Lincoln Road Trip by Jane Simon Ammeson

Author:Jane Simon Ammeson
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Red Lightning Books
Published: 2019-03-19T16:00:00+00:00

HUFFMAN’S MILL COVERED BRIDGE AND A RAID NEAR LITTLE PIGEON CREEK

On the trail from Corydon to Vincennes, the Huffmans, another Kentucky family migrating to Indiana, camped at a ford on Anderson Creek. Its pastoral beauty so impressed George Huffman that he and his wife, Nancy McDaniel Huffman, returned and built a home there around 1810 and, much later, a mill. But, like Kentucky, Indiana had its share of battles with Native Americans fighting to hold on to their land.

The Raid on the Meeks Family and the Atha Meeks Memorial

A year after the Huffmans settled in Indiana, Shawnee Indians under the leadership of Set-te-tah raided two cabins built by a settler named Atha (sometimes spelled Athe) Meeks and his family in nearby Little Pigeon Creek. Meeks’s son, also named Atha, was the first to be shot by the Shawnees. Meeks, a Revolutionary War veteran, rushed to the aid of his son as they were attempting to scalp him but was fatally shot by Big Bones, another member of the raiding party. Meeks’s wife managed to drag her husbands’ body into their cabin but was struck by a tomahawk blow. Though wounded, Atha Jr. was able to fend off the attackers, giving his brother William time to shoot Big Bones. The remaining Shawnees fled, but some were captured and taken to the cabin of Justice of the Peace Uriah Lamar.

Or at least that’s one story. When I interviewed Steve Sisley, a Spencer County historian, he said the body of Big Bones was found in a tree, and family tradition has it that the remaining Meekses used his skull as a drinking vessel. Hard times make folks hard, as shown further by what supposedly happened to Set-te-tah after he was captured during the fight. “Believing that one of the men wouldn’t approve of killing Set-te-tah, they sent him to a well to get water, but he returned before the killing was accomplished. So one of the men spilled the water and they sent him out again,” says Sisley. “When he returned Set-te-tah was dead.”

It’s a half-hour drive southwest from the site of the raid in Little Pigeon Creek to the Richland City area where Atha Meeks Jr. later lived and died, but it’s there in the Graff Cemetery that a memorial to Atha Meeks tells the story of the family’s settlement near Little Pigeon Creek and the fateful raid on their homestead:

Pioneer and Revolutionary War veteran Athe Meeks Sr. (1750–1812) and his family settled near lake drain’s entrance to Pigeon Creek in 1805. Seven years later at age 62 he was brutally killed on his doorstep and went down in history as the last white man murdered by the Indians in Indiana Territory. His 19-year-old son, Athe Jr. (1793–1843) was wounded during the encounter. Atha Sr. was buried in a field at the site of the tragedy near his cabin. Atha Jr., his wife Anna Vest Meeks (1797–1843), and several other family members are buried in this cemetery.

The cemetery and memorial are located south of Bullocktown off 900 West near County Road 500 in Spencer County.

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