One Township's Yesterdays Chapter XII  

THE WILDWOOD ROVER

"... 'Oh, yes! we have seen him. He was with Basil the blacksmith, and both have gone to the prairies; Coureurs-des-Bois are they, and famous hunters and trappers'." ...Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

INTO THE WILDERNESS came the dauntless adventurer, the hardy, reckless coureur-debois of old; came also that dashing kindred spirit, the huntsman, the French chasseur. Like the explorer and the Jesuit missionary; they penetrated far into the remote backwoods regions at an early date in the history of the white man on this continent.

The coureur-de-bois was a gay French vagabond, a "wood ranger." He was a picturesque figure, dressed in fringed buckskin and embroideries, with a knife in the belt. He was a trapper and a hunter by trade, but an adventure by profession. Sometimes he was full-blooded French, sometimes a half-breed, and very, very rarely a coward. The chasseur (French for huntsman) was the same sort of fellow. His was a spirit, also, that thrived on adventure and the thrills of life in wild places far from the customary haunts of white men.

Although no record definitely states, it is quite possible that the first of the white race to see this one-time obscure patch of wilderness, now called Union Township, was either Jesuit missionary, explorer, or wildwood rover. All of them came very early to Indiana. Who came before the other, is a mystery. So far as we know, they all came at about the, same time: Jesuit, explorer, coureur-de-bois, voyageur, trader, trapper, hunter. For it was far back in the early days, not long after the beginning of the 18th Century, that Frenchmen penetrated Indiana and Illinois. There were posts, well known to the school child of today, at Vincennes, Vermilion, and Ouiatanon on the Wabash, near the present city of Lafayette. And there were the portages of the Wabash and the Kankakee, the latter not far to the northwest of our township.

Followed Rivers.
Trading with the natives, the French no doubt worked up the water-courses, the Tippecanoe and Yellow rivers providing passage for their lighter craft. And the territory was rich in furs. There is a possibility that they penetrated to the lakes near the upper reaches of these rivers. If so, how could they have missed Maxinkuckee? For here there were Indian settlements in the midst of a bountiful hunting-ground. And if Maxinkuckee really did escape them, that was their hard luck!

The question has been asked: If they came here, why did they leave no trace? The best answer seems to be that they did not stay long enough; they were not permanent. The French were naturally rovers in those days. They were restless. They kept moving Their permanency was confined to the trading posts: Vincennes, St. Joseph, and others already mentioned. If they came to the Union Township area, they did not settle down. Only the Jesuit stayed.

The history of this region lying contiguous to Lake Maxinkuckee is vague so far as details are concerned, looking backward beyond the past century. Prior to the first permanent white settlement. there is some likelihood of transient settlements, if we may call them such. Lone backwoodsmen may have had cabins, however temporarily constructed, in this Indian country. The French were the most likely persons to be able to squat awhile on Indian land, for they knew how best to get along with the red men. They obtained considerable sway among the Indians in the early days. They settled here and there in the wilderness, mingled with the natives, traded with them successfully, perhaps due to a conciliating manner or certain diplomacy inherent to the French as a people, and thus managed to subsist where others deemed it yet uninviting or unsafe to settle permanently with their families. Early writers, like SAMUEL R. BROWN, spoke of the French inhabitants of Ouiatanon (near the present Lafayette) as "half civilized," as contrasted perhaps with people in the older settlements of the East.

No French Here?
Some wandering coureur-debois, some restless chasseur, some backwoods adventurer may have been the first white man to pick his way through the forests and across the oak barrens of our region, and to look upon lake and stream and all the land `round about, finding them good. As for our earliest permanent settlers, French names were conspicuous by their absence from the roll.

The coureurs-de-bois and the chasseurs, who left home to go westward and northward from eastern Canada, were led chiefly by the spirit of adventure. They wished to escape the trying poverty of the rural districts, the great moral languor and their narrow life. They had, heard wonderful stories of the vast and fascinating world west of them. They were full of energy and impatience. And they longed to see what that world was, and make their own use of it. "Doubtless the peculiarly narrow range of activities at home," was the opinion of BRACQ, "led young men to join those wanderers from France who lived with the Indians and married Indian women." The coureurs represented the dash, the boldness which the early settlers displayed. They were as good as men of that type could be.

The remarkable courage of these care-free adventurers may be compared perhaps only with the fortitude of the "Black Robes," as the red men called the Jesuit missionaries. Says Dr. W. H. MOORE, "HENNEPIN, the first white man to tell of the buffalo, although wearing the frock of a priest and writing with the pen of a FENIMORE COOPER, possessed the soul of a coureur-debois." These missionaries often accompanied the early explorers on their expeditions, and shared the hardships and adventures which were to be expected during such undertakings.

So it was that the original and unsurpassed "Rover Boys" came a-roving into the picture . .. and kept on roving until they were out of it. And when they left the picture, they left also a blank (without record). Their disappearance was complete. And regarding the blank that remained:

Though well versed in myth, magic and fable,
To fill it we have never been able.