Vigo County, Indiana - Chapter 4: The Indians and the Early Settlers, 1908

The coming of the white man into Indiana was evil for the red man, who lost all of his native virtues without acquiring those of the white men but only their vices. The removal of the Indians from their lands to the far-western territories, which from some points of view seems so hard, really was a blessing to tlie Indians and saved them from total extinction because of their degradation.

General Harrison, in his message to the Indiana territorial legislature, in 1805, drew a melancholy picture of the condition of the Indians, in the following passage :

"The interests of your constituents, the interests of the miserable Indians, and your own feelings, will sufficiently urge you to take it into your most serious consideration, and provide the remedy which is to save thousands of our fellow creatures. You are witnesses to the abuses ; you have seen our towns crowded with furious and drunken savages ; our streets flowing with their blood ; their arms and clothing bartered for the liquor thai destroys them ; and their miserable women and children enduring all the extremities of cold and hunger. So destructive has the progress of intemperance been among them that whole villages have been swept away. A miserable remnant is all that remains to mark the names and situation of many numerous and warlike tribes. In the energetic language of one of their orators, it is a dreadful conflagration, which spreads misery and desolation through the country and threatens the annihilation of the whole race."

It was such an appeal that lead to the passage of stringent acts against the sale of liquor to the Indians, but it does not look well in the early annals of the county, that among the indictments returned by the first grand jury of Vigo county were several for selling liquor to the Indians. (See court records.)

The state of the Indians in 1817, the first year that people lived in Terre Haute, has been described b_v Benjamin Stickney. an Indian agent in the federal service, who was among the Indians of Indiana for several years. In a letter to the superintendent of Indian affairs it is shown that the Indian department of the government was anxious to care for the moral welfare of the Indians, for Mr. Stickney wrote, "I shall pay every attention to the subject of your letter, developing the exalted views of philanthropy of the Kentucky Baptist society for propagating the gospel among the heathen. The civilization of the Indians is not a new thing to me. I have been between five and six years in the habit of daily and hourly intercourse with the Indians northwest of the Ohio, and the great question of the practicability of civilizing them ever before me. That I might have the opportunity of casting in my mite in the bettering of their condition was the principal inducement to my surrendering the comforts of civilized society * * '''

"The great, and I fear the insurmountable obstacle is the insatiable thirst for intoxicating liquor that appears to be born with all the yellowskinned inhabitants of America, and the thirst for gain of some of the citizens of the United States appears to be capable of eluding the vigilance of the government to stop the distribution of liquor among them. When the Indians cannot obtain the means of intoxication within their own limits, they will travel any distance to obtain it. There is no fatigue, risk or expense that is too great to obtain it."

The agent said further that the knowledge of writing enabled Indians to make secret arrangements with whites for obtaining liquor. Other obstacles to civilizing Indians were their general aversion to the habits, customs and dress of the white people ; the general indolence, and belief that the life of a civilized man is one of slavery and the unfavorable view which they hold of the character of the citizens of the United States, believing that their minds are so occupied with trade and speculation that they never act from other motives.

At this time the Indians under Mr. Stickney's observation in Indiana were about 1,400 Miamis and 2,000 Pottawatomies. They had no schools nor missionaries among them since the time of the French Jesuits. They had places that were commonly called villages, but perhaps not correctly, as they had no uniform place of residence and during the fall, winter and part of the spring they were scattered in the woods hunting. Their respective bands assembled together in the spring at their several ordinary places of resort, where some had rude cabins made of small logs covered with bark, but more commonly some poles stuck in the ground and tied together with pliant strips of bark, and covered with large sheets of bark or a kind of inat'= made of flags. Such mav have been the habitations of the two little bands of Wea-Miamis livinsj north of the village of Terre Haute at this time, and in Parke county, the latter being those who sold wild game and baskets to J\Irs. Fuller, at whose house near Roseville, Chauncey Rose was then living.

The Indians in the vicinity of Terre Haute after the attack on Fort Harrison were of a tame, inoffensive, worthless lot, and no stories have told of any picturesque or interesting characters among them, though there must have been some good Indians. Traditions of the early settlers convey the impression that the natives were dangerous and that settlers were in danger of their lives, but with the exception of a few incidents the pioneers of Vigo county ran few risks and suffered little from this source, though they were scattered thinly over the county.

