USA > Indiana > Historic Indiana : being chapters in the story of the Hoosier state from the romantic period of foreign exploration and dominion through pioneer days, stirring war times, and periods of peaceful progress, to the present time > Part 3
USA > Indiana > Historic Indiana : being chapters in the story of the Hoosier state from the romantic period of foreign exploration and dominion through pioneer days, stirring war times, and periods of peaceful progress, to the present time, centennial ed. > Part 3
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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
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French Dominion
overseas, and the silent savage has vanished with his forests. But still a tinge of romance lin- gers over the palisaded station and its denizens. "Such," says Mr. Dunn in describing those denizens,
"were the French settlers of Indiana-yet not such; for we have scanned too closely what we might esteem their faults, and given little heed to what we must -admit to be their virtues. In many respects they were admirable. They were simple, honest, and patriotic. In their social life they were kindly, sympathetic, and generous. The ancient habitant rises before us lithe and erect as in his prime. The old capote is there, the beaded moccasins, the little ear-rings, and the black queue. His dark eyes glisten beneath his turban handkerchief as of yore. There stands his old calèche. He mounts upon it and moves away-away-away, until its creaking sounds no longer, and we realize that he is gone forever."1
1 Dunn, J. P., History of Indiana, page. 130.
CHAPTER III
BRITISH OCCUPATION
W HEN Great Britain secured Quebec and the control of the St. Lawrence from the French, her grasp of the Western depend- encies, along the waterways, followed naturally. The strongholds of French supremacy were in north- ern and eastern America. The vast tract, inland, was acquired without more fighting, and its fortunes rose and fell with those of Canada. Within a few years of the time that Spain assumed dominion over the Mississippi River, and consequently come vitally into contact with the interests of its tributaries, which we mention elsewhere, England gained possession of the lands through which those rivers flowed. The history of the little settlements on the Maumee and the Wabash under English rule was part of the same period that the struggling settlements were hampered by Spanish interference, at New Orleans.
The British crown owned the territory that is now Indiana less than twenty years. It occupied the scattered military posts scarcely fifteen years before General George Rogers Clark and his little band of American frontiersmen took possession of them in the year 1779. England's title to the wilderness do- main made little difference to the scattered French
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British Occupation
settlements on the Wabash. It being the policy of Great Britain to leave the customs, language, and religion unchanged, the happy-go-lucky class of fron- tier Frenchmen cared little what government ruled.
When the English troops took possession, in 1765, there were only eighty or ninety French families living at Post Vincennes; and there had been about fourteen families at Fort Ouiatanon during its oc- cupancy, and at the post in the northeastern part of the State there were nine or ten French houses. These three small colonies were, at that time, the only white settlements within the territory which is now the State of Indiana. After the British commandant, with a small detachment of redcoats, had taken possession of the fort, under the Cross of St. George instead of the Lilies of France, and issued a specific proclamation to the settlers, the isolated camps real- ized little difference by the change of sovereignty. When England took possession of every stronghold from St. Lawrence and the Lakes, south, there were scarcely any American colonists north of the Ohio River and west of the Alleghanies. The savage Iro- quois had prevented immigration overland. The American traders who came from the Atlantic col- onies, by way of the rivers, were a mere handful and lived among the French at the posts. As soon as Great Britain had extended her control over the West, many English traders and land hunters began to go thither. The home government immediately feared that the section might feel itself so remote, and be- come so self-reliant, that the settlers would declare an independent government. In consequence of this apprehension, the King of England issued a procla- mation forbidding any emigration to the newly
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Historic Indiana
acquired section. Six years later, the commander- in-chief wrote to the Colonial Department,
"as to increasing the settlements (northwest of the river, Ohio) to respectable provinces-and to colonization in general terms in the remote countries-I have conceived it altogether inconsistent with sound policy. I do not apprehend the inhabitants could have any commodities to barter for our manufactures, except skins and furs, which will naturally decrease as the country increases in people, and the deserts are cultivated; so that, in the course of a few years, necessity would force them to pro- vide manufactures of some kind themselves, and when all connection upheld by commerce with the mother coun- try shall cease, it may be expected that an independency in their government will soon follow."
Notwithstanding all these prohibitions by the home government, there was an ever-increasing number of hardy pioneers, who ventured down the river from Pennsylvania, or tracked through the forests of Ken- tucky from Virginia and the Carolinas, to the territory northwest of the Ohio. A few of these came into Indiana. Despite the interdict of Great Britain, and the forbidding attitude of the savages, the population of the English colonists from tidewater kept in- creasing along the rivers of the West. During all the years of the British occupation, there was a constant menace to the whole border population south and north of the Ohio, from the Indians, who were be- coming more and more alarmed at the white man's invasion. It was a time of midnight surprises, swift and sudden attacks and massacres; then an uprising by the whites, and war to the death against the sav- ages. Year in and year out there were always alert
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British Occupation
anxiety and dread of further disaster, while bitterness of feeling between the races grew ever more deadly. The Indians had no enduring confidence in French, Spanish, or English. They had been used by each in turn, against the other; and were bewildered by the conflicting policies of Europe, which were being fought out in the wilderness.
