Johnson County, Indiana - Chapter 1: In the Beginning, 1881

In all that vast region of country lying between the Ohio and the lakes, France, at one time, claimed a nominal ownership. This claim, set up in the latter half of the seventeenth century, was founded on the right of discovery, settlement and military occupation, and it was maintained until the defeat of the French by Gen. Wolfe, at Quebec, in 1759. In the treaty that followed, France forever relinquished her pretensions to this region, and it passed into the possession of the British crown.

When the war for independence came on, British agents, scattered here and there in the wilderness, were active in stirring up the Indians to make war on the frontiers. The Kentuckians were among the principal sufferers, and, as a measure of protection, it was thought to be necessary to rid the country of the mischievous agents. Gen. George Rogers Clarke, accordingly, applied to Patrick Henry, then Governor of Virginia, for authority to raise an army with which to attack the British posts in the West. The authority being given, Gen. Clarke repaired to the Falls of the Ohio in the spring of 1778, when two hundred frontiersmen at once rallied to his standard. Floating down the Ohio in rude boats to a point a short distance below the mouth of the Wabash, the little army disembarked, and at once set out for the British posts on the Illinois River. Providence favored the enterprise. The English were expelled from the Illinois country, and the oath of allegiance to Virginia was willingly taken by the French inhabitants. News of the event reaching the post at Vincennes ahead of the invaders, the French residents of that place rose successfully against the British garrison, and British rule was at an end in the West.

The country now belonged to Virginia. Steps were taken by this commonwealth to organize a government suitable to the wants of the region, and Col. John Todd, of Kentucky, was commissioned as the Lieutenant Colonel and Commandant of the country on the "Western side of the Ohio."

The dominion exercised bv Virginia was of short duration. In 1784, this State ceded to the United States all her claim to the country "northwest of the Ohio," and from that time on the entire region has been under the jurisdiction of the United States.

Various changes in the Territorial government were, from time to time, made, and State after State was carved out and admitted into the Union, until the whole has long since been absorbed. On the 19th day of April, 1816, Indiana was admitted as one of these States.

During all of the time from 1769, when La Salle, a French explorer, with thirty companions, descended the Kankakee and was the first of Europeans certainly known to have set foot on the soil of our State, down to within a few years before the admission of the State into the L^nion, it is not surely known that any white man ever set foot within the borders of the territory now comprised within the boundaries of Johnson County. The probability is, that white men were here during that time. An Indian trail, connecting the falls at Louisville with the Wabash villages, passed through this county. This Indian highway, leading to and from the "dark and bloody ground," was, doubtless, traveled by many a war party going to and returning from the Kentucky settlements. These returning parties not infrequently were accompanied by prisoners, and there is a strong probability that white captives have been led by dusky warriors through the primitive woods of this county, long before the white hunters were venturing beyond the northern hill ranges of the Ohio.

And then, again, it is known that the French Jesuits and traders, during the century of French ascendency in the West, navigated all the principal streams, established trading-posts and missionary stations wherever Indians could be found in numbers to justify : and, as the White River country was prolific of all kinds of game and fur-bearing animals common to its latitude, a reasonable hypothesis, supported by tradition, warrants the conjecture that Frenchmen were, long ago, voyageurs on White River, and thus came within the borders of our county.