HISTORY OF MANITOWOC COUNTY -


plenty. As late as I859 and i86o it was an easy matter to take a couple of
hounds
and put them into the woods on the north side of the Little Manitowoc river
and
it would be but a few minutes before they would be in full cry on a deer
trail.
They would take to the water of Lake Michigan, leaping from the ice banks
in
winter, sometimes from twenty to thirty feet into the ice, and were then
killed
when coming out. The Indians could live well here and I think for their mode
of life they all lived well, although some of their delicacies would hardly
be ap-
petizing in these days. I remember visiting a camp one day on the Manitowoc
river, in company with a couple of boys. The Indian was gone but the squaw
and a couple of pappooses were there. The camp was a temporary one for the
purpose of trapping muskrats along the river from the Rapids down. As we
sat
there the squaw determined to be hospitable, fished out a number of muskrat
tails
from the ashes where they had been baking and passed them out to the young-
sters. They broke through the skin, which was baked like a shell, and greedily
sucked the little bones. We were offered some of these tidbits but for some
rea-
son felt compelled to decline. There are but few of the Indian names of localities
left in Manitowoc, which is interpreted as being the place of the spirits,
Mishicot
and Neshoto, the significance of which I do not know, and 'Meeme. Meeme sit-
nifies "pigeon" and was the name of a river now called Pigeon river.
The town
kept the Indian name, while the river has been given the English translation.
The
Indian villages were nearly always located where a stream empties into a
lake, or
by the side of a river where there were a number of spring brooks emptying
into
it. They had a natural eye for a picturesque location, as well as the es-
sential camp considerations of plenty of water and fuel.
I came to Manitowoc county with my parents in the late summer of i852. I
was then nearing my twelfth year,-just the age for new and strange scenes
to
make the deepest impression. We settled in the town of Kossuth, just about
two
miles from the Indian village on the Neshoto river, and when I got over the
ap-
prehensions of the Indians, natural to a boy who had been accustomed only
to city
life, I was much interested in our Indian neighbors and observed their habits
and
mode of life very closely. The chief of the village on the Neshoto river
was called
"Katoose," the meaning of which I do not know. The planting grounds
of these
Indians were on the river bottom on the southwest quarter of section 28,
town-
ship 2i, range 23 east. There they raised large crops of corn, pumpkins,
squashes
and beans. During the fall of 1852 and the summers of 1853 and 1854 I made
many visits to the "planting grounds," as the Indian village was
called.
I was the proud possessor of an old single barreled gun, and the Indian boys
were wild with joy when I gave them a chance to shoot with it, for these
young-
sters were allowed only to practice with bow and arrows, and many of them
were
quite proficient in the use of this primitive weapon. I used to get in an
Indian
canoe with three or four of them, and if I gave one of them my gun and let
him
sit in the bow, waiting for a chance to fire into a flock of ducks, he put
on no more
airs than the chief himself. Our talk was altogether by signs. I knew no
Indian
and they knew no English but we managed wonderfully by signs.
During the late fall and winter the planting ground was quite deserted, only
a few old Indians remaining there. Before the snow fell, the Indians would
pack
their ponies with baskets of corn, and with their blankets and tanned deer
skins,
take the trails to the northern woods, returning to the planting ground in
time to


I


I






446