The situation was most disastrous to both races, and the trouble seemed interminable to the hapless frontiersman.
It was owing to the constant friction with the na- tives that General George Rogers Clark first came out with a commission from Virginia to help protect the border toward the Ohio River, maintaining that a country which was not worth defending was not worth claiming. It was in defence of Kentucky settlers that he came to the Wabash and the Mis- sissippi. A far more momentous result of that cam- paign is part of the story of the Revolution. It was to end the dominion of England over the wilds of Indiana. While the puny settlements on Western rivers were struggling with the primeval forces, little affected by the troubles of the American colonists on the Atlantic shore, these colonists had for three years been en- gaged in a life-and-death struggle for liberty from British rule. The strictures upon emigration to the new lands were part of the cause of revolt. Concen- tration of population to the narrow strip of country between the Alleghanies and the ocean was resented by the Southern colonies as much as unjust taxation. In fact the war has come to be recognized as a revolt against the attitude of Great Britain in regard to America on many questions. The colonists felt the genius for control of their own affairs.
-
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Historic Indiana
It required little more than a decade, from the conquest of the French possessions in North America, for the American colonies to throw off the claims of Great Britain. In fact, the military part taken by the colonial troops in that conquest gave them the assur- ance to begin a protest to the crown.
Professor Hinsdale says:
"The history of French America is far more picturesque and brilliant than the history of British America in that period, but the English were doing work far more solid, val- uable, and permanent than their northern neighbors. The French took the lakes, rivers, and forests; they cultivated the Indians; their explorers were intent upon discovery; their traders on furs; their missionaries on souls. The English did not either take to the woods or cultivate the Indians; they loved agriculture and trade, State and Church, and clung to the fields, shops, politics, and churches. As a result, while Canada languished, thirteen English states grew up on the Atlantic Coast, and became popu- lous, rich, and strong. They spread to other colonies. There were 80,000 white inhabitants in New France, and 1,160,000 in the British Colonies at the close of the period." 1
During the War for Independence, the dramatic movements of General Clark and his Southern soldiers in the Northwestern wilderness were so successful, that the settlements on the Wabash and the Mississippi passed from British control before the contest was over on the Atlantic coast. Indiana territory became an American possession by these brilliant achieve- ments, in February, 1779, four years before England
1 Hinsdale, Professor, The Dial, 1900.
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British Occupation
gave up the hope of retaining her colonies. Al- though the British garrisons lingered, as late as 1796, under one pretext and another, they were but a sur- vival of the past, and scarcely received passing no- tice from the settlers. The wilderness had become American.
CHAPTER IV
HOW SPANISH RULE AFFECTED INDIANA
S PANISH doubloons paid for the first Indiana homesteads, Spanish silver was the only coin of the realm on the Wabash until 1838. It was barter, or Spanish "pieces of eight," for twenty years after the territory became a State. From whence came this coinage and how did it become the circu- lating medium of Hoosierdom? Down the Mississippi and its tributaries, was the outlet for the produce of the great valley, and back from the Gulf came pay in Spanish money. The free and uncontrolled navi- gation of the Mississippi, as the highway to the sea and to Europe, was of the utmost importance to all the adjacent territory, and became the bone of con- tention for two centuries, among the three great Powers and the colonies. In this way Indiana felt the dominion of Spain, and it became a part of her history, although the territory was never within the possessions of his Most Catholic Majesty.
To appreciate the conditions in the interior along the Wabash, the Ohio, and all the other tributaries of the Mississippi River, a glance at the Spanish claims on this continent is necessary. De Soto had dis- covered the lower Mississippi River in an overland march from Florida, in search of gold, in 1542. He
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1
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How Spanish Rule Affected Indiana
was buried in its waters-that the Indians might not learn that he was mortal-a hundred and forty years before the Frenchmen, La Salle and Tonty, came down the river from the Great Lakes. In ac- cordance with the custom of nations, De Soto's little band had declared possession in the name of the Spanish monarch, as had been done for all the southern shores. Ever since Columbus's discovery, ships had been sailing away from Spain with their prows turned to the southwest. They had colonized the edges of the shores between Mexico and Argentina before there was a single English settlement on the Atlantic coast. Very naturally the Spanish Government set up priority of claim to the lands along the Gulf. What a vision it must have been to the unaccustomed eyes of the natives of the forest
" when through the gloomy pines there flashed the brilliant arms and trappings of the Spanish cavaliers and their soldiers, whom the Indians took to be gods. They were wearied and tattered with the long and fruitless search for strange cities and gold. Their horses were jaded and their men gaunt, from malaria and lack of food, but when they came upon this mighty river, they compared it to an inland sea and kneeling on the banks, the gallant De Soto declared it to be the possession of the Crown of Spain." 1
But the aim of De Soto and those who followed him was gold and booty; no colonies were ever founded in the section. A century and a half later, after La Salle had set up the cross of St. Louis, D'Iberville founded the first fort and town on Biloxi Bay, to establish possession. After these two dramatic in- cidents, the control of New Orleans and the river changed several times between these two nations and 1 Fiske, John, Discovery of America, vol. i., page 68. 3
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Historic Indiana
for years to come the question was weaving like a shuttle, back and forth, through all the diplomacy of the centuries. The earliest efforts at making settle- ments in the entrance to the Mississippi were dis- couraging, but by 1718 France had founded a per- manent colony at New Orleans, which proved to be a most loyal and persistently French settlement. We pass over the interesting history of how New Orleans lived through many changes of French rulers, sent out by the kings; under the Treaty of Utrecht, Spain had ceded all of the great territory called Louis- iana to France. In 1769 Spain got it all back again and took formal possession of the city, the river, and of the Louisiana territory, by virtue of a secret treaty with France. This compact was made seven years before as a recompense for Spain's loss of Florida to Great Britain, when she was helping France. During this time, in 1763, France, beaten and bankrupt, had finally lost to Great Britain all her dominion of Canada.
