The
Potawatomi and the Pickle Pioneer
Lyman Budlong
was a prosperous pickle producer.
After buying 700
hundred acres of land in Bowmanville, Illinois, he started farming. Budlong
grew carrots, tomatoes, onions, lettuce…but his cash crop was cucumbers,
Budlong was the Davy Crocket of Cucumbers. By 1900, he seasonally employed 1500 women and children
and 800 men to harvest and process twelve thousand bushels of vegetables per
day during the summer months and 150,000
bushels of cucumbers per pickle season. All the pickles were processed on-site
and Budlong became the largest supplier of premium pickles in the entire World.
One day while
pitching a pitchfork into a pickle patch (figuratively speaking), Budlong was
surprised by what he found.
An excavation of his gravel pit in 1909 revealed fourteen bodies buried in circle with their feet towards the center.
The excavation
was thought to be a Potawatomi Indian burial ground, but this seems totally inconsistent with the Tribe’s traditional
funeral rituals. Clan members would dress the corpse in the best clothing and everyday
items, tools, ornaments, moccasins and even prized possessions would be
interred as well. And bodies were buried individually in a variety of positions.
Apparently,
there was not a great deal of care exhuming the bodies on the Budlong site
because while they were originally well preserved, they soon crumbled (dust to
dust) and only the skeletons remained after being exposed to the air. There is also no record of any artifacts being recovered from the farm and no explanation
offered for the mass grave.
What happened to
the skeletons? No one knows.
Budlong died in
1909 and was buried next to wife Louise, less than one mile from his pickle paradise. A
section of Chicago near Lincoln Square is named in his honor: Budlong Woods
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