Delaware County, Indiana - Chapter 2: Indian Inhabitants - American Conquest, 1908

During the first half of the eighteenth century, while St. Ange was second governor of 1 ost Vinccnncs, the only Indians in Indiana lived along the Wabash and to the north of it. There were no villages and no resident tribes to the south of the Wabash valley.* Within historical times, the Indians most closely identified with the central and eastern Indiana counties were the Delawares. The Delawares were originally eastern Indians, of the Algonquan stock, calling themselves Lenapc- or Leni-lcnape, and figured more than once in the history of the early colonies in New York, New jersey, Delaware and Pennsylvania. After being forced out of their eastern abodes on the Delaware river, partly by the hostility of the Iroquois and partly by the extension of the white settlements, they moved into western Pennsylvania, then through the gateway of the Alleghanies, and finally settled in eastern Ohio, where, being within reach of the French, and backed by the western tribes, they asserted their independence of the Iroquois, and in the subsequent wars, up to the treaty of Greenville in 1795, showed themselves the most determined opponents of the advancing whites. f

About the year 1770, having received permission from the Miami and I'iankishaw to occupy the country between the Ohio and White rivers in Indiana, the Delawares became seated in central and eastern Indiana, their presence here being commemorated in the county that contains but a small ] -union of the territory over which these Indians wandered. At one time they had six villages. In 1789, by permission of the Spanish government, a part of them removed to Missouri, and afterwards to Arkansas, together with a band of Shawnee. By 1820 the two bands had found their wav to Texas. The Delawares, including the Munsee, now number about 1,900, most of them in Oklahoma, Indian Territory and Kansas.

The Munsee were one of the three principal divisions of the Delawares, called, because of their totem, the "Wolf tribe" of the Delawares. From this tribe the county seat and metropolis of Delaware county takes its name. 1 iie original significance of the word "Munsee" is defined as "at the place where stones are gathered together," a meaning that has, of course, no relation to the city in Delaware county. Besides the Muncie in Indiana, two other towns in the United States bear that name, one in Illinois and the other in Kansas; while in Pennsylvania three localities have the name form of "Muncy." The Mnnsec, as a tribe of the Dclawares, dwelt originally in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, about the Delaware river. About the middle of the eighteenth century they moved to the Allegheny river. The Moravian missionaries had already begun their work among them, and a considerable number under their teaching drew off from the tribe and became a separate organization. The others moved west with the Delawares into Indiana where most of them were incorporated with that tribe, while others joined ihe Chippewa. Shawnee and other tribes, so that the Munsee practically ceased to exist as an organized body. Many removed to Canada, and settled near their relatives, the Moravian Indians. In 1885 the only Munsee officially recognized in the United States were living with a body of Chippewa in Franklin county, Kansas, both together numbering only 72.

In 1774 all the country northwest of the Ohio was put into the boundaries of the Province of Quebec, and several years later the lieutenant governor of Detroit assumed the title of "superintendent of St. Vincennes," and took personal command there in 1777. Throughout all the years since the first exploration of her territory Indiana was but a part of a province of a province. "For ninety years her provincial seat of government vacillated between Quebec, New Orleans and Montreal, with intermediate authority at Fort Chartres and Detroit, and the ultimate power at Paris. Then her capital was whisked away to London, without the slightest regard to the wishes of her scattered inhabitants, by the treaty of Paris. Sixteen years later it came over the Atlantic to Richmond, on the James, by conquest ; and after a tarry of five years at that point it shifted to New York city, then the national seat of government, by cession. In 1788 it reached Marietta, Ohio, on its progress to its final location. In 1800 it came within the limits of the state.'"*

During the Revolutionary war, the danger most dreaded by the colonists was that which came from across the western frontier, produced by the Indians and their English leaders. At this time a considerable population had crossed the mountains from the Atlantic colonies into the country along the Ohio, and the county of Kentucky had already been organized as a part of Virginia by George Rogers Clark. This young Virginian, when it became apparent that a frontier force must be maintained to subdue the Indians and check their invasions under English leadership into the colonies, was selected by the government of Virginia to organize and command such a force on the frontier. Owing to lack of money, of supplies, the small number of set- t!crs from whom his force was to be recruited, and the vast extent of country to be covered by his force, the success of Clark's campaign has long been a glorious addition to American annals, and his fame fitly symbolized with the designation "The Hannibal of the West." Setting out with a small force of men, recruited largely in Kentucky, and relying on the support or at least the neutral attitude of the French settlers, lie surprised the post at Kaskaskia, July 4, 177S. and in the course of the same month Vincenncs became an American post, an American flag was floated for the first time in Indiana, and the French residents welcomed the American invaders as friends of their iiriti< n. Yinccnnes was later captured by the British and again retaken bv Clark, but the details of his campaign are not here pertinent. Suffice it to say that he held the vast region of his conquest against all expeditions of the English until the close of the war, and when the treaty of Paris was signed in 1783 the conquered region became a part of the new American republic. By the Ordinance of 1787 all this country northwest of the Ohio was organized as the Northwest Territory, and provided with a temporary government directed by officials appointed by Congress.

