Indiana State University - Sycamore Yearbook (Terre Haute, IN)

Page 16 text:

wliicli AVayne negotiated witli the various tribes in 1795. Xeitlier Tecumtha nor his father signed that treaty, neither of them being tribal chiefs, but by it the Indians were to give up claim to the southern half of Ohio, which was Tecumtha ' s home. He was of Shawnee i:)arentage, and this tribe was not granted any liome after being pushed out of Ohio. The various tribes in that council tried to get Wayne to divide the country north and west of the treaty line among the Indians, but this he re- fused to do. Consequently, the Shawnee and other Ohio tribes were thrust back upon the western Indians and were compelled either to fight for homes or to beg the hospitality of their allies. The Shawnee and Delaware rested in southern Indiana and lllinnis. where Little Turtle, head chief of the Miami, and leader ot the allied tribes against Harmon, St. Clair, and Wayne in succession, had allowed them to found their homes. In 1803 began a series of treaties in which great tracts of land in In- diana and Illinois were ceded to the whites. Al- thougii nine Shawnee chiefs signed the treaty in 17 ' . . i. only two signed the ti-eaty in 1803. In the series of treaties which followed, the Shawnee were not even consulted. It was clear to Tecumtha that his tribe was rapidly being dispossessed of its homes, while it was not being treated with the same consideration that some of the other tribes were. Consequenth ' . there was general dissatisfaction in the tribe, and among other tribes as well. The climax came in 1809, when Harrison, following the western desire for expansion, and with the president ' s permissidii. iic dtiated two hirgc cessions in In- diana. (Sit iiiaji.) Harrison consulted the Delaware. Potawatomi and Miami, but again the Shawnee were not included. Tecumtha and other warriors thought that these treaties were being made by chiefs who received especial favor from the United States govei-nment. He would do away with the tribal basis of In- dian government, and establish a republican confederacy of all the tribes, from Canada to Florida. In this confederacy, the warriors, and not merely the chiefs, would control the policy of the tribes. No tribe could cede away land without the consent of all the tribes. This was the grandest conception of Indian polity that any Indian ever planned. Tecumtha took advantage of the Indians congregating around his brother, the Prophet and ilagician, and was inciting them to action. WALDO F. MITCHELL, -10, C. C, ' 12 Author of Indiana — One Hundred Years Ago Indians from all the Northwest visited the Proi het ' s town on the Tippecanoe river. By the sjjring of 1810 the dissatisfaction of the vShawnee, Ottawa, Chippewa, and Potawatomi had become so great that they defied the gov- ernment by refusing to accept the annuity of salt which had been pledged to the Indians in 1803. Harrison tried to quiet the Indians, and Tecumtha met him at Vincennes in a famous conference, but all to no purpose. The Indians grew bolder and moi-e defiant under the leader- ship of Tecumtha and the teachings of the Proj het. The condition at the beginning of 1811 is stated by Lossing as follows: Emissaries sent -Dawson, Harrison; Pirtle, Battle of Tippecanoe; Loss- ing, War of 1S12 ; Dunn, True Indian Stories; U. S. Statutes, VII.

Page 15 text:

Snbiana— (! nc Jlunbreb gearg go HOSTILITIES OX THE FRONTIEK. TN the Indiana Territory House Kecords or- - - curs the following entry for February. 11, 181H: ••Whereas, the hostile disposition of the Indians, and the danger to which the village of Vinceiiiir i fhcrc1., -iilij. ■(•(,. ,1. and for the pn ' S( ' r aticiii u ' the piililic .ni- and the records of the territory in tlii . om- pi-rilous situation, make it necessary that the seat of government of the territory should he removed to a place where the archives of the state and the claims of individuals should not be endangered. ' A few ' days after tlie IIoux ' adopted the pre- amble above, together [ a resolution to remove the capital from Vim ennes, the West- eTii Sun at Vincennes published the following : It again becomes our duty to record the melan- choly news of the murder of three more of our fellow citizens by the Indians. In the course of the present week there has not Ijeen less than 15 or ' 20 horses stolen from the neighborhood. It had l)een just fifty years since King George III issued a proclamation forbidding his subjects in America to cross the ridge of the Alleghanies, to enter the fertile valleys beyond. In those fifty years the frontier line of white settlement had been transposed. The tide of settlers had reached the mountain passes, and had flowed through these gateways to Ten- nessee and Kentucky. Again the tide had set in across the Ohio and down this I ' iver until the whole north bank of the river was occupied by white settlements. Time and again the whites had met the red men around the council fires and had impelled them to barter away their lands. Yet not always by jDeacef iil meth- ods, for the Indians fought every inch of the way, trying to save their hunting grounds, their fishing brooks, and their plots of grow- ing corn. This is a romantic period, and full of heroic adventure. The names of Daniel Boone, Simon Kenton, Lewis AVetzel, and scores of others take similar places in the early history of the trans-Allegheny region that the name of Miles Standish fills in the history of Plymouth, or that of Roinulus in the history of Rome. The net results of the period is that the frontier line advanced north from the Ohio, and in 1813 the Indians were again tak- ing their stand against the whites. Indiana had grown from one county with two settlements in 1800 to a territory with a representative government and ten counties in 1813. (See map.) The settlements had ar- ranged themselves in the form of a crescent, resting upon the Ohio, the eastern tijD being near the site of Eichmond, and the western tip near the site of Terre Haute. Kentuckians had been crossing the Ohio into the territory and other Southerners had found their way through Cumberland Gap and down the Ohio to seek their fortunes in the land of promise. Pennsylvania had joined the tide drifting down the Ohio, and other settlers from the new state of Ohio had helped to settle up the AVhitewater basin. Settlements were pushing toward the interior when the Indian hostili- ties in 1811 brought a halt to the advance of the frontier line which began so decidedly fol- lowing the land sales in 1806 and 1807. TECUJITHA. There wei-e various reasons why Tecumtha went on the warpath in 1811, and the most of these causes operated in instigating the In- dians against the settlers in Indiana from 1812-1815. There had been little, if any, open hostilities toward the whites since the treaty

