USA > Indiana > Newton County > A standard history of Jasper and Newton counties, Indiana : an authentic narrative of the past, with an extended survey of modern developments in the progress of town and country, Volume I > Part 5
USA > Indiana > Jasper County > A standard history of Jasper and Newton counties, Indiana : an authentic narrative of the past, with an extended survey of modern developments in the progress of town and country, Volume I > Part 5
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40
INDIANA UNDER BRITISH RULE
Vincennes was killed in battle with the Indians at the mouth of the Ohio in 1736. and Louis St. Ange commanded Old Vin- cennes until 1764, or a short time before it was finally surrendered to the British. In May of that year, about six months previous to the proclamation of General Gage, the British commander-in-chief in North America, announcing the cession of the country of the Illinois to His Britannic Majesty, St. Ange appointed his successor to the command of the old post and started for Fort Chartres to relieve the commandant at that post, who was on his way to New Orleans. For nearly thirty years he had led and governed the people of Old Vincennes.
On the Ioth of October, 1765. St. Ange made a formal delivery of Fort Chartres to Captain Sterling, representing the British govern- ment. That military center of the Illinois country became the first semi-civil seat of government established northwest of the Ohio and included the territory constituting the present State of Indiana.
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Captain Sterling in turn received his orders from General Gage, whose headquarters were at New York, the British seat of colonial government in North America.
Fort Chartres was a very unhealthful place and Captain Sterling lived only three months after taking possession. In September, 1768, Lieutenant-Colonel Reed, in command, set up a sort of civil govern- ment for the Illinois country. Its main feature consisted of seven judges, who constituted the first court west of the Alleghanies and retained authority until 1774, when the British Parliament restored civil law in full force.
UNCERTAIN FRENCH TITLES TO LANDS
The steps leading to the formal assumption of the civil adminis- tration of the territory embracing Indiana by the Canadian authori- ties, with Quebec as the seat of the dominion government, are thus described: "The arbitrary act of General Gage, in 1772, in ordering all the whites to immediately vacate the Indian country, aroused the settlers and they at once vigorously protested. They declared they held the title to their lands from officers of the French government, who had a right to convey such titles, and that when the French government transferred the territory to the English their rights were duly protected by the treaty of cession. Gage was autocratic and determined, and on the receipt of this remonstrance he ordered that all written titles to the possession of the lands should be forwarded to him at New York for examination. The inhabitants were a careless set and mainly ignorant, had failed to properly care for the written evidence of the grants made to them, and many of the papers had been left in the hands of the notary who had drawn them. They never dreamed of any question ever being raised as to their right to the lands they were occupying, and had been occupying for nearly half a century. So it was that this last order of Gage fell like a thunderbolt upon the poor inhabitants. Some deeds were found, but many more could not be found. An appeal was made to St. Ange at St. Louis. He responded by reciting that he had held com- mand of the post (Vincennes) from 1736 to 1764, and that during that time, by order of the governors, he had conceded many parcels of land to various inhabitants by written concessions, and had verbally permitted others to settle and cultivate lands, of which they had been in possession for many years. Other officers certified that many deeds had been carried away, others removed to the record office of the Illinois (at Fort Chartres), and still others had been
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lost or destroyed by rats. But the British government had already heard the muttering of discontent in the eastern colonies and did not want to add to the embarrassments at other points, and in 1774 the whole territory northwest of the Ohio was put under the domin- ion of Canada."
RULED FROM CANADA AND VIRGINIA
When the Illinois country, or the territory northwest of the Ohio, was transferred from France to Great Britain about a decade previously, the entire population did not exceed 600 families, or perhaps 4,000 people, and when it came under the dominion of Canada it was considerably less, as many of the inhabitants had gone to St. Louis, New Orleans and other points in Louisiana.
The British took possession of Vincennes in May, 1777, but it was captured by the Americans in August of the following year by Gen. George Rogers Clark, and became forever a possession of the United States.
