Mark Bennett: Legacy of Lost Creek settlers adds important lesson to Cultural Trail

Apr. 13—An artist will soon study the history of the Lost Creek pioneers who settled in Vigo County in the 1820s, and then will craft a sculpture that captures their story.

That art piece will stand in Deming Park near the Railroad I shelter. Picnicking families, joggers, moms pushing strollers, couples power-walking and passing motorists will see the sculpture.

If the artwork turns out like the other three sculptures on the Terre Haute Cultural Trail, it will grab their attention.

Those glances and curious stares matter, no doubt. Art aims to make us think and wonder.

But the greatest value of the upcoming Lost Creek Settlement sculpture — and the previous three Cultural Trail sculptures — is the history behind them. Young school kids, teenagers, parents, workers, retirees, newcomers, visitors and longtime residents all could better understand the Terre Haute community in which they live by knowing what those Lost Creek pioneers endured just to experience freedom.

The dangerous cross-country trek undertaken by six families of "free" Black Americans from North Carolina to west-central Indiana in the 1820s exemplifies courage.

It also illustrates how injustice and racism get normalized. It happened to them in both the South, where the brutal practice of enslaving African American people was legal until the Civil War, and in the North, where discrimination imposed barriers in the daily lives of the oppressed.

And, the Lost Creek settlers' ability to build a community in the rural Hoosier prairie and woodlands shows the strength of the human spirit.

It's a lesson that needs to be taught in local classrooms. Anyone in the community, for that matter, needs to study that history, just like the artist who will create the sculpture will do.

This week, that sculpture took a step closer toward completion. Wabash Valley Art Spaces, the nonprofit organization that has brought 21 outdoor sculptures to Terre Haute, launched a crowdfunding campaign on Wednesday to raise funds to fully fund the Lost Creek sculpture. Art Spaces has set a goal of raising $30,000 through the campaign by May 27. If the goal is met, the funds will be matched with a grant through the Indiana Housing and Community Development Authority's CreatINg Places program.

With about two-thirds of the funds needed for the project already secured, the crowdfunding effort would finish it. Art Spaces and Cultural Trail Committee members have nearly completed interviews with three prospective artists — the finalists from a nationwide search. Those sculptors will submit their proposals, by the end of May, to tell the Lost Creek story through a sculpture. Then, one artist will be chosen, work will begin and a sculpture should be in place by the end of this year, said Ally Midgley, Art Spaces executive director.

"It's an incredible story," Midgley said Monday afternoon, "and it deserves this honor."

Like the other three historical figures commemorated on the Terre Haute Cultural Trail, the Lost Creek Settlement's story isn't widely known, even among Vigo Countians. And like the other Trail subjects, the sculpture can open conversations about those pioneers' legacy.

Since the Cultural Trail art pieces were put in place, Hauteans and visitors now know a bit more about Terre Haute's "Desiderata" poet Max Ehrmann, Indiana state song composer Paul Dresser and acclaimed novelist Theodore Dreiser.

Ehrmann's bronze likeness sits on a park bench at the northeast corner of Seventh and Wabash, sculpted by artist extraordinaire Bill Wolfe in 2010. Four years later, artist Teresa Clark's Wabash River-themed sculpture honoring Dresser was unveiled at Fairbanks Park. In 2019, a metal depiction of a typewritten page, toasting Dreiser's early-20th-century classics, such as "An American Tragedy" and "Sister Carrie," debuted on the northeast lawn of the Vigo County Public Library.

Ehrmann's masterpiece "Desiderata" has inspired millions since its almost accidental introduction to the world beyond Terre Haute in 1965, as it became the "peace poem," gracing college dorm walls and middle-America living rooms. Dresser wrote dozens of hit songs, a veritable Elton John of late-19th-century Tin Pan Alley, including "On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away" — Indiana's official state song since 1913. Both Ehrmann and Dresser were beloved in Terre Haute for their generosity. And while Dreiser had a fraught relationship with Terre Haute, the novelist supported workers on strike in Kentucky, pushed for a fair trial for eight young African Americans accused of rape in Alabama and battled censorship.

The Lost Creek Settlement pioneers' exploits transcended even those, in a humble way. Perhaps more vital is the fact that many of their descendants still live in the Terre Haute area. They've made Terre Haute a better place.

The pioneers moved away from North Carolina two centuries ago. Those particular Black families were considered legally "free," but as the Library of Congress historical account explains, they lived in a dangerous, complicated situation. In the pre-Civil War South, they lived in the shadow of slavery. Their travel was restricted. They couldn't gather safely. They lived under discriminatory laws. Forming churches, schools and even fraternal groups was risky.

As Lost Creek settlers descendant Dee Reed explained last year, "While they were free African Americans, 'free' wasn't really free."

They decided to leave and move to Indiana, which wasn't a bastion of racial acceptance but had resisted slavery. It was a perilous journey. They traveled in wagons and on foot. They had to carry "freedom papers," documents to verify to white authorities that they weren't enslaved people escaping bondage.

As Reed's late mother Lost Creek historian Dorothy Ross told the Tribune-Star in 2019, "It was a shame, but it was necessary that they carry [the 'freedom papers'] with them in order to travel safely."

They made it to this place, just miles from the Wabash River banks, just a few years after Indiana gained statehood. It wasn't utopian. Schools in the state's newly formed Black communities were prevented from hiring white teachers, so Lost Creek settlers came up with the money to find and hire a Black teacher. They built a school, church, cemetery and other community resources. They turned wilderness into productive farms.

They prospered in a truly independent way.

Today, a seven-acre private park, Lost Creek Grove, stands where the settlement began in eastern Vigo County. A historical marker recalls the church's role as a spot on the Underground Railroad. The Deming Park sculpture will introduce more generations to the pioneers' grit, bravery and ingenuity.

Mary Kramer, the former Art Spaces executive director and Cultural Trail Committee leader, hopes the Lost Creek story gets told in classrooms.

"This certainly belongs in the school curriculum somewhere," she said. "There aren't too many places that have this, and I see it as a source of real pride."

Mark Bennett can be reached at 812-231-4377 or mark.bennett@tribstar.com.