Miami Burial Ground

Jamestown Press
Jamestown, Indiana
19 August 1898, Page 4

MIAMIS' BURIAL GROUND
A Spot of Romantic and Historic Association

Thorntown Argus -- Situated on a slightly wooded knoll just east of Prairie Creek on the Kenworthy farm, is the old Indian graveyard, a spot which the modern "Kewazakee" can well be proud lies within her borders, since within its confines rest the remains of more than one hundred members of the tribe of the Miami's. The old log house standing well back in the trees and the general air of weirdness marking the scene is bound to attract the attention of the stranger, or hasten the lagging footsteps of the small boy as he passes the spot at nightfall, filling his infantile imagination with spooks and goblins, not entirely dispelled until he crosses the threshold of his home.

The exact extent of the burial ground is hard to conjecture, because the Indians had no system in digging of graves, but probably covers a space 125 feet square in front of the log house, even extending to the crest of the hill and into adjoining fields. Wm. Kenworthy, while grubbing up trees several hundred feet from the area containing most of the graves, dug into one covered with slabs of wood supposed to contain the remains of a chief. The tomahawks and the belt of brooches found, which would have been deemed a rich prize by the modern relic hunter, were carefully replaced and covered over, and to this day have never been discovered.

When Wm. Kenworthy came from Highland county, Ohio, in 1823, the place was used as a burying ground and for how many years previous it had been used as such, no one knows. His father however, had assisted in burying many Indians there, and for this reason the spot was regarded with a sort of reverence by the son, and guarded with unceasing watchfulness from desecration by foreign collectors and relic hunters. Before quitting the Reserve in Nov. 1829, the Indians begged the privelege [sic] of still retaining their burial ground, and obtained from the white settlers the promise that their dead should be forever unmolested, a promise which had been rigidly observed by the ancestors of the Kenworthy's down to the present time.

In 1836 the ground was first broken, and in the center of a space 8 or 10 feet square were unearthed the skeletons of two young braves who had been buried in a sitting posture, facing each other. Their story is a highly interesting one and forms the basis of a legend which for its rare intermingling of romance and tradegy [sic] finds no superior in the works of Longfellow or Cooper, who have surrounded the American Indian with a halo of remarkable brilliancy. Both had fallen in love with the same maiden, and she lacking the tact of the modern summer girl, she refused to show either the preference. As time went on their hatred for each other grew apace until after sending the customary rattlesnake skin stuffed with arrow, correspondence ceased and "the hot time in the old town" could no longer be averted. They met, as near the cemetery as possible in order to save expenses, and after exausting [sic] their arrows, crawled toward one another and fought with knives until each fell over dead. And Lere [sic] where they fell, they were buried, facing each other in the grim stoicism of the death they had chosen. As a protection from wild beasts, a staked pen was built around them in which were placed their knives, guns and blankets, and thus enclosed, they were found by Wm. Kenworthy who reburied them with all their trappings of war, in 1836.

Shortly after this in plowing in another field, a circle 50 feet in diameter, resembling the modern circus ring, was found and, in the center a mound 7 or 8 feet across. Here another skeleton was turned up by the plowshare, presumably that of a white trader, whose bones were partly charred, while the razor and knife blades indicated that he had been burned at the stake. And here, perhaps, lies another tradegy [sic] as interesting as the other could it be unravelled [sic]; perhaps even the two stories bear some connection, that the white man was the chosen suitor of the maiden, and had met death at the hands of the savages. Who knows?

Their usual method of burying the dead was to cover the body with a wooden slab, and place five or six inches of dirt upon it. This method was not always followed, however, for in one instance the body of a child was found buried in a hollow log, while in another case the body of an old chief was placed in the branches of a tree, where his bones yet remained at the advent of the first white settlers. This was also not the only burying ground in this locality, there being one on the Mills farm southeast, and another at "upper Thorntown," 3 1/2 miles north-east of town, while as late as February, 1892, the remains of a French trader were exhumed on Front street while digging gas trenches.

Such is in brief, a few facts concerning this historic spot, which is replete with memories of the past, to which a visit can be most profitably made, and which Thorntown can well keep and cherish as a bequest from her barbaric founders and predecessors.

Transcribed by: Janet Isley Price (no relationship to individuals) - October 9, 2007