Many old residents remember the old Indian burying ground in the bottom of the ravine at the foot of Wayne and Pearl Streets.  Most of that ground is known now as Kiwanis Playground and it is a most interesting commentary on changing conditions to realize that the tiny feet of laughing children are running above the moldering remains of forest chieftains.  Many residents remember that the bottom of the ravine was used for many years as an Indian burying ground but not many know that the slopes on both sides hold the remains of many early settlers.  Thirty, forty, fifty years ago is not such a long time back but then the hilltop was known as a pasture where the kindly old pioneer, Mr. Guernsey allowed the villagers to pasture their cows.  There where the beautiful Garfield School now stands and hundreds of people have their homes, the lowing bossies ate of the rich grasses or stood contentedly chewing their cuds the while the village milkmaids extracted the rich fluid.

 

The children of those folks were warned not to play in the bottom of the ravine for fear they would fall into the many deep depressions where Indian graves had caved in.  For countless years the wandering tribes who met periodically at the mouth of the Old Saint Joe and made the valley their home had buried their dead in deep graves in the bottom of the ravine.  The rude, log cabins decayed and the graves caved in leaving deep holes dangerous for playing children.  In earlier days, probably while the tiny village was still known as Newburyport, there was no public graveyard so those sturdy pioneers appropriated the slopes just above the old Indian graves and buried their dead.

 

The blue, granite and marble quarries were far away in old New England, separated from the pioneer burying ground by a thousand miles of roads, bottomless with mud, so no huge, carved monuments could be erected over the loved ones.  But the limestone of Indiana was not far off and it was possible to bring home a small piece with rude sled or Indiana travois.  Then the father set about to carve a rude cross.  This done, it was set up in broken stone and cemented in with pitch derived from the majestic pines of the great forests which hemmed in the village, there to stand in loneliness the while the rains of summer and the snows of winter lay upon the slope. 

 

Workmen excavating a basement for a new residence at 1019 Morrison Avenue in 1939 uncovered at least three human skeletons.  The skeletons are believed to be the remains of “Red Men”, according to then Sheriff Charles L. Miller and authorities on Indian lore.  In each of the graves, the bodies had been buried with the heads facing towards the southwest.  Authorities are puzzled by the fact that the skeletons were interred deeper than the usual Indian graves.  No implements or relics were discovered in the graves.  The skeletons were buried under four and a half feet of earth on a hillside overlooking the Kiwanis Playground.  That part of St. Joseph, cut by valleys and gullies, which evidently were carved by rivers or large creeks long ago, is rich in history, going back to LaSalle’s explorations of the St. Joseph River.  Burnett’s trading post, one of the earliest settlements in Michigan, was located approximately a mile from what is now Morrison Avenue.  The vicinity was once an Indian encampment, and it is believed the excavators have discovered an ancient Indian burying ground.

 

As the village grew, the need of a permanent God’s acre was felt and the present City Cemetery was bought and laid out.  It too is old now but not nearly so old as the lonely graves on the slopes of the ravine.  Busy streets and beautiful homes occupy the ground which was once the village pasture field; the pitiful little stone and wooden crosses have long since fallen and disappeared under decaying weeds; the bottom has been leveled and a fine playground made over the old Indian graves but the slopes still retain the rough, weedy, brushy appearance just as they looked in the days when they were the village burying ground.  Those whose hair is silvering knew and loved the old days and remember the pitiful little crosses, but this will probably be news to our younger generation.