Until the close of the war with Great Britian the Indians preferred peace and friendship, although small war parties made predatory incursions into Illinois and Indiana in 1814 and the spring of 181 5.

Seven white men were killed in the vicinity of Fort Harrison, three near Vincennes, and a company of sixteen men under Lieutenant Morrison was surprised between Fort Harrison and Busseron creek, losing five killed ( May 13, 1815). In December, 1S14, a Kickapoo chief with his squaw called at Fort Harrison and was furnished with lodging by the commanding officer. As told in the Western Sun, "The chief and his wife retired to rest, and, while they were asleep, a ranger fired his piece through an aperture in the house and killed the squaw." The murder caused much excitement among the Kickapoos, but the injured chief, guided by the advice of the white persons whom he trusted, agreed to accept a purse that was offered to satisfy him for the loss of his wife, and the affair went no further.

Indiana applied for admission as a state in 181 5. The census gave the proposed state a population of 63,897, and Knox county, which then included Sullivan, Vigo, Parke and others, had 8,068 people. In the next four years 75,000 people came into the state. There was no more Indian history. The pioneer settlers dwelt safely in their log-cabin homes and cultivated their little places without necessity of posting pickets to guard. The forts and block houses fell into ruin or were put to other uses.

On May 12, 1824, Joceo, a Wea chief, gave notice in the Register that on the loth inst., from near John F. King's farm (on the edge of Terre Haute) sundry horses therein described were stolen from some Miami Indians on their way to Kaskaskia. He states this was the second loss by the same party from the same encampment. For the apprehension of the thieves and securing the horses and giving information thereof to Christmas Dazney at Fort Harrison a reward of $30 is offered, the horses remaining in pledge until the reward is paid. The chief added with grave irony, 'Tt is hoped every white man will exert himself in bringing these rogues to justice, as white men should never countenance others in setting such bad examples."

The week following, these Indians make a reflection on the bad manners of some whites and an appeal to the honor of others by publishing the following notice.

"That we, the undersigned Miami Indians, on business, do leave our wives and. children In the white settlements, and as we always demean ourselves well, we solicit the white people not to molest them in our absence.

Rev. Isaac McCoy, a missionary of the Baptist church, came into the Wabash country and preached to whites and Indians in this, Parke and other counties. He became the first white resident of Parke county, where he established a religious station and school, and taught a little band of Miami boys and girls and some christianized Indians who had migrated from the Brothertown tribe in New York. The first marriage solemnized in Parke county was by McCoy, when he married in 1819 an Indian born at Terre Haute as recorded in his journal, "On the i6th of February I joined in marriage Mary Ann Isaacs, of the Brothertown Indians, who had been spending a few weeks at our home, to Christmas Dashney, a halfbreed Wea."

This Christmas Dazney, as he called himself, was born Christmas, 1799, at the town variously called Weautown, Orchardtown and Terre Haute, the son of a Kaskaskia Irishman and a Wea-Miami woman, and died in Kansas in 1848. His widow married Baptiste Peoria, called by the Indians Paola, and for him was named the town of Paola, Kansas. Dazney was the last of the Mjamis in this region.

McCoy followed the Indians, to whom he had dedicated his life, as they moved northward into Michigan, and followed their dwindling bands to Indian Territor}', where the Miamis joined the Cherokees, and finally saw an Indian church established for his flock in Oklahoma.

In the collection of the late Charles B. Lasselle, of Logansport, is a list of Indian traders licensed by Governor Harrison in 1801-02. Among

Haute. Dec. 5. - One to Charles Johnson to trade with the Miamis at their town of Terre Haute. Licenses were granted to nearly forty traders, nearly all for trade in Indiana. The war put a stop to the trade, and it was afterwards resumed to a much less extent. In 1815 it was resumed at Fort Harrison with the Delaware, Pottawotomies, Shawnees and Kickapoos, and continued at that point until about 1820. Most of the traders were French, but among those at Terre Haute was Curtis Gilbert. Others mentioned were Pierre Laplante, Etienne Bisayon, Anthony Lafons, Wallace, Rollon.