During the Revolutionary war no British or American settle- ments were made within the limits of Indiana, although when General Clark was in authority at Vincennes a number of Ameri- cans were added to the post settlement, and the Indians ceded to the commandant himself 150,000 acres of land around the falls of the Ohio River, which grant was afterward confirmed by Vir- ginia and the National Congress. As an energetic Kentuckian, and an able, brave man of military genius, backed by the Old Dominion and the statesmanship of Patrick Henry, then governor of Virginia, General Clark was admirably fitted to be the conqueror of the Northwest, whether fighting against the British or the Indians.
IN THE COUNTY OF ILLINOIS
In 1778, when the news of Clark's capture of Vincennes and Kaskaskia reached Virginia, its assembly passed a law organizing all the territory northwest of the Ohio into the County of Illinois and placing Col. John Todd in control as county lieutenant. Kas- kaskia was the seat of government, and Indiana again came under a new administration centering ultimately at Richmond, Virginia. Todd arrived at his capital in May, 1779, and at once commenced his administration as county lieutenant, leaving Clark free to pursue his military enterprises; but he himself was killed at the battle of Blue Licks in 1782. Although by statute the organization known
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as the County of Illinois had expired in 1781, its civil officers con- tinued to exercise power and grant land concessions until the pas- sage of the ordinance of 1787.
PART OF THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY
We now approach the period of stable American Government, when the United States as a nation extended its jurisdiction to the
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THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY OF 1787
County of Illinois and the territory northwest of the Ohio River. That immense domain was claimed by Virginia by right of con- quest, but in January, 1783, the General Assembly of the Old
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Dominion, in the interests of the United States, ceded to the National Congress all its rights, titles and claims to that great land. The Virginia deed of cession was accepted by Congress in the spring of 1784, and in July, 1788, Gen. Arthur St. Clair, who had been elected by Congress governor of the Northwest Territory under the famous ordinance of the previous year, arrived at Marietta, Ohio, to take over the civil administration of the national domain now included within the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wiscon- sin. At that time, therefore, the future Hoosier State was governed indirectly from Philadelphia and directly from Marietta, the terri- torial capital.
Until Indiana was organized as a territory in 1800, there were few settlements within the limits of the present state. In 1798, under the provisions of the ordinance creating the Northwest Terri- tory, which provided for civil government when its population should number 5,000 free inhabitants, a popular assembly was elected to represent the Northwest, and in January, 1799, convened at Cincinnati, whither the seat of government had been moved from Marietta. Ten members of the upper house, or council, were then appointed by President Adams, upon recommendation of the elected assembly, and when the two bodies met at the new territorial capital in September, 1799, a near approach to popular government had been effected in the territory northwest of the Ohio River.
INDIANA TERRITORY
The Legislature selected as the territorial delegate to Congress, William Henry Harrison, who was filling the position of secretary of the Northwest Territory. The new government was hardly under way before the tremendous domain over which it had jurisdiction underwent its first carving under authority of the ordinance of 1787. By act of Congress, approved May 7, 1800, it was declared that "from and after the fourth of July next, all that part of the territory of the United States northwest of the Ohio river which lies to the westward of a line beginning at the Ohio opposite the mouth of the Kentucky river and running thence to Fort Recovery, and thence north until it shall intersect the territorial line between the United States and Canada, shall, for the purpose of temporary government, constitute a separate territory to be called the Indiana Territory." The seat of government was fixed at Vincennes and William Henry Harrison was appointed governor. He reached Vincennes in Jan-
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uary, 1801, the gubernatorial duties having been performed since the preceding July by John Gibson, secretary of the territory.
The judges and juries were soon in action, and in July, 1805, the first Legislature of the Territory of Indiana met at Vincennes. At that time, Indiana had been shorn of Michigan for about six months and in 1809 Illinois was carved away, leaving its territory as at present.
GOVERNOR HARRISON, FATHER OF INDIANA
Governor and General Harrison is acknowledged to be the father of a settled and secure Indiana. Within five years from the time he assumed control of affairs, both civil and military, he had perfected treaties with the Indians, securing cessions to 46,000 square miles of territory, including all the lands lying on the borders of the Ohio River, between the mouth of the Wabash River and the western boundary of the State of Ohio. At the same time, in co-operation with the Legislature, he guided the revision and improvement of the territorial statutes, and at his recommendation Congress estab- lished several land offices. In 1804 three were opened-at Detroit, Vincennes and Kaskaskia, respectively-and in 1807 a fourth, Jeffersonville, Clark County.
