USA > Indiana > Delaware County > A twentieth century history of Delaware County, Indiana, Volume I > Part 3
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
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 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57
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 others 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 grad- ually 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 castern 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
S
HISTORY OF DELAWARE COUNTY
the part of Indiana that is now Delaware county. After the passage of the Ordinance of 1787 and the institution of government in the Northwest Ter- ritory, the period of actual settlement began. But for some years all the region between what is now castern Ohio and the valley of the Wabash was a wilderness. In a short while the line of settlement extended across the eutire north and south length of Ohio at its eastern border. But the emigra- tion did not advance in even line to the west; rather the earliest settlers pioneered down the water course 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 White- water 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 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, and soon after established at the old post of Kekionga a fort that has since borne his name. Previously, under Wayne's instructions, posts had been established called Fort Greenville and Fort Recovery (both only a short dis- tance east of the Indiana line). At Fort Greenville, in August, 1795, was negotiated the Greenville treaty between General Wayne and the delegates 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 was 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 Ken- tucky 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 North- west 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.
9
HISTORY OF DELAWARE COUNTY
It will be seen that this three-cornered 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 con- tributed portions to the present Wayne, Randolph and Jay counties. Popula- tion at once began moving into the lands ceded by the Greenville treaty. In 1795 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 that portion of the cession. Of course, during the first two years of the territorial government of Indiana, this region belonged to Ohio and its population was counted with that of the latter territory. In 1800 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. Dear- born 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 carly population of Wayne county, comprised the stock from which many of Delaware county's pioneers came, and their influ- ence 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 cast 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 Dela- ware county, almost adjoining, was still without a permanent inhabitant and belonged to the wilderness and the red men.
CHAPTER III. . ADVANCE OF CIVILIZATION; DELAWARE COUNTY OPENED TO SETTLEMENT.
A number of interesting matters are brought up for consideration when we inquire into the reasons why civilization did not sooner advance its bounds over the region now called Delaware county. From a population of 2500 in 1800, Indiana had about 25,000 in 1810, and over 60,000 in 1815. But during the next five years population increased to nearly 150,000, and to nearly 350,000 in 1830. The rush of settlement began about 1815, and in fifteen years settlements had been made in every portion of the state. It is remarkable how such a county as Delaware became "settled up" in ten years' time, how a wilderness was so quickly transformed into civilization, and homes and institutions established on every section where shortly before the Indian and the hunter had been the only human visitors. The power of American civilization to transform the wild prairies and the rapidity with which the transformation was effected doubtless inspired the poet who spoke thus of the uninhabited plains :-
"I listen long and think I hear
The sound of that advancing multitude Which soon shall fill these deserts. From the ground Comes up tho laugh of children, the soft voico Of maidens, and tho sweet and solemn hymn Of Sabbath worshippers. The low of herds Blends with the rustling of the heavy grain Over the dark brown furrows."
The treaty of 1809, above mentioned, by which the "twelve mile pur- chase" was gained, had one result that contributed very materially to the slow development of Indiana . during the next five years. The Indians had not failed to regard with jealousy the gradual encroachment of the whites upon their hunting grounds. But after Wayne's victory and the treaty of Greenville, no concerted movement in opposition had been carried out. But a worthy leader, brave warrior and shrewd chieftain arose among them in the person of the Shawnee, Tecumseh, who was ably assisted in his endeavors to rouse the Indians to resist by his brother, Law-le-was-i-kaw, but best known as the "Prophet." These two dwelt in one of the Delaware villages in the present Delaware county in the year 1805, and here it was that the Prophet began his exhortations, reinforced by his claims to divine
11
HISTORY OF DELAWARE COUNTY
power, by which he acquired a powerful hold on the superstitious minds of his followers and gradually inflamed them to open hatred of the whites .*
Tectimseh and Harrison.
Leaving the Delaware villages on White river about 1806, Tecumseh and his followers removed first to Greenville, Ohio, where their conduct soon aroused the suspicions of the American officers, and in the spring of 1808 they moved thei. settlement to the banks of the Wabash, near the mouth of the Tippecanoe, their village being known as Prophet's Town. Tecum- sehi's efforts were now directed toward the formation of a great Indian confederacy, and he lacked little of complete success. When, in 1809, as above mentioned, several of the tribes ceded a large tract of territory to the American government, Tecumseh opposed it, declaring that one or several of the tribes could not barter away the lands that belonged to all the Indian nations in the confederacy. Despite the efforts of Governor Harrison toward breaking up the confederacy which had its center about Prophet's Town, the Indians became more hostile every day. Small parties appeared in different parts of the territory, stealing and occasionally taking the lives of settlers. Tecumseh and his brother became more insolent in the con- ferences with the governor, and, on the eve of the second war with Great Britain, a secret British influence increased the disaffection of the tribes.
