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"The Sailor Squirrel" was a favorite story of the late Capt. F.M. Van Natter. He said it was told to him by an old mussel-fisher in Pearl City. Capt. Van Natter was a collector of Hoosier stories and anecdotes, many of which he used in his book, "Lincoln's Boyhood: A Chronicle of His Indiana Years" (1963).
Three years ago, Mrs. Van Natter donated his papers to the Byron R. Lewis Historical Collections Library at VU. Among these were some old 78 rmp phonograph records, containing the "American Legion Program" on WAOV for March 5, 1944. On the program Van Natter presented French folksongs sun by Marie McQuaid and Nellie Dognaux, with piano accompaniment by Wilfred Marone.
During a pause in the program, Van Natter told this story:
Down about Pointe O'Chene, below Vincennes, an old Frenchman was wandering along the Wabash River.
Presently, he saw a squirrel come down to the water's edge and leap aboard a clapboard. He saw that squirrel hoist its tail like a sailorman would a sail, and deliberately tack out across the river.
Using its tail for a sail, the squirrel sailed to the other side and slid the clapboard into the mud-bank. The squirrel went ashore and disappeared into a farmer's cornfield.
The old Frenchman sat down and waited. After a while, he saw the squirrel come out of the field, carrying an ear of corn in its forepaws. He went aboard the clapboard, hoisted his tail as he had done before, and sailed back across the Wabash.
On reaching the Indiana shore, that funny squirrel snatched up the ear of corn and scampered to a high knothole in a sycamore tree.
He and some others cut down the tree and found that the squirrel had shelled the corn--Illinois corn--which that very squirrel had sailed across the river to find.
The wild animals around Vincennes were very, very smart in those early days!
EMAIL: rking@indian.vinu.edu