Lake Maxinkuckee Its Intrigue History & Genealogy Culver, Marshall, Indiana

One Township's Yesterdays Chapter XLVI  



FIRES AND FIRE FIGHTERS


    "It seemed that nations did conspire
    To offer to the god of fire Some vast, stupendous sacrifice!
    The summoned firemen woke at call,
    And hied them to their stations all.
    The engines thundered through the street,
    Fire-hook, pipe, bucket, all complete."
    ... Horace Smith  


THE ORIGINAL MAKERS OF FIRE antedated the comparatively modern Quenchers of Fire in these parts by not a few decades of history. The Potawatomi Indians who dwelt in this land, were a "nation of fire-blowers," so their name signified, originating it seems in the facility with which they produced flame and set burning the ancient council fires of their forefathers beside the waters of the Green Bay country. They were the people who lighted some of the earliest fires in the wilderness that is now Union Township, but those were fires for the cooking and roasting of venison and other wild meats and the baking of corn patties and like native delicacies, also for the toasting of native shins when the weather turned chilly. Those redskin fires were strictly utilitarian.

Since then, many other fires have been lighted in Union Township, fires without number, for similar purposes. Still another kind of fire, however, figures in township history, the kind that lighted itself by some mysterious means, or became lighted through some mishap or other, or was called by the name of "incendiary."

There were several varieties of fires throughout the township, and a number of fires of each variety There were uncounted fires that did not get very far, were "nipped in the bud"; there were others that got far and some that got too far, just went as far as they could . . . despite the heroic efforts of the fighters of fire.

The fighters of fire date back to the first settlements, when the fighting was a sort of individually co-operative affair, the neighbors being called in to help in the battle if the, fire got beyond the control of the household concerned. That was the "home fire." There were not many public buildings in those early days; consequently, "community fires" were rare. But whenever one did occur, the men - - and sometimes the women - - of the community that were within range sort of pooled their resources and fire-fighting ambitions and apparatus (mostly buckets), and pitched in. It was "potluck."

Dearth of facilities, though not of aims and ambitions, made of early fire fighting a rather hopeless, task, when once the fire got beyond human control. Several fine old homesteads and a considerably larger number of barns, here and there throughout the township, were razed by the fiery destroyer. Among the larger homesteads destroyed was the VOREIS place near Burr Oak. Family heirlooms of considerable value, which cannot be replaced, were lost in this fire.