But despite treaties and the protection of the National Govern- ment, personified by such a rugged character as Harrison, the origi- nal lords of the soil continued to show just causes for uneasiness and indignation. Even the governor, in his 1806 message to the Legislature, remarked that they were already making complaints, some of them far from groundless. While the laws of the territory provided for the same punishment for offenses committed against Indians as against white men, unhappily there was always a wide difference in the execution of those laws. The Indian was, in all cases, the sufferer. That partiality did not escape their observation. On the contrary, it afforded them an opportunity of making strong comparisons between their own observance of treaties and that of their boastful superiors.
During the period from 1805 to 1810, especially, the Indians complained bitterly against the encroachments of the whites upon the lands which they had not ceded. Not only the invasion of their favorite hunting grounds, but the unjustifiable killing of many of their people, were frequent charges which they brought to the atten- tion of Harrison. An old chief, in laying the troubles of his people before the governor, said earnestly: "You call us your children ; why do you not make us as happy as our fathers, the French, did?
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They never took from us our lands ; indeed, they were in common between us. They planted where they pleased; and they cut wood where they pleased; and so did we. But now, if a poor Indian attempts to take a litle bark from a tree to cover him from the rain, up comes a white man and threatens to shoot him, claiming the tree as his own."
TECUMSEH AND THE PROPHET
All such complaints found voice in Tecumseh and his brother, the Prophet ; the one playing upon the superstitions and passions of the Indians, and the other organizing them into a strong confederacy which was to control the disposition of lands, instead of allowing them to be ceded by separate and disunited tribes. Both in 1808 and 1809 the Prophet visited Harrison at Vincennes to assure him of his friendliness and to protest against the charge that he and Tecum- seh were in league with the British. In the later part of the year 1809 it was estimated that the total quantity of land ceded to the United States under treaties which had been effected by the governor exceeded 30,000,000 acres ; and all these cessions were accomplished in direct opposition to the influence of Tecumseh and the Prophet ; but the break between these powerful leaders of the white and the red races was at hand.
In July, 1810, Governor Harrison made an attempt to gain the friendship of the Prophet by sending him a letter offering to treat with him personally in the matter of his grievances, or to furnish means to send him, with three of his principal chiefs, to the Presi- dent at Washington. The bearer of this letter was coldly received by both Tecumseh and the Prophet, and the only answer he received was that Tecumseh, in a few days, would visit Vincennes and inter- view the governor ; this he did, with seventy of his principal warriors, in the following month. For over a week conferences were carried on with the haughty Shawnee chief, who on the 20th of August de- livered an ultimatum to Harrison, to the effect that he should return their lands or fight.
While the governor was replying to Tecumseh's speech, the In- dian chief angrily interrupted him to declare, that the United States Government, through General Harrison, had "cheated and imposed on the Indians." Whereupon, a number of the Indian warriors pres- ent sprang to their feet and brandished their clubs, tomahawks and spears. The governor's guards, who stood a short distance off, marched quickly up, and the red men quieted down, Tecumseh be- ing ordered to his camp.
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On the following day Tecumseh apologized and requested another interview. The council was thereupon reopened, but while the Shawnee leader addressed Harrison in a respectful manner, he did not recede from his former demand as to the restoration of the Indian lands.
The governor then requested Tecumseh to state plainly whether or not the lands purchased at the Treaty of Fort Wayne in 1809 could be surveyed without molestation by the Indians, and whether or not the Kickapoos would receive their annuities in payment for such cession. The proposed grant was partly in Illinois. Tecumseh replied : "Brother, when you speak of annuities to me, I look at the land and pity the women and children. I am authorized to say that they will not receive them. Brother, we want to save that piece of land. We do not wish you to take it. It is small enough for our purpose. If you do take it, you must blame yourself as the cause of the trouble between us and the tribes who sold it to you. I want the present boundary line to continue. Should you cross it, I assure you it will be productive of bad consequences." This talk terminated the council.
