187 



the westward limit of Erie ice as a separate lobe. The Wild Cat creeks, 

 above their northward bend, are bordered along their northern bluffs 

 by weak, but distinct, moraines. 



Returning to the Wabash, at the great bend we find it following the 

 south side of a strong moraine from the mouth of Tippecanoe River to 

 the point of its southward deflection. The drainage on the south side 

 of the stream through this section was all to the south and west previous 

 to the recession of the ice to the north side of the river. Above the 

 mouth of the Tippecanoe the Wabash becomes probably a distinctly 

 terminal drainage stream of the Erie lobe, and its tributaries have come 

 into existence in pairs on opposite sides of the main stream as the ice 

 withdrew toward its source. The head waters of the southern tributaries 

 have in several instances been pirated by the stream to the south and 

 west of them, as in the case of the deflection by the Mississinewa of a 

 tributary of West White River north of Muncie, and the capture of the 

 Salamonie by the Wabash above Ceylon. The development of these upper 

 tributaries and the former connection of the St. Mary's and St. Joseph 

 rivers and the glacial Maumee Lake with the Wabash by way of the 

 broad valley of Little River extending from Ft. Wayne to Huntington 

 have become familiar facts through the investigations made by Dr. C. R. 

 Diyer and published in the Sixteenth, Seventeenth and Eighteenth Re- 

 ports of the State Geologist of Indiana. The Tippecanoe River, after the 

 manner of the upper tributaries of the Wabash, may be paired with the 

 Wild Cat Creek. Below the great bend of |;he Tippecanoe, in Starke 

 County, it drains the western edge of the Erie drift; above that bend 

 it receives its water supply from the Saginaw drift. From its mouth to 

 New Buffalo, ten miles north of Monticello, it has a deep valley (100 

 feet at Monticello) and varying from one-half of a mile to a mile in 

 width. Above this deep portion, the character of its valley changes rather 

 abruptly to a very narrow and superficial channel, not much too large 

 to carry its flood waters. This shallow valley is remarkably meandering, 

 much of the general course being originally guided by sand ridges. 

 The lower portion of the Tippecanoe was evidently the former outlet of 

 a lake of considerable extent, which covered the country north of Monti- 

 cello. The earliest lake area may have extended southward to the im- 

 mediate vicinity of the mouth of the river, where the strong moraine 

 running along the north bluffs of the Wabash changes abruptly near the 

 Tippecanoe battleground to a chain of low gravel mounds, which continue 



