SETTING STEEL TKAPS 



umes. Therefore I will speak only of a few of 

 the earliest pioneers. As I have said fur traders 

 in those early days became immensely rich and 

 the Kankakee Region in an early day was the 

 greatest hunting ground in the Middle West, 

 especially for the fur-beasing animals. As gold 

 and gems was the magnet that attracted our 

 Hoosier folks to the Par West, so it was the fur 

 trade that brought the early explorers to the 

 Kankakee region. The Indians caught the furs 

 and traded them to the new-comers for trinkets. 

 Then began the greatest trade that this part of 

 Indiana ever knew. New types of persons were 

 brought into existence in the new country by 

 the new trade and it is some of these I am go- 

 ing to tell you about in this new story, as the 

 history of the Kankakee fur trade is one of the 

 brightest pages of its history. In the fall of "45" 

 Harrison Hartz Polsom and Rens Brainard, two 

 young men came from Ohio with their parents. 

 In 1840 they settled on the prairie north of the 

 Kankakee Swamp. Having some idea how 



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