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ALLEN COUNTY TO THE WABASH · 94 MILES
The Snake Fish river: The fourth river of the Fort Wayne country never touches the city, but no army or trader approaching from the Wabash could avoid it. The Eel River rises southeast of Huntertown, in Allen County's own northwest, and flows 94 miles southwest through Whitley, Kosciusko, Wabash, Miami, and Cass counties to join the Wabash at Logansport. The Miami called it Kineepikwameekwa Siipiiwi — River of the Snake Fish, the snake fish being the eel-shaped fish of its waters; English records render it Ke-na-po-co-mo-co, and the French, translating as the Miami had taught them, called it Rivière L'Anguille.
The Eel was the western water road of the Kekionga world: down the Wabash system, up the Eel, and a short carry brought a traveler into the Little River and Maumee country. It was along the Eel that the fighting of 1790 opened, when detachments of Harmar's army were struck near its banks — the human record of that campaign belongs to the Story and Wars sections. The river itself remained what it had been, a clear, gravelly prairie stream, and it remains one of the least altered rivers of northern Indiana; in 2016 the mayors of its valley towns were petitioning to make it only the fourth designated scenic river in the state.
Sources:
- U.S. Geological Survey / GNIS and the river's reference record — the 94-mile course from Allen County to Logansport, and the Miami and French names with their gloss, "river of the snake fish."
- Cass County Online (April 2016) — the scenic-river petition by the Eel valley mayors.
- spine and wars-unrest-disasters sections, this record — the 1790 campaign on the Eel, in full.