4 DAVE (AU DUT BORN Gai eE si 
of the Indiana line, or St. Joseph County on the east), the barometer 
shows the river bed 180 feet below the steam-mill at Morocco.” 
Ditching continued during the next fifty years by laterals and new 
ditches, so that as time went on the water level was lowered and 
lowered. In 1876 a county map illustrates the lake as one-tenth its 
former size. An old resident tells me it entirely ceased to exist about 
1900. A writer in 1911 notes the fact that there was then no lake to 
be seen in the vicinity. So while man-made Wawasee has increased 
in size, Beaver Lake, a natural body of water covering once twenty 
and one-half square miles, has through a period of fifty years after 
the white man found it gradually declined to naught. It was man- 
destroyed. 
Cultivation of the land about the lake began before 1859, reports 
Owen, but today wild grass, much like our cultivated hay, covers much 
of the level lake bed. Contrary to results obtained in many other 
swamp reclamation projects, this old lake bed and its environs raise 
good farm crops. 
An early traveler through the country (1859) described Bogus 
Island in the west-center of the lake (so-called because it had been 
the resort of a gang of counterfeiters who were captured in 1860) as 
covered with a fine stand of wild black cherry trees. In the 1830’s it 
was inhabited by Indians. Today the little hill appears as a mound, 
still tree covered, surrounded by an ocean of waving grass as far as 
eye can see, a sight somewhat comparable to the rippled water around 
it in the early 1800’s. In the extremely cold winter of 1838 a deer 
hunt on this island resulted in the killing of 65 deer, while as many 
escaped on the glassy ice. Seven wolves and some foxes also were 
taken. Other similar knolls in those three-quarter-century ago days 
were Indian, French and Deserter’s Islands. 
I have the following history, past and present, of the wildlife 
thereabouts from Ned Barker, born in 1860, grandson of the man for 
whom the township was named and who has tramped over the ter- 
ritory all his life. 
“When I was a boy,” said Mr. Barker, “Beaver Lake was literally 
covered with swans both spring and fall. They appeared in flocks like 
white clouds above the lake. They left it in the morning from day- 
light until 9:00 A. M. and returned at dusk through as long a period. 
I learned to wing-tip them, becoming sufficiently expert that even with 
a shotgun I could shoot off the primaries of the swan on one side so 
it became out of balance and could not fly and it would coast to earth 
unhurt. When captured, it was placed in one of the pens at my father’s 
place on the bank of the lake. These swans, being again wing-clipped 
in the spring of a succeeding year, bred in captivity. We killed both 
spring and fall in those days and I acted as a guide after I was twelve 
years of age for some noted hunters, among whom were Messrs. Gaff 
and Fleischman, prominent business men of Cincinnati, and I got 
swans for them.” 
According to T. H. Ball, about fifty years ago swans identified as 