On the following day Governor Harrison, attended only by his interpreter, visited Tecumseh's camp and told him that the United States would not acknowledge his claims. "Well," replied the In- dian, "as the great chief is to determine the matter, I hope the Great Spirit will put sense enough into his head to induce him to direct you to give up this land. It is true, he is so far off he will not be injured by the war. He may sit still in his own town and drink his wine, while you and I will have to fight it out."
Tecumseh's last visit to the governor previous to the battle of Tippecanoe, which crushed the red man's power in Indiana and the Northwest, was on July 27, 1811. He brought with him a consider- able force of Indians, but that showing was offset by 750 well-armed militia whom Governor Harrison reviewed with some ostentation. The interview was conciliatory on the part of Tecumseh, who, how - ever, repeated that he hoped no attempts would be made to settle on the lands sold to the United States at Fort Wayne, as the Indians wished to keep them for hunting grounds. He then departed for the express purpose of inducing the Indians to join his confederacy.
THE BATTLE OF TIPPPECANOE
While Tecumseh was absent on that mission, the battle of Tippe- canoe was fought under the leadership of the Prophet, and Indiana
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became white man's land forever. After Governor Harrison had exhausted every means to maintain peace with the Indian leader he resorted to decisive military measures. His army moved from Vincennes in September, 1811; he built a new fort on the Wabash in the following month, resumed his march, and on the 6th of November, after an unsatisfactory conference with a representative of the Prophet, about half a mile from town, encamped on the battleground, six miles north of the present City of Lafayette. The selection of that location is said to have been at the suggestion of the Indians, who pronounced it a good place for a camp; the Prophet may therefore be said to have selected the ground on which his people met with such signal defeat.
General Harrison's force consisted of about 250 regular troops, 600 Indiana militia and 150 volunteers from Kentucky. Just before daybreak of November 7th, the Indians made a sudden attack on that part of the camp guarded by the militia. They broke at the first on- slaught, but soon reformed, and the entire body of Americans pre- sented a determined front to the wily foe, but did not attempt an offensive until it was light, when several gallant charges were made by the troops and the Indians defeated. The Indians being familiar with the ground had been able to inflict severe losses on the Ameri- cans. Among the killed were Major Jo Daviess, the gifted and brave Kentuckian, and Col. Isaac White, the gallant Virginian, who fell side by side while leading a charge of dragoons. Long after- ward, both Indiana and Illinois were proud to bestow upon two of their counties the names of these heroes of the battle of Tippecanoe.
FOUNDING OF THE STATE GOVERNMENT
Governor Harrison's prolonged absences from the seat of govern- ment on military duties made it necessary to place the civil adminis- tration in other hands. In 1812 and the first four months of 1813, these responsibilities devolved upon John Gibson, secretary of the territory. In February of the latter year President Madison nom- inated Thomas Posey, United States senator from Louisiana, for governor of Indiana, as General Harrison had been made commander- in-chief of the American forces in the West. Governor Posey arrived at Vincennes in May, 1813, and in December of that year the Legis- lature met at the new capital-Corydon, Harrison County. The State House at that place had been partially erected in 1811, but was not entirely completed until 1815.
In December of the latter year, the Territory of Indiana applied
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to Congress for admission into the Union as a state, since more than 60,000 free white inhabitants then resided within its limits-to be exact, 63,897. Congress passed the enabling act in May, 1816, and the delegates elected to frame a state constitution held a convention at Corydon, lasting from the' Ioth to the 29th of June, of that year. Instead of deliberating in the stuffy little State House, they held most of their meetings under a huge elm tree on the banks of Big Indian Creek, several hundred feet northwest of the capitol. The grand old tree still stands, fifty feet in height with a spread of branches nearly 125 feet across. The first session of the Legislature of the State of Indiana opened at the Corydon State House on November 4, 1816.
