THE OHIO VALLEY-GREAT LAKES ETHNOHISTORY
ARCHIVES: THE MIAMI COLLECTION
It is noted that the following work from the Miami Archives should be read and
considered within the historical context in which it was composed and printed.
The opinions expressed and the language used do not reflect the opinions or
standards of the Glenn A. Black Laboratory of Archaeology, but are, rather,
indicative of thought in that historical moment during which the document was
published.
The Kankakee "Marsh" of Northern Indiana and Illinois
Meyer, Alfred H. in: Papers of the Michigan Academy of Science, Arts and
Letters,
Vol. XXI, pp. 359-396, 1935. Published 1936, pp. 360-363.
pp. 360, 361, 363.
360 |
Alfred H. Meyer |
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Maumee: The Kankakee "cornscape" |
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389 |
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Recreation and conservation |
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392 |
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Summary and Conclusions |
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393 |
INTRODUCTION
SYSTEMATIC studies in land utilization, such as have been undertaken in recent years by the Federal Departments of Agriculture and of the Interior, by the Michigan Land Economic Survey, and other state departments, together with the researches conducted by various public and private agencies, as reported in the bulletins of the New York Social Science Research Council, all reflect the need for a scientific analysis of the land-utilization problems of the United States.
Regions which at one time or another have experienced competing and conflicting claims to land use generally furnish excellent material for land-utilization studies. The Kankakee marsh reclaimed area of northern Indiana and Illinois is such an area. Here clashed the interests of the hunter-sportsman-conservationist group with those of the organized land companies and of individuals interested in the reclamation of the wet lands for agricultural use. The author's interest in the region was aroused several years ago as a result of public propaganda and a petition to the Federal Government by a group of the Izaak Walton League to restore at least a part of the original marsh-swamp, once nationally famous for its wild life, particularly wild fowl. Studies of this type especially recommend themselves today in connection with the nation's agricultural and conservational readjustment policies.
The Kankakee country represents essentially an intermorainal marsh reclaimed valley extending from South Bend, Indiana, southwestward to Momence, Illinois. Down the wide, flat-floored valley coursed the original meandering Kankakee River, now a series of straight ditches. Rising in the east within a few miles of the St. Joseph River, tributary to Lake Michigan, and itself forming a headwater branch of the Illinois River to the west, the Kankakee, with (page 361) the St. Joseph portage, provided a strategic connecting link in the Great Lakes-Mississippi route of the early French explorers, fur traders, and missionaries.
Serving successively in its native state the Pottawatomie hunter, the pioneer trapper, the marsh-hay ranger, and the professional sportsman, the modern Kankakee, dredged, ditched, and drained, has added over a half-million acres to the famous drift farming section of the Central Plains.
The Kankakee is located in the more favorable humid section east of the Mississippi. Its summer isothermal position places it within the "a" subdivision of the Df climatic type of the Köppen system, and fairly well within the southern border of the Corn Belt (Map 19).
Demographical relations are no less significant. Rimmed by a score of towns, the marsh at the eastern end is terminated by the industrial city of South Bend, while its western extremity is within 45 miles from the second metropolis of the country- Chicago (Map 20). Less than 150 miles from the center of population of the United States, its valley is "within 3-24 hours by express or 5-36 by freight of at least half the population of the United States" (1, p. 34).
THE FUNDAMENT - THE "NATURAL" KANKAKEE
Marsh prairies of aquatic sedges and grasses, potential grazing areas; wild-rice sloughs, scenes of countless wild geese and ducks; flag ponds, lined with muskrat houses; a narrow but almost uninterrupted swamp forest, full of game, rimming a meandering river teeming with fish; the wet prairies, made humanly habitable by the interspersion of sandy island oak barrens surmounting the highest flood waters- such in brief is the physical setup which attracted the squatter pioneer from the East, who sought contentment in the solitude and seclusion of a marsh wilderness.
In the eyes of the reclamationist a half century later this same general scene reinterprets itself as an open prairie, practically unencumbered by a forest cover, with a flat valley floor, a high water table, and a presumably rich alluvial river bottom soil, located within 50-100 miles of the greatest stock and grain market in the world.
The cultural subtractions and additions incident to the drainage operations have modified almost beyond recognition the general areal picture of the prereclamation period. Yet certain elements of (page 363) the natural landscape and their influences on human culture persist in general outlines to this very day. Many of the marsh dunal islands, particularly the unoccupied ones, and much of the original "meander lands" along the Kankakee River are still marked as of old by timber growth of upland and swamp species respectively.
The "islands" presently encompassed by dry land continue to be the preferred sites of regional settlement.
GEOMORPHOLOGY
The conditions of the surrounding terrain in relation to the agricultural economy are as significant as the "islands" in respect to the human habitat. The latter, rising conspicuously in the form of sand dunes, were recognized at the outset as "barrens" and as generally unsuited to cultivation. But the soil conditions of the flattish marsh areas appear, for the most part, to have been known only superficially and classified categorically with the common types of river bottom and marsh lands. Whatever typical surficial lowland charac-
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