The marsh: Chapman's water birds, the market gunners, and what the ditches did

THE GRAND KANKAKEE AT COUNTY FRAME · THE COUNTY'S OWN MARSH IS BANKED IN FARMS — POINTED TO, NOT RETOLD

This county is the marsh's head, not its heart, and the frame is set first: the Kankakee River rises about a mile west of South Bend, on Chapman's own telling, and the Grand Kankakee Marsh — the "Everglades of the North," estimated in the literature at anywhere from 400,000 to more than a million acres, the estimates printed as the range their carriers give — spread west and southwest from this county's edge across the northwestern counties. What this county held was the headwaters, the upper marsh, and its own wet ground: Terre Coupee, the shallow lake of Chapman's portage passage, and the marsh townships of the county's south and west — and, on this CDP's own ground, the Harris Township marsh whose ditching is banked whole in this build's Farms and Land legs, state ditch and mowed hundreds and all. That county-marsh record is pointed to here and not retold; this article runs the animal line the register asks for. Chapman's water birds are the marsh's census before the ditches: sixteen kinds of duck on his list — wood duck, the big black-headed duck, ring-necked duck, redhead, canvasback, the dipper or bufflehead, shelldrake and fish duck, red-breasted and hooded mergansers, mallard, pintail, green-winged and blue-winged teal, the spoonbill, gadwall and baldpate — with the American swan and the trumpeter swan above them, the loon, the terns and gulls, and the wader company of herons, bitterns, the glossy ibis, snipes, yellowlegs and the long-billed curlew in the undrained swales. His verdict on the whole company is one clause: the swimmers "formerly frequented this county in large numbers, have almost disappeared" — and his cause for the waders is the county's epitaph for its wetlands: "cultivation has drained their favorite haunts." Between Chapman's census and its emptying stood the market era, and the marsh record keeps it in colour: the Kankakee "full of market hunters and guides," its hunt clubs raising clubhouses on the marsh's edge (the Maksawba Club among them; Forest and Stream was reporting the Water Valley and Maksawba shooting in March 1898), its birds going to city markets by the wagonload. The state geologist's 1888 list — Maurice Thompson's Kankakee water and shore birds — reads like a market catalogue with the prices worn off: the field plover "much sought after for the market by pot-hunters," wood ducks "very plentiful," great blue herons everywhere, above all at English Lake. Then the ditches finished what the gun began: systematic ditching from the 1880s, the Kankakee's main channelization by 1917–1918, a river straightened into a ditch and a marsh converted to farmland — Indiana's share of the national reckoning standing at 87 percent of its wetlands lost. What came back, partially and late, is measured in the marsh's own terms: the sandhill cranes Chapman watched stopping on their journeys — locally abundant breeders in northwestern Indiana until 1929, then gone as breeders — now stage each autumn at Jasper-Pulaski Fish and Wildlife Area in the tens of thousands, migrants again over ground their grandfathers nested on; and the restored marsh fragments of the Kankakee's state areas carry ducks and herons in something like the old companies, at preserve size. On Granger's own ground the marsh line is shorter and stands where the Farms leg left it: drained, ditched, farmed — and its water birds now are the creek's and the retention ponds' herons and teal, Chapman's company at farm-pond size.

Sources:

1. Chapman (1880), Chapter II (the Swimmers and the Waders) and the portage passage: the sixteen-duck list, both swans, the "almost disappeared" verdict, "cultivation has drained their favorite haunts"; the Kankakee rising about a mile west of South Bend.
2. Grand Kankakee Marsh restoration record (Kankakee River Basin Commission / marsh histories): the "Everglades of the North," size estimated 400,000 to over 1,000,000 acres as carriers differ; ditching from the 1880s; channelization 1917–1918; Indiana wetland loss 87 percent.
3. Market-era record: Forest and Stream (March 1898) on the Water Valley and Maksawba shooting; the Maksawba Club among the marsh hunt clubs; Maurice Thompson's 1888 Kankakee bird list in the state geologist's report — field plover "much sought after for the market by pot-hunters," wood ducks "very plentiful," herons "everywhere."
4. Sandhill crane record: abundant NW Indiana breeders until 1929; autumn staging at Jasper-Pulaski Fish and Wildlife Area now in the tens of thousands.
5. This build's Farms and Land legs: the Harris Township marsh and its ditching at county size — pointed to, not retold.