuments, they had their dwellings, wigwams though they were. Their civilization was not complicated, and yet they lived in villages, graphic accounts of which have been given. In place of roads they had trails, some of them noted ones, which will be described later. They communicated with each other in writing by means of rude hieroglyphics. They had no schools, but their young were thoroughly trained and hardened to perform the duties expected of them.

The Indians had not carried agriculture to a high degree of perfection, but they turned up the sod and planted garden vegetables and corn, of which latter they raised more than is generally supposed, though the women did most of the farm work. They were not given to commerce, but they bartered goods with settlers and took their furs to the trading posts where they exchanged them for the white man's products. They made their own clothes, their canoes, their paddles, their bows and arrows, and other weapons of war, and wove bark baskets of sufficient fineness to hold shelled corn. And another interesting fact concerning them, they also understood how to make maple sugar. The sugar groves of the county have given of their sweetness for more generations than we know of.

Much of a specific nature has been written of the Indians of this part of the country, much more than could be compressed within the space of this volume. We can only characterize them briefly. That they were in the main peacable is the testimony of all records. On the other hand they were by no means the "noble red men" which the idealism of Cooper and Longfellow has painted them. Historical facts and the witness of those who have had the benefit of personal association with these unfortunate people lead one to believe that the Indian, as compared with our own ideals of life and conduct, was essentially and usually a sordid, shiftless, unimaginative, vulgar and brutish creature, living from hand to mouth, and with no progressive standards of morality and character. The Indians in this vicinity frequently came and camped around the settlers, begging corn and squashes and giving venison in return. They supplemented this begging propensity by thieving usually in a petty degree-and it is said that they would steal any article they could put their hands; on and escape observation. A sharp watch was kept on their movements when they were known to be in the neighborhood.

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The Indians with whom the settlers of Cass county had to deal had

been influenced more or less by coming in contact with Christianity. At different times for a century French missionaries had penetrated this region. Father Marest is one of the first known as having worked in this field. The Pottawottomies yielded more readily than other tribes. to the teachings of the missionaries. They were deeply impressed by the ritual of the Catholic church. The tenacity with which many of the converts clung to the faith is a remarkable tribute to the power of that church over a barbarous people. Old chief Pokagon, whose record has come down to us singularly free from the usual stains of Indian weakness, was a lifelong adherent of the Catholic church, and he and his people formed the nucleus and chief support of a church in Silver Creek township.

The natives had been subject not only to the influences of Catholicism but to those of Protestantism. This brings us to the consideration of one of the most remarkable institutions of a missionary character that the middle west ever knew. Not only the work of religion but many secular events and undertakings that concern the early history of northern Indiana and southwestern Michigan centered around the Baptist mission among the Pottawottomies, which was founded near the site. of Niles in the year 1822. Here gathered the red men to receive religious and secular instruction. The councils between the government authorities and the chief men of the tribe took place at the mission house. This was the destination to which the settler from the east would direct his course. After resting and refitting at this point and counseling with those who knew the country, the homeseekers would depart in different directions to locate their pioneer abode. Thus the Carey Mission, as it was called, played a very conspicuous part in the history of this region. It served to connect the old with the new. It was founded primarily for the benefit of the Indians, it served their spiritual and often their physical needs, and its existence was no longer warranted after the Indians had departed. But the Mission was also a buffer to soften the impact of civilization upon the Indian regime. Its work in behalf of the Indians and settlers alike pushed forward the process of civilization and development in this region some years before it otherwise would have been attempted.

The name of Rev. Isaac McCoy has become fixed in history as that of one of the most remarkable religious pioneers of the middle west. His influence and fame, while centering around the Carey Mission which he established, also spread to many parts of the west. Born in Pennsyl

vania in 1784, he was taken by his parents to the wilderness of Kentucky when six years old. There he met and married the gentle Christiana, daughter of Captain Polk, and as faithful co-workers they devoted their efforts to a common cause. The people of Cass county have special reason to remember this pioneer missionary's wife, for her name is borne by the stream that runs south from the center of the county to a junction with the St. Joseph near Elkhart. For a number of years Rev. McCoy was pastor of a church in Indiana, and in 1817 was appointed a missionary and undertook his labors among the Indians of the western states and territories.

The founding of the Carey Mission was, in the language of Judge Nathaniel Bacon in an address delivered at Niles in 1869, "the pioneer step in the way of settlement. It was barely ten years since the massacre at Chicago, and about the same time after the memorable battle at Tippecanoe, and the disastrous defeat of our army at Brownstown, when this mission was established. Emigration had in a great measure stopped. Very few dared to venture beyond the older settlements, until McCoy boldly entered into the heart of the Indian country, and began his mission school among the Pottawottomies who dwelt on the river St. Joseph. The fact was soon made known throughout Indiana and Ohio, and at once adventurers began to prepare to follow the example of the missionary, who had led the way."

In the same address Judge Bacon quoted a report of mission made by Major Long of the United States army in 1823. It contained the following description of the mission establishment: "The Carey Mission house is situated about one mile from the river St. Joseph. The establishment was erected by the Baptist Missionary Society in Washington, and is under the superintendence of the Rev. Mr. McCoy, a man whom, from the reports we have heard of him, we should consider as eminently qualified for the important trust committed to him.

"The spot was covered with a very dense forest seven months before the time we visited it, but by the great activity of the superintendent he has succeeded in the course of this short time in building six good log houses, four of which afford comfortable residences for the inmates of the establishment; the fifth is used as a school room, and the sixth forms a commodious blacksmith shop. In addition to this they have cleared about fifty acres of land, which is nearly all enclosed by a substantial fence. Forty acres have already been plowed and planted with