. Until recently it was supposed that the following incidents, as described by Dillon, took place in the Indian village which stood at the site ef Yorktown: "An old Delaware chief, whose name was Tate-c-bock-o-she, through whoso influence a treaty had been made with the Delawares in 1804, was accused of witch- craft, tried, condemned and tomahawked. His body was then consumed by fire. The wife of the old chief, his nephew, who was known by the name of Billy Pat- 1er-on, and an aged Indian whose name was Joshua, were then necused of witch- craft, and condemned to death. The two men were burnt at the stake; but the hiv of the wife of Tate-c-bock-o-she was saved by her brother, who suddenly ap- proached her, took her by the hand, and, withont meeting with any opposition from the Indians who were present, led her ont of the council-house. Hle then in.mehately returned, and checked the growing influence of the Prophet by cx- claiming, in a strong, carnest voice: 'The evil spirit bas come among us, and we are killing each other.' "
A comparison of the different authorities has led Judge Dunn (in an article in the Indianapolis News, March 17, 1906) to the conclusion that "Joshua was killed at the principal Delaware town, which was what the whites called Muncie- town and the Indians Woopicamikink or Wapecomekoke. This is commonly spoken of as being on the site of Muncie, but it was on the north side of the river, directly opposite where Muncie now stands. The traditional site of the mission [the old Moravian mission] where Tatapachkse [Tate-c-bock-o-she] was executed is the south- en-i quarter of section 17, range S east, township 19 north, the location of Little Munsee town." in Madison county at the resort now known as ""Indian Mounds."
Concerning the old Indian village on the north bank of the river at Muncie there is the following testimony by a pioneer, William Jackson: "The old Indian village and graveyard stood on the north bank of White river, a short distance to the westward of the bridge, on the Muncie and Granville pike. When I came here many distinct features of the graveyard were still visible. The graves in many instances were surrounded with pens, or poles piled around them. Many skeletons were exhumed and a number of skulls have been preserved."
12
HISTORY OF DELAWARE COUNTY
Finally in the fall of 1811 General Harrison, with a force of about a thousand regular troops, Indiana militiamen and Kentucky volunteers, marched up the Wabash into the heart of the Indian country. While en- camped about seven miles northeast from the site of Lafayette, on the early morning of November 7, a furious attack was made by the Indians, "so suddenly," wrote Governor Harrison, "that the Indians were in the camp before many of the men could get out of the tents." Tecumseh was not present in the battle of Tippecanoe, but the Prophet, standing near the scene of action, lent encouragement to his followers by singing a war song that could be heard above the rattle of musketry and the din of battle. The loss in killed and wounded was almost equal on both sides, but substantial victory remained with the whites, the power of the Prophet was broken and the confederacy dissolved soon after the battle. Some six or seven tribes were represented at the battle of Tippecanoe, but it is of interest to note that only a few of the Miamis and none of the Delawares were present, the tribe whose homes were in what is now Delaware county and vicinity hav- ing withheld full allegiance to Tecumseh and his league.
Though the settlers were relieved of the worst dangers by the victory at Tippecanoe, the war with Great Britain which was declared in June, 1812, placed new obstacles in the path of peaceful progress, and created a state of almost constant apprehension throughout the settlements. It was uncertain how far the Indians would be influenced by the state of hostili- ties, and to guard against any outbreaks from the tribes residing near the settlements it was deemed best to inaugurate a state of defense along the frontiers. Block houses were built from Wayne county to Vincennes. The Delawares on White river professed friendship for the Americans, and in order that they should not be involved in any collisions between the whites and other tribes they were directed to remove from their villages to the Auglaize river in Ohio. The Miamis, on the lower courses of the Missis- sinewa, as well as other tribes in northern Indiana, became troublesome after the Fort Dearborn massacre and Hull's surrender of Detroit to the British. An expedition, for the destruction of the Miami villages on the Mississinewa, was organized late in the year 1812, under the command of Lieut. Col. Campbell. Leaving Dayton on December 14th, and marching eighty miles in three days, early on the morning of the 17th the force reached an Indian town on the Mississinewa inhabited by a number of Delawares and Miamis. After killing eight warriors and capturing forty- two of the inhabitants, the Americans burnt the village, and in the course of the day destroyed several other Indian villages in that vicinity. At night camp was pitched at the village first destroyed, and here, on the following morning, the Indians made a furious attack, engaging the troops for an hour, and killing and wounding about fifty of the whites. The Indians
--
13
HISTORY OF DELAWARE COUNTY
were repulsed, but Colonel Campbell at once began his return to Greenville, where the force arrived after much suffering and almost unfit for further duty. The location of the villages which were destroyed has been placed, by Dillon and successive writers, at points fifteen or twenty miles distant from the junction of the Mississinewa with the Wabash. If Campbell's of- ficial report of the campaign can be relied upon at all in its figures as to days' march, it is difficult to understand how, if he left Dayton on the 14th and after marching a distance he estimates at eighty miles reached the first Indian village on the morning of the 17th, he could have traversed the wil- derness at least as far as the present site of Marion, which is distant by an air line nearly a hundred miles from Dayton. Accepting the figures of the official report, it seems more reasonable to conclude that the villages which were burnt and where the bloody fight occurred in December, 1812, were located somewhere along the Mississinewa in its course through northern Delaware county.
