The Legend of Long Ago Lake

Before any man-made lights dotted the nightscape of Newton County, Indiana, before the trails turned to paved roads and the woods were replaced with rows of crops, there was a lake. This wasn't some little back-country pond, it was at one time the largest body of water in the entire state. By some historical estimates it was ten miles long, 7 miles wide and fourteen feet in depth in certain spots, covering around 36,000 acres. The original settlers called it Beaver Lake, or just “Big Lake”. In the time before the French explorer and fur trader La Salle surveyed the surrounds of the Kankakee River, packs of timber wolves stalked vast herds of buffalo, deer, and endless small game alongside the Potawatomi natives who wintered in camps around the shores of the ancient lake. Though the lake is now long gone, there is a fantastical tale about this particular basin that has lingered on the lips of a select few, barely whispered from one generation to another. The land that surrounded this mysterious lake has concealed an extraordinary secret for all this time, a secret older than any of our oldest historical accounts, that sheds new light on the past, and perhaps even the future of the long ago lake.

René-Robert Cavelier, sieur de La Salle, French explorer

Many famous (and infamous) characters once roamed the woods and marshes around Beaver Lake, but some seemed to elude the pages of history, until now. Turkey Foot, a Potawatomi clan chief was one such infamous villain who retreated to the groves bordering the old lake after many a raid of settler villages throughout Indiana and Illinois. After the signing of treaties with the U.S. government, other tribe chiefs were tasked with bringing him to justice for his murderous crime spree. One account from Otho Wingers' “The Potawatomi Indians” claims Turkey Foot met his end by the hand of the son of Chief Bull Foot, who avenged his father after Turkey Foot killed him. A different account in “The Land of Potawatomi” by Elmore Barce claims Turkey Foot was “never taken”. Yet another said Chief Topenebee was given this task and reported back to authorities that Turkey Foot could not be found, even after an extensive search of the lake area. It is a part of the legend of the lake that an ancient enchantment protected those who hid there so long as they did no harm to the land.

Chief Topenebee (or Topinabee) of the Potawatomi

Years later the notorious “Bogus Island” rising out from the reeds of the lake would serve as a hideout for horse thieves and counterfeiters who were unaware of the strange spell of the lake but benefited from it nonetheless. Even ill-famed Chi-town mobster James "Big Jim" Colosimo (mentor to John “The Fox” Torrio, who mentored the immortal Al Capone) was said to have known of and visited Bogus Island. Colosimo, or “Diamond Jim” as he had been nicknamed later in his career for his penchant for diamonds of all kinds; pins, cuff links, rings, and other jewelry, supposedly caught wind that his protégé John Torrio was planning to usurp his throne upon his return to the city after eloping with his second wife Dale Winter to West Baden Springs in southern Indiana. According to one anonymous source, he stopped at the dunes around the fabled Bogus Island, which to this day aren't far from the roadside of U.S. Highway 41, and buried all the diamond jewelry he was wearing at the time, along with several thousand dollars in cash, in a tan briefcase and placed a deer skull on top near the old island. He was gunned down in his own diner soon after his return by an assassin hired by Torrio. The diamonds and money were never recovered.

"Diamond Jim" Colosimo Slain

But this story isn't about raiders, rustlers, or mobsters, it's about one of those aforementioned illusory individuals who has so far managed to slip through the cracks of the chronicles of yore, and a treasure worth much more than diamonds and ill-gotten dollar bills. The point of mentioning the others is to establish the precedent that there has always been something unusual going on with Beaver Lake, it has ever held an inexplicable mystique, and served as a haven even to its less reputable guests. Until now, this exposition was entirely unknown by the recorders of history. The researchers and historians did not know, as diligent as they have been, that the destiny of Beaver Lake and its surrounds may have been so greatly affected by a single person who had neither wealth, nor fame. She was a Potawatomi medicine woman whose name was Mokjewen. She lived and traveled with the tribe that frequented the lake, before it was drained; trapping and fishing in autumn, weathering the harsh winters on the plains beside the buffalo herds, and trekking to the shores of Lake Michigan in the spring to trade furs. She harvested native herbs along the trails, healing members of her tribe and others of many ailments. It is not possible to ascertain her approximate birth date or when she died as there was no record of it, but through the passing of this tale we can at least assume she was still present when early attempts to drain the lake began. She was one of those who the Potawatomi called a “Keeper of the Sacred Fire”, a title that not only applied to their people collectively, but was also reserved for special persons who carried and safeguarded their traditions, stories, and spirit. The individual who held this title was said by the Potawatomi to represent the spirit of the water spider.