Corydon remained the state capital until 1825, although the site of Indianapolis had been selected by the commissioners appointed for that purpose by the Legislature in 1820. In 1819 Congress donated to the state four sections of land to be selected from any tract of the public domain then unsold, and in May of the following year the locating commissioners fixed upon a tract on the west fork of the White River near the geographical center of the state and platted the new capital as Indianapolis. The seat of government of the commonwealth was moved thither in 1825, as stated, and the first State House completed in 1836. As designated in the congressional grant, Indianapolis was fixed as the permanent capital of Indiana, and all its counties have since looked to that city as the seat of their government authority.
MIAMI AND POTTAWATTAMIE TITLES EXTINGUISHED
It is an unrelated coincidence that the completion of the State House at Indianapolis and the virtual extinguishment of the Indian titles to the lands of Northwestern Indiana should both fall within the year 1836; it is, nevertheless, a happy coincidence for the pur- pose of continuing this narrative in a chronological and orderly manner.
Without going into the intricacies of the general, or blanket trea- ties by which Great Britain and the United States secured their color of title from the Indians, it is sufficient to know that the specific treaties by which the primitive owners transferred the lands now within Jasper and Newton counties to the general Government were made in 1818, 1826 and 1832.
On October 2 and 3, 1818, the Pottawattamies, Weas and Dela- wares-all closely related in tribal affairs-ceded their several par-
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cels of lands in the State of Indiana west of the Tippecanoe River, the last two tribes then relinquishing all claims to real estate within the limits of the young commonwealth. The Pottawattamie treaty of October 2d, which is the most important from a Jasper County standpoint, was concluded at St. Mary's, Ohio, between Governor Jonathan Jennings, Lewis Cass and Benjamin Parke, United States commissioners, and the principal chiefs and warriors of the Potta- wattamie Nation. The following tract was thus ceded to the Gov- ernment : Beginning at the mouth of the Tippecanoe River and run- ning up the same to a point twenty-five miles in a direct line from the Wabash River, thence on a line as nearly parallel to the general course of the Wabash River as is possible, thence down the Ver- million River to its mouth, and thence up the Wabash River to the place of beginning.
Within the following eight years the Miamis, the Pottawattamies and the Weas ceded various tracts in Central and Western Indiana, which did not effect any territory within the present Jasper of Newton. Both the Pottawattamies and Miamis ceded all their lands east of the Tippecanoe by the treaty of October 23, 1826, the tract being thus formally described in the paper: Beginning on the Tippecanoe River, where the northern boundary of the tract ceded by the Pottawattamies to the United States by the treaty of St. Mary's in the year 1818 intersects the same, thence in a direct line to a point on Eel River half way between the mouth of said river and the Parrish's village, thence up Eel River to Seek's vil- lage (now in Whitley County) near the head thereof, thence in a direct line to the mouth of a creek emptying into the St. Joseph's of the Miami (Maumee) near Metea's village, thence up the St. Joseph's to the boundary line between Ohio and Indiana, thence south to the Miami ( Maumee), thence up the same to the reservation at Fort Wayne, thence with the lines of the said reservation to the boundary established by the treaty with the Miamis in 1818, thence with the said line to the Wabash River, thence with the said river to the mouth of the Tippecanoe River, and thence with the Tip- pecanoe River to the place of beginning.
By the treaty with the Pottawattamies of October 26, 1832, a tract of land in the northwestern portion of the state was ob- tained by the Government, which overlapped the Kickapoo cession in Illinois. On the following day the Pottawattamies of Indiana and Michigan also relinquished all claims to any remaining lands in those states, as well as in Illinois south of Grand River.
By the four treaties mentioned the settlers of Northwestern
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Indiana, the pioneers of whom commenced to come into that sec- tion of the state at the time of these Pottawattamie cessions, were enabled to read their titles clear to their homesteads and mansions on earth.
On the 11th of February, 1836, the Government concluded the agreement with the Pottawattamies by which all former treaties were ratified, and a stipulation made that they would migrate, within two years, to their reservation beyond the Missouri River, the United States to pay the expenses of such removal and furnish them one year's subsistence.
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