One other Indian campaign during the war of 1812 deserves mention because it was directed against the Delaware villages in what are now Mad- ison and Delaware counties. Depredations upon the white settlements con- tinned during 1813, and in June of that year an expedition was formed to punish some hostile Indians supposed to be sheltered in the Delaware vil- lages. The troops, under the command of Colonel Joseph Bartholomew, leit Valonia, in Jackson county, and proceeded north and northeast, "about one hundred miles, to the upper Delaware town on White river .* We arrived there on the 15th, and found the principal part of the town had been burnt three or four weeks previous to our getting there. We found, how- ever, a considerable quantity of corn in the four remaining houses. We went from thence down White river, a west course, and passed another vil- lage three or four miles below, which had been also burnt. At the distance of twelve miles below the upper town, we came to another small village, not burnt." A skirmish was had with the Indians in this neighborhood, but nothing of consequence was effected by the expedition further than the burning of the Indians' corn. Soon after another expedition visited the Delaware towns and the Indians on the Mississinewa, but because of the comparative neutrality of the Delawares throughout the war this county did not become the scene of important campaigns. In 1814 the tide of vic- tory set in strongly toward American arms, and with the battle of the Thames in October the British and Indian power ceased to cause serious alarm in the west. The tribes in Indiana soon sought terms with the Amer- ican leaders, and to the close of the war they professed to live on terms of peace with the Americans.
' Bartholomew's report, in Dillon's History.
14
HISTORY OF DELAWARE COUNTY
Treaty of St. Mary's.
The return of peace in 1815 marked the beginning of such an era of expansion as no other century and no other land than America has ever witnessed. The supremacy of our national arms, the ability to assert and protect our rights as a nation, were impressed upon the world at large, and among Americans themselves the success of the war produced an independ- ence, an expansiveness of thought and action, and a degree of self-confi- dence that became the dominating qualities in the American character dur- ing the nineteenth century. The original colonies at once seemed too small and confined for the restless energy of the people, and the movement to the west became a great overflow that soon peopled all the lands east of the Mississippi.
It was from the emigration that set in after the war of 1812 that Dela- ware county was settled. On the east and southeast, a large part of the territory of Randolph and Wayne counties, as we have already seen, had been opened to settlement and by this time contained a large and flourishing population. One barrier must be removed in order that the tide of settle- ment might reach Delaware county : the Indian title to all this region had to be extinguished before anyone could legally make a home there.
This was accomplished in the treaty of St. Mary's, in Ohio, concluded October 3, 1818, when the Delaware Indians ceded to the United States all their claims to lands lying within the boundaries of the state of Indiana. However, the Delawares reserved the right to occupy these lands for a period of three years from the date of the treaty, and as the experience of the pioneer settlers of Delaware county testifies, these Indians were familiar visitors and neighbors of the whites for some years after settlement had begun.
-
CHAPTER IV. PUBLIC SURVEY OF DELAWARE COUNTY-FIRST OCCU- PANTS OF LAND.
However, even after the land was ceded by the Indians, it was not quite ready to be occupied by homescekers. A very important preliminary work had to be done. A few settlers probably entered the ceded region be- fore it was finished, but they were what are properly known in American usage as "squatters," who could have no legal and recorded rights in the land on which they settled.
Before people could begin to live upon the land and form such asso- ciations with one another as constitute a county, it was necessary that a survey of the public lands should be made. Too often the employes of the government who performed this arduous and essentially pioneer work are overlooked or passed by with scant honor. They were the avant couriers of actual settlement, and the substance of their work has continued as a benefit to all who have come after them. Only on condition of their work having been properly done, could definite individual ownership exist, and those mutual rights and duties of men with one another be established which make an organic body such as a county possible. The legislature of the state of Indiana were able to declare where and what the area of this county should be, because the United States measurers of land had already laid their measuring chain upon the land out of which the county was to be made.
Survey of Lands.
In 1796 Congress enacted the law in accordance with which all the pub- lic lands were to be surveyed. The system embodied in this act is known as the "Rectangular System." The entire territory of the present state of Indiana has been surveyed and divided into townships in accordance with this system and with reference to a certain "meridian" and "base line." The first principal meridian is the north and south line that forms the boundary between Ohio and Indiana, but the meridian spoken of so fre- quently in determining the location of townships in Delaware county is the Second Meridian, which is just forty-seven miles west of the west boundary of this county. The "base line," or the east and west line from which reckoning was made in the survey, is a line one hundred and ten miles south of the south line of Delaware county. With this principal meridian
-
16
111STORY OF DELAWARE COUNTY
and this base line established, the surveyors of the general government began to go over the public land of Indiana with compass and chain, and to mark trees and set posts for the boundaries of townships and sections and quarter sections. These surveyors knew, of course, no names of counties and town- ships as we know them, neither did they give names at all to townships or groups of townships as they surveyed them. They recorded and dated carefully day by day their measurements and topographical notes in their note-books, thus creating the original "Field Notes," which in every county today are of such primary and incalculable importance for titles, deeds, mortgages and all transactions involved in buying, selling or owning of land. As they tramped over the surface of the country, measuring and marking it off into portions each exactly six miles square, making a town- ship, they gave no names to the townships, but merely numbered them in relation to meridian and base line.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.