Pokagon Trail & Pokagon Trek

8 Mile Trail 

3 1/2 Mile Trek 

POKAGON, CHIEF OF THE POTAWATOMI

This land of “Smiling Waters” is steeped in Indian Lore. With the woods and the hills, the Indians found this a favorite hunting ground with plenty of water and game. Indian names familiar in this area are those of the Potawatomi Chiefs, father and son, Leopold and Simon Pokagon. The lives of these men form the connecting link between the carly Indians and the pioneers who later settled here. 

Leopold was an orphan Chippewa child who was captured by a Potawatomi Chief about 1775. He was called Pokagon because he was wearing, as part of his headdress, a human rib. Pokagon means “rib”. Leopold Pokagon, although he became a friend of the Christian Missionary, never adopted the religion. He was a respected and judicial chief. 

One of Leopold Pokagon’s visitors was Johnny Appleseed, who roamed over the area planting apple seeds. On one trip when Appleseed expressed his desire to go south to the Tippecanoe country, Pokagon took him in his own cart.  This two-wheeled wagon, drawn by an ox and a horse, and containing an Indian and a white man, must have made an unusual scene.

Simon Pokagon was born in old Pokagon Village about 1830. When he was eleven years old, his father died and he was given an education by white friends. He eventually had four years of college at Notre Dame University and one year at Oberlin College. He and his wife, Lonidaw, had four children. A great event of his life was a trip to the World’s Fair in Chicago in 1893. At this time, he presented to the Mayor of Chicago a deed for the land on which the city was built. Even though the price was ridiculously small (3 ¢ an acre), the United States withheld payment for thirty years. Simon Pokagon was the last noted chief of the Potawatomi Indians. Although there is no perpetuate of the memory of Leopold and Simon Pokagon, their names have become familiar because of Pokagon State Park and its Potawatomi Inn.

POKAGON STATE PARK

Since the park’s establishment in 1925, it has become increasingly popular as a family outing place. On the shores of Lake James in the heart of the rolling hills of Steuben County, Pokagon is truly Indiana’s year-around playground, providing healthful outdoor recreation at all times of the year.

Part of an area once ruled by the powerful Potawatomi Indians, the park takes its name from one of the famous chiefs, Simon Pokagon. The attractive Potawatomi Inn, overlooking Lake James, carries the tribal name and is widely known for its excellent food and fine services at all seasons.

Summertime activities offered at Pokagon include horseback riding, swimming, boating, hiking, bicycling and tennis. Winter sports fans enjoy ice fishing, skating, cross country skiing and sledding. The 1,780 foot refrigerated double-track toboggan slide provides thrills galore for park visitors of all ages.

The Nature Center is open every day of the year, staffed by naturalists who offer daily programs for the general public in the summer and on weekends the rest of the year. Steuben County has more lakes than any other county in Indiana. These lakes were formed about 12,000 years ago by glaciers that blanketed the area here and up to Canada.

Lake James is the largest lake in Steuben County and the seventh largest in the state. The lake is about 3 1/2 miles long and a mile wide at the broadest pomt, covering 1,600 acres in its three basins - Lower, Middle, and Upper. In addition to lakes, other evidence of past glaciers include the hummocky moraines, the heterogeneous mixture of boulders and clay called glacier tll or drift that covers the ground and was dropped when the ice melted, and the character of the boulders themselves. The boulders consist of quartzite, banded gneiss, granite that 1s grey or pink in color, dark diorite and other rocks foreign to the state, that were brought by the moving ice hundreds of miles from Canada. Among the boulders on display at the entrance to Potawatomi it a conglomerate or pudding stone made up of cemented pebbles. Each boulder tells a story.

 Pokagon State Park occupies about two-thirds of the eastern shoreline of the lake. On the way to the park from Interstate 69, the road is built through the midst of tvpical knobs and kettles that are characteristic surface features of glacial moraines. This particular deposit has been named the Mississinewa Moraine and was mostly the work of the Eme Glacial Lobe with possibly some material brought in by the Saginaw Lobe. The undulating morainal hills bordering Lake James to the east rise more than 100 feet above the water, thus giving the basin a depth of about 200 feet below the neighboring hills. The lake basin lies entirely in glacial till. 

Drilled wells in Steuben County hit bedrock at about 600 feet above sea level, and before the glacial period, northern Indiana seems to have been a plain at this elevation. The highest points in the county are 1,000 to 1,500 feet above sea level, indicating that the glacial debris has covered the area to a height of at least 500 feet. In Hillside County, Michigan, just to the north, the drift is only about 100 feet in depth. Before the glacier arrived, this area was a plateau capped by resistant sandstone. The great glacial accumulation in northeast Indiana was dropped in the lee of this once prominent table land. The floor of Lake James is uneven with a few deep holes, the deepest reported being 87 feet. 

There are numerous shallows and a few islands. The bottom is generally sandy with little marl and muck except at “Blind Island” in the Lower Basin and some swampy shores. Several excellent sandy beaches occur, usually in bays where cliffs are absent. The lake is fed by numerous springs and the wooded shores help keep the water clear. In the last decade, the water level of the lake has risen and some former low shores and low islands have been flooded. In the Lower Basin, “Blind Island” has disappeared except for rushes that mark the site. Higher ground is make of loose tll that is easily eroded when attacked by waves. The wave action undercuts some slopes and develops cliffs.