Permit me another short digression, as it is pertinent to this story to explain some of the Potawatomi lore as I understand it. The “Keepers of the Sacred Fire” is a reference to both the Council of the Three Fires, an alliance with the Ojibwe and Odawa (Ottawa), and with their own origin folklore. The Potawatomi tell a tale of a severe winter where all the animals gathered together on an island for a meeting to discuss what they should do. The renowned animals; like the wolf, the eagle, the buffalo, and the snake, agreed that they would go and bring back fire so they could all survive the long cold. One by one they attempted to go and obtain fire; the wolf tried to carry it on his back but was burned, the buffalo sank in the icy waters and extinguished it, the eagle and the snake each tried only to come back singed, and all the other great animals gave attempt but were unable to return with the flame. A lowly water spider spoke up and said she would bring back the flame, but the other animals laughed and said she was too small and weak. She went out and found a small ember which she wrapped in a basket woven from her web to protect it from the bitter winds on her back, bobbing across the surface of the water. The water spider was remembered in that act as a heroine among all the animals and charged with being the keeper of the flame.

The Water Spider

Mokjewen was a steward of this tradition and served as the guardian of the spirit of her people, the great water spider who keeps the flame alive. The legend of the lake passed down in oral tradition could be interpreted that this “place of fire” the Potawatomi are so named for, where the water spider carried the first flame, may be none other than our very own Beaver Lake. Or perhaps it was carried to this place from somewhere else. When the Potawatomi were forced from their ancestral lands in 1838 (what was called later “The Trail of Death”), after the Indian Removal Act of 1830 was passed, there was no record found of Mokjewens' departure, nor was she listed among the forty people who died during the forced march to Kansas. It was assumed that she was the sole Potawatomi who defiantly remained behind, living off the land in the cover of the woods, and that the magic of the lake helped to keep her presence concealed. Some early settlers claimed to have seen a native woman walking the prairies and forests, but most of these reports were dismissed as preposterous ghost stories.

Although we do not know her fate, a secret she passed known only to few has finally emerged, having waited just below the surface of the very grounds we walk on for all this time. From when the first attempts to drain the lake began as early as 1852, Mokjewen, knowing that the will of progress would eventually succeed, sought to preserve the magic of it. She took an ember, supposedly that very same one carried by the water spider which encapsulated the spirit of the lake, deep into the nearby woods and buried it between two great oak trees. Apparently this was made known to someone else, though we do not know who exactly. The legend says that as long as the ember remained the land would be blessed as it always had been in the time when the Potawatomi called it their own. It brought forth a spring of water from where it was buried, and that water had the power to heal, not on it's own, but by infusing whatever vegetation and animals that consumed it with potent curative properties. The animals who drank from the puddles grew strong, and the trees and plants surrounding it grew tall and remarkably fast. But there was also another side to this magic- For anyone who harmed the land would not be blessed by the waters, but rather they would face the same fate as the shrinking lake, their endeavors would slowly fade into nothingness. As Mokjewen had foreseen, the magic of the lake was no match for the insatiable appetites of men who only valued the land for it's monetary worth.

It only took twenty years from when the “big ditch” was dug in 1873 by property baron Lemuel Milk for the lake to be drained completely. But a faint essence of magic still lingered on, left behind by Mokjewen in some corner of the land that once surrounded the lake. Milk owned sizable swathes of the recovered land which was inherited by his only daughter, Jennie, who had taken the name Conrad in marriage. Jennie Conrad was renowned for her business acumen, she was a shrewd cattle trader and had ambitious aims of building her very own city. But what inspired her machinations in the first place? Before now, nobody has questioned the genesis of her motivations. It was rumored that Jennie found something in those woods where she intended to build her namesake metropolis, something that she kept hidden from everyone else. Only now has it become evident what it is that she had found- The spring of Mokjewen, and more than that, she unearthed the ember that was buried there in an attempt to harness it to build her empire. However, this apparently proved problematic for her and to her grandiose plans. Upon suffering one setback after another, Jennie likely began to attribute her run of bad luck to this mysterious curio she had discovered. Before Conrad became the ghost town it is today, there was every indication it would succeed. Jennie negotiated deals with the Chicago, Indiana, & Southern railroad, and had many locals who worked for her or leased her land lined up as tenants. There was a massive cattle stockyard, a school, church, cement factory, hotel, and even a park for recreation. A nameless resident farmer who rented plots from her had remarked to another local that he encountered her one day far from the town, all the way out by the Illinois state line, digging a hole near a patch of trees. The farmer had noted that she seemed particularly perturbed that day, angrily muttering aloud and working furiously to finish the hole as he watched her from a distance. He decided not to approach her in the current predicament but he did observe her taking a small object from a satchel, wrapped in black cloth and throwing it down into the hole before filling it in and stomping wildly as she spat on the ground. Jennie Conrad passed away some years after without ever revealing what it was she buried that day, but that's where I become a part of this story, because I'm the one who found it one hundred years later.