Page 17 text:

out by the British authorities in Canada fanned the tlame of discontent; and Elliott, the old enemy of the Americans, still living near Maiden (across the i-iver below Detroit), ob- serving symptoms of impending war between the United States and Great Britain, was again wielding a jjotent influence over the chiefs of the tribes in the Northwest. Their resources, as well as jjrivileges, were curtailed. Na- poleon ' s continental S3 ' stem touched even the savage of the wilderness. It clogged and al- most closed the chief markets for his furs, and the prices were so low that Indian hunters found it difficult to purchase their usual neces- saries from the traders. At the beginning of ISll the Indians were ripe for any enterprise that promised them relief and independence. ' The Indians, thus aroused, began stealing horses, plundering houses, and committing simi- hir (Iced . thus creating general alarm along the border settlements. In the meantime Harrison had called (nit the militia and had secured reg- ular troops to hcl]) cliastise the Indians. He started witii his army of twenty-four com- panies for the Prophet ' s town, stopping to build Fort Harrison, about two miles north of Terre Haute. By October 28, the fort was completed, and the next day the main body of troops moved on toward Tippecano( . Harri- son defeated Teeumtha and his Indian allies November 7. burned the village, and soon re- turned to Vineeiines. This defeat however, did not alleviate the dissatisfaction of the Indians. BRITISH WAR. C()ni;■ .•- decl:nv(l war against Great Britain •lull. ' lit. IM-J. On Aii-ust 16. Hull surren- dered DL ' truit. The preceding day. the Pota- watomi, who had been killing and harassing in the neighborhood of Fort Dearborn (Chicago), treacherously slew the garrison, together with the women and children inmates of that post, as they were vacating the post to retreat to Fort Wayne. The British and Indians then planned to make a general attack on the fron- tier posts and settlements. The Potawatomi, Kickapoo, Ottawa, Shawnee, and less powerful tribes readily listened to a union and confeder- ation of the tribes to drive back the approach- ing white settlements. The hostiles began to gather about Fort Wayne in August, and made attacks upon the few isolated settlers in the vicinity. A scalping party of Shawnees de- stroyed the Pigeon Boost Settlement, about twenty-five miles north of Jeffersonville. The same day some settlers at Fort Harrison were killed, and on the 4th a general attack was made upon that fort. It was with great diffi- culty that the garrison, aided by the women and children, all under the leadership of CajD- tain Zachary Taylor, was able to defend the place successfully. The next day the Indians made a series of attacks upon Fort Wayne. In one of these attacks they used their cunning bj ' bluffing the garrison with Quaker guns. These were hollow logs fitted up as cannon. However, the e guns caused greater injury to the Indians than to the whites, for when fired the cannon ' burst their bands. As the attacks of the hostiles began to thicken the outlying settlements of whites were de- serted, and the settlers retreated to more thickly settled regions, where block houses were built for protection. len that could be spared joined the army to help in repelling the attacks. Back from the frontier line wherever there was little danger from Indians, immigration and settle- ment continued quite rapidly. The southern part of the Twelve Mile Tract (purchase of 1809. just west of the Greenville Treaty Line) filled up rapidly with settlers. Other settlers, instead of jjushing farther into the interior to settle along the frontier, or perhaps to squat on the Indian lands, now broke into the wilder- ness farther down the Ohio. People began to .settle in small numbers on Little Pigeon Creek, where heretofore there had been only scattered settlements. The greater number of these came from Kentucky. ' Squatters and settlers began miles Register. July 4, ISIS, P. 318. Warrick, Spencer and Perry Counties (1SS5). P. 21.