By Clark's conquest, by the Ordinance of 1787 for the government of the Territory, and by ordinances, dated in 1785 and 1788, providing for the survey and disposal of the public lands of the Territory, the region now embraced in the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and parts of rubers became a part of the United States and opened to the settlement of the pioneer homemakers who formed the first wave of western expansion. However, the Indian inhabitants were a factor that proved an obstacle to the settlement of this region for many years, and it was only when they gradually yielded, by war and treaty, their rights to the land that the white men were permitted, to come in and possess the fertile regions north of the Ohio. When the war of the revolution came to a close in the colonies, the Indian hostilities in the west were continued with renewed bitterness. When the territory north of the Ohio was surrendered to the colonies and it became understood that in a short time the Americans would push out and possess and settle this country, the Indians were aroused to make one long and determined effort to resist this invasion. For more than ten years hostilities were continued, during which time the settlement of the Ohio country was retarded and only a meager number of pioneers came as far west as the present state of Indiana. Campaign after campaign was made against the Indian tribes, conference followed conference, and at each treaty the Indians ceded some portion of their aboriginal heritage.

The eastern half of Ohio was ceded to the United Colonies in 1785. The Shawnees, who resisted every advance of the whites, were induced, by the Fort Finney treaty in 1786, to remove to a tract of country between the upper courses of the Great Miami and the Wabash - probably including the p;irt of Indiana that is now Delaware county. After the passage of the Ordinance of 1787 and the institution of government in the Northwest Tcr- < ritory, the period of actual settlement began. But for some years all the region between what is now eastern Ohio and the valley of the Wabash was a wilderness. In a short while the line of settlement extended across the j entire north and south length of Ohio at its eastern border. But the emigration did not advance in even line to the west; rather the earliest settlers j pioneered down the watercourse of the Ohio, turning aside only at the larger tributaries, so that during the last decade of the eighteenth century the fringes of population had extended all along the course of the Ohio and had penetrated inland for some distance along the Miami in Ohio and the Whitewater and the Wabash and its tributaries in Indiana.

Settlement would have proceeded more rapidly had not the Indians continued hostile. It will be remembered the English did not withdraw j their garrisons from all the posts in the western country until 1796, and the presence of the British had served as an inspiration to the Indians. About . the time the British garrisons were withdrawn, Anthony Wayne won his notable victory over the allied tribes at the rapids of the Maumee, in 1794, I and soon after established at the old post of Kckionga a fort that has since j borne his name. Previously, under Wayne's instructions, posts had been 1 established called Fort Greenville and Fort Recovery (both only a short distance east of the Indiana line). At Fort Greenville, in August, 1795, was negotiated the Greenville treaty between General Wayne and the delegates I of the various tribes inhabiting the portions of country under dispute. The boundary line setting off the Indian country from that ceded to the whites, fixed by this treaty, has more significance in the history of Delaware county than would be supposed in the case of an event so remote from the date of first settlement in the county. By this treaty nearly all of the present state of Ohio with the exception of the northwest corner \vas surrendered by the Indians. The western line ran from Fort Recovery (not far from the present Celina, Ohio) in a slightly southwesterly direction to the mouth of the Kentucky river on the Ohio. In the territory to the west of this line numerous other cessions were made by the Indians, among them a military reservation at Fort Wayne, lands about the various Wabash settlements, and the Clark grant at the falls of the Ohio. Excepting the minor cessions along the Wabash, the principal territory thrown open to settlement by this treaty in what is now Indiana was the triangular piece, shaped like a church spire with the base resting on the Ohio river, lying east of the Greenville Treaty Line to the present Ohio state line. When, in 1800. Congress divided the Northwest Territory, this Greenville line became part of the dividing line between Ohio and Indiana territories, but on the admission of Ohio to the Union in 1802 the western boundary became what it is to-day.

It will be seen that this tlircc-corncred strip in what is now southeastern Indiana contained territory that has since been made to comprise several entire counties at the southern end, and the narrower northern point contributed portions to the present Wayne, Randolph and Jay counties. Population at once began moving into the lands ceded by the Greenville treaty. In 170:; a few families made a beginning of the town of Lawrenceburg, in the extreme southeast corner of Indiana, and from that date settlements increased over th.it portion of the cession. Of course, during the first two -.ears of the territorial government of Indiana, this region belonged to Ohio and its population was counted with that of the latter territory. In 1S00 the total population of what is now Indiana was estimated at 2500, the majority of whom were French, in the settlements along the Wabash. When Ohio became a state in 1802 the section above described was added to Indiana, and from this Dearborn county was organized in 1803. Dearborn county and the valley of the Whitewater attracted a large number of Quaker immigrants. Their influence on the early politics of Indiana is a matter that can not be considered here; but these Quaker settlers, who later formed the bulk of the early population of Wayne county, comprised the stock from which many of Delaware county's pioneers came, and their influence can be easily traced in this county's history.

In February, 1809, Indiana territory was reduced to practically the present limits. But at that time the Indians still retained more than two thirds of the territory, so that the white settlements were restricted to the region along the Ohio, along the Wabash from Vincennes south, to the southeastern corner (Dearborn county) and several smaller grants. In September, 1809, a large area was opened to settlement, by treaty. By the larger cession the north boundary of settlement was fixed at a line running from the Wabash above Terre Haute to the east fork of White River near Brownstown. At the same time another tract was ceded, twelve miles in width and lying west of and parallel to the Greenville Treaty Line, being commonly known as the "twelve mile purchase." By this purchase the boundary of civilization was extended so as to include what is now a small portion of Jay county, the larger part of Randolph county, almost the entire Wayne county, and the other counties lying to the south. In 1815 this strip, then divided among the counties of Wayne, Franklin, Dearborn and Switzerland and parts of others, contained more than twenty thousand inhabitants, which was one third of the population of the entire territory which was just about to be made into a state. While Wayne county (then comprising the northern end of the strip and considerably greater area than it now has) had nearly seven thousand inhabitants in 1816, the area of Delaware county, almost adjoining, was still without a permanent inhabitant and belonged to the wilderness and the red men.