Plans for the Town of Conrad

My wife and I purchased our first family home in Lake Village, an actual stone's throw from the Illinois state line. From the first moment when we laid eyes on the house and the land we were mesmerized. There was something so captivating and inviting about this place. Even though we weren't in a financial position to buy it at the time I knew we had to have it, so I worked long and hard to make our dreams a reality. Years later, late in the day a few summers back, my son came running inside from the backyard, waving his arms frantically to alert us to something, he was huffing and puffing, barely able to get any syllables out. “What is it!?” I yelped, presuming he had incurred some usual countryside injury. He caught his breath and proceeded to inform me that he had hit a water line while digging a hole. “Water line?” I questioned, “We don't have any water lines buried out here”. He pointed in the direction he had run from with insistence, so I followed him out to where he had been digging a hole. Lo and behold watery bubbles were forming in the sand about three feet down. The sun had nearly set and I squinted into the darkening hole. It seemed for a moment I thought I saw a faint glow from where the bubbles were emanating. I reached down and touched the wet sand, rubbing it between my fingers I raised my hand to my nose. I didn't smell any gas or notice anything amiss, and it was too late to investigate further so I scratched my head and decided to leave it until the morning. What we found the next morning astounded us. The grass around the hole had grown threefold, flowers that weren't there the day before had sprouted up overnight. My wife and I sat at the breakfast table wondering to each other how it could be possible, we traded logical explanations back and forth. Then my son called to us from upstairs with an urgent tone. We walked upstairs to find him standing with his back to the door frame where we regularly recorded his height. “I knew I felt taller!” he exclaimed excitedly. I skeptically examined the measurement we had marked only days before, curiously it appeared that he had grown an entire inch. But as people usually do, we shrugged it off as another strange coincidence. I filled in the hole, half-worried about some imagined sink hole while simultaneously rationalizing it away as a leaky drain tile from the nearby field.

For weeks there was a soggy spot in the yard around where the hole had been, and the vegetation had been shooting up faster than I could knock it down with my weed-eater, yet still I paid it no more mind than that. I had nearly forgotten the incident completely until one morning when I was taking my coffee on the back porch and I noticed a wisp of smoke rising from that spot. I set my cup down and grabbed a shovel expecting to put out whatever it was only to find that there was no smoke when I got up close. I stared at the ground for a moment with eyebrow raised before I decided to dig it back out and be sure. The more I dug down the more wet the ground got until I noticed those same bubbles from before. The sand at the bottom of the hole was moist and I reached into it not really expecting to find anything, but I did. I felt something solid, small, and warm, much warmer than the sand around it. I pulled it out to find what first looked like a piece of charcoal. As I examined the strange object it radiated heat in the palm of my hand as I brushed off the sand and black char from it. I felt the heat move all over my body in a wave of euphoria. I can only describe it as a sensation of immense vigor, like I could lift a car or build a whole city with my own bare hands, just like Jennie Conrad tried to. As I looked down at the black clump it flared brilliantly like an incandescent fire gem and started to burn again with a tiny white flame. The entire story of Mokjewen flashed before my eyes all the way back to the beginning like a vision that seemed to go on forever but in real-time was over in an instant.

Initially I did not want to tell anyone this story, even my wife, for I know how unbelievable it sounds. After coaxing it out of me, we deliberated over how to handle it. Knowing that exploiting the ember was entirely out of the question, we chose to take it to where Mokjewen had first removed it from the heart of the lake; to honor her, the Potawatomi, and the land so that it might continue to bless and protect the entire community. I will not say the exact place where we returned it, but if you visit the Kankakee Sands where the lake once stood you may find where it is buried if you let your intuition guide you. You will see the buffalo that left these parts again roam the prairie. The deer and turkey, once hunted to near extinction are again plentiful. The people here are strong and kind, living in harmony with nature. Perhaps even the lake may yet choose to reappear some day, as Mokjewen had foretold, so long as the ember remains. From time to time that spot in the yard still gets soggy, and when it does I still rub that wet sand between my fingers before I tend to our garden, or the chickens and bees, to give them a little bit of the residual magic, and it still works. Our gardens grow a little faster, the animals live a little longer, the honey tastes a bit sweeter, and our family has been happy and healthy ever since. Before coming here we had daydreamed together for years about finding the perfect place to raise our children in peace; somewhere with natural beauty, wide open spaces, and magic- We found it. What we didn't expect to find was the final piece to the puzzle that is the mystery of Mokjewen, and the long-forgotten miracle of the long ago lake.

Written by: Justin Miller (The human being) without any aid from artificial (supposed) intelligence