OE me ee eU ro. Ok emD UibLak Erle iN 3 
difficulties of travel. Indian tribes constantly visited it and they car- 
ried news of its wildlife abundance. The late Judge Fabias M. Finch 
of Indianapolis many years ago wrote that the Shawnees claimed to 
be descended from fish and they used to have a fish tattooed on them. 
These Indians said the transformation took place in a lake in north- 
western Indiana. Judge Finch quoted William Conner, a fur dealer, 
as saying that he had seen the lake many times and had had the root 
pointed out to him by one of the tribe where he alleged that the first 
Indian came out of the water after transformation, and Conner was of 
the opinion that it was Beaver Lake. I find no corroboration of this 
legend but tattooing was common among the tribes of this area. 
Old residents remember the many beaver dams which were to 
be seen in various parts of the lake. Richard Owen, while state geol- 
ogist, saw remains of beaver dams about the lake in 1859 when he 
passed that way on a surveying expedition. A pioneer of Marshall 
County reports that one dam, which he especially observed in Beaver 
Lake, was more than a mile in length, the longest beaver dam that he 
had ever seen. Our native beaver (Castor canadensis), for which the 
lake was named and once so numerous there, is practically unknown in 
the whole state today. Dr. Marcus W. Lyon, Jr., of South Bend, Indi- 
ana, a mammalogist of note, has no. records at all of wild beavers 
within the state in recent years. 
In the digging of a well on the shore of the lake, in a section 
reclaimed by draining, pure black muck twenty feet in depth, chiefly 
made up of decayed and decaying vegetable matter, was encountered. 
There were many places about the lake where such muck appeared 
solid but was so soft that man and beast became mired, sink- 
ing to a depth of six or eight feet in a twinkling, at times leading to 
fatalities because the muck clung and prevented swimming out. 
As early as 1853 the first drain ditch was dug, extending from 
the lake through five or six miles of prairie northward to the Kankakee 
River. This was one of the first projects in Indiana for the draining 
of water-covered muck areas to release ground for agriculture. A 
company was even then forming to drain extensively the whole Kanka- 
kee region. It was found that this ditch, when completed, soon caused 
the shore line of the lake to recede about one hundred yards. Between 
8,000 and 9,000 acres were thus reclaimed from the water. 
Owen says of this 1859 trip: ‘‘Few, if any, boulders were observed 
after leaving Morocco on the route to Beaver Lake. The country here 
is rather sparsely settled, yet some fine, low prairies exhibit an ex- 
tensive growth of grass which we could scarcely distinguish from 
teme red-top. Ferns and mimosa bushes, with scrubby timber, were 
common as we approached the sand ridges. We disturbed several 
flocks of cranes and a few fine, white specimens of the genus Ardea, 
probably the A. lewce. (These are known today as American egrets. ) 
We have been gradually descending as we pass near Beaver Lake, 
being now at least a hundred feet below the level of Morocco, until 
finally at the Kankakee crossing in Illinois (there being no suitable 
bridge or ferry short of Momence on the west, four or five miles west 
