Prophetstown State Park in Battle Ground, Indiana, was me and Maggie's peaceful and scenic home for three days. Photo by Pat Bean
Travels With Maggie
“We need the tonic of wildness, to wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and the meadow-hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe: to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground.” — Henry David Thoreau
Prophetstown State Park
This peaceful Indiana park is named for Shawnee Indian leader Tenskwatawa (the Prophet) and his brother, Temcumseh, who established a village here in the early 1800s. Located near where the Walbash and the Tippecanoe rivers join, it was my Indiana home for three days.
Volunteer hosts in my previous campground had recommended it after Maggie, my friendly four-legged traveling companion, and I stopped to visit with them on one of our morning walks. I always tell people where I’m headed and ask for recommendations. This had been a great one.
Harrison, on his second attempt to become president, used the slogan “Tippecanoe and Tyler, Too,” and held a huge campaign rally in Battle Ground to implant the idea that he was the man who won the war against the Indians.
Meadow wildflowers, such as these wild geranium, colored me and Maggie's walks. Photo by Pat Bean
The ploy was successful and Harrison became this country’s ninth president. Thirty-two days later he died of pneumonia and John Tyler became our 10th president.
As I looked out over the awesome meadow where Mother Nature had woven her magic, I was saddened to think of the blood that had fallen on land that now looked so peaceful.
Not only did the park look out over a breathtaking meadow full of purple, pink and yellow wildflowers, I was sitting on top of history. The park is located in Battle Ground, Indiana, where William Henry Harrison defeated the two Shawnee brothers who had threatened revenge on the settlers for taking their land, hence the town’s name.
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