One Township's Yesterdays Chapter XXXV  

GHOSTS FOR GOOD MEASURE

"O 't is a fearful thing to be no more, Or if to be, to wander after death! To walk as spirits do, in brakes all day, And, when the darkness comes, to glide in paths That lead to graves . . ." ... John Dryden

ALONG WITH THE SUPPLY OF ROMANTIC TRADITIONS relating to the red man of this region, a sprinkling of ghosts, phantoms and elusive spirits have been thrown in--for good measure. Prominent among the stories about these spectres is the uncanny one concerning Patt-koo-shuck, the avenger, who slew his father, Chief Aubeenaubee.

We have already heard of the tragic end of that brutal chieftain, who was reputed to have spent his later years pretty constantly at the bunghole of a keg of potent spirits, supplied of course by his white, brethren. The son, Pau-koo-shuck, was taken away by the soldiers in '38, during the march westward made several attempts to escape, and just before reaching the Mississippi made another endeavor to get away. In a fight with an officer he was injured and left for dead at the wayside. He returned to life, however, and made his way back, afoot and alone, to the land he loved. Finally, he grew reckless and discontented, drank to excess, and got into frequent quarrels and fights here and there. At or near Winamac he got mixed up in a fracas and was so badly injured that he died the results.

Pau-koo-shuck, it is said, was brought from Winamac to Lake Maxinkuckee, where he was buried on Long Point alongside of an Indian named Whip-poor-will, who had got fast in a hollow of a coon tree and was dead when found there. Tradition says that the, ghost of an Indian, supposedly poor Pau-koo-shuck, used to come forth almost every favorable night to skip about on the water and float around among the bushes and trees of the Point where he had been buried, like a thing of life, "cutting such fantastic tricks before high heaven as made the angels weep!"

"Sometimes he would be seen," says , "in his little canoe, apparently paddling with all his might for the southeast shore, where his father, Aubeenaubee, had formerly owned a reservation, and while the spectator would be gazing the ghost would instantly disappear in the rippling waves, and would be last to sight. Turning to the shore again, he would be observed floating about as if in search of something, and then, all at once, would disappear in the earth, and might not again be seen for several nights.

"The Indians, and nearly everybody else in those days, believed in ghosts and goblins, and few doubted that the ghost of this young red man of the forest came and went at will, and was endowed with supernatural powers to ride upon the waters, float in the air, enter houses, wigwams and cabins without let or hindrance and frighten the occupants out of their wits, so that _ each particular hair on their heads would stand on end like quills on the fretful porcupine! _ "

With the firewater "racket" going at full speed back in those hectic days, there is small wonder that the ghosts of departed red men should come back to haunt and taunt the white brethren.

The noble Chief Menominee was removed to the West with his people, and it is said that he afterward died of a broken heart. One is to believe that his spirit, likewise, might have returned to the ancient hunting-ground of his tribe to linger amid the scenes he loved and no doubt to bring some culprit to his knees, quaking and quavering with fear. Some of the Indians, the Miami’s for instance, were pensioners of the government and received an annuity . . . for whiskey chiefly. The dispensers of rum and other incendiary beverages of like nature dogged the pension-bearing native until he was relieved of such burden and supplied with a sufficient load of liquid fire to make of him a whooping, howling fanatic. No wonder the red man's ghost arose from the grave!