Until 1800 the Western settlers in the Indiana ter- ritory, with all their trade dependent upon the river transportation, were at the mercy of the Spanish gov- ernment. The boatmen, with their boats laden with produce and pelts, must await the pleasure of Spanish customs officials. Discommoded as the river voyagers were, under the change of dynasty in 1769 they could not compare with the despondent French citizens of New Orleans. Ten thousand creoles, loyal to their king, resented being used like pawns upon his chess- board, to propitiate a Power whose help he needed in his wars at home. Still the gay creole population of the lower Mississippi submitted without combat to the change, but business was neglected and festivities suspended. The new Spanish Government hung the
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How Spanish Rule Affected Indiana
most prominent French loyalists, ordered the Spanish language to be used, and encouraged immigration from Castile. Then came the sweeping proclamation of dire import to all the upper country, that the Mis- sissippi should be closed to all trade outside this prov- ince, prohibiting all foreigners from passing through Spanish territory without a passport, and any im- migration from the American colonies. These orders could only be overcome by fees and bribes, and all traffic became corrupt and disastrously uncertain. Cargoes decayed on the boats and wharves, at great loss to the settlers along the rivers. In time many of them abandoned tillage and trapping, became more shiftless than ever, and poverty overtook them. Three years later the new Governor, Unzaga, regained the confidence of the French at New Orleans, the colony increased, and agriculture was resumed. Fur- ther improvement came under his successor, Galvez, who gradually permitted more heavily laden cargoes to come down the river, and trade revived.
Besides the disasters to the river transportation of Indiana's produce, she encountered Spanish inter- ference in a dash of troops from the little fort at St. Louis, to capture Fort St. Joseph and claim occupation of territory. This was in 1781, during the Revolution- ary War. When the claim thus set up reached the distant King of England he had the new American envoys from the colonies to checkmate the design. Great Britain had then lost the war, and Spain's hold on Indiana territory was but as the passing shadow.
1627927
It was during Galvez's occupancy of the governor- ship of Louisiana that the struggling American col- onies were engaged in the War of Independence.
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Historic Indiana
This contest might have affected far-away Indiana and the other river colonists very slightly, had not Spain engaged in the conflict by declaring war against Great Britain in 1779. This move of the Powers in Europe ruined the commerce on the Gulf of Mexico by checking all shipments to Europe; consequently it again acted disastrously on the sorely tried settlers all the way to the Great Lakes. The cabals at Madrid meant hardships on the frontier. Hopes of perma- nent relief from all the vexatious hindrances to transportation were revived by the treaty of peace granting American independence, in 1783, wherein, it was fully stipulated that the Mississippi should remain forever free, from its mouth to its source, for navigation by all British subjects and by all citizens of the United States. It would seem that this should have settled the whole matter and there was an im- mediate response to this measure by increased im- migration. Industry and traffic were revived. Alas! Spain was slow to obey the articles of the treaty. Twenty years of delay and continuous vexation fol- lowed. They were years of diplomatic dawdling and exasperating fencing, between the commissioners of the American Congress and the ministers of Spain. All this time the patience of the pioneers was tried beyond endurance by their losses in commerce. Prop- erty was seized and confiscated from Natchez on down the river.
In 1793 the French Minister, Genet, tried to induce Kentucky and Tennessee to join his standard, in an invasion of Spanish territory, and rid themselves and the French settlers of the foreign yoke. General George Rogers Clark even accepted a command to accomplish this much desired end; but the Federal Government
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How Spanish Rule Affected Indiana
demanded the recall of Genet, and that threatened uprising subsided.
At the same time another form of insidious attack by the Spaniards exasperated the founders of the young republic, struggling hard to establish a stable government. This was the constant intrigues, through a long term of years, on the part of the Spanish gov- ernors of Louisiana to induce the Southern and Western settlers to secede from the United States, and form an independent government west of the Alleghany Mountains, or join the Spanish territory. The long years of delay in gaining a free outlet to the sea had worn on the disaffected settlers. The Spanish Gov- ernor, Miro, incumbent at the time, and his successor Carondelet, sent emissaries through the South and through the Indiana territory, trying to wean the inhabitants from the new American government, and join them to the Spanish territory of Louisiana. They made a secret compact with the American General Wilkinson, who was at the same time engaged in the service and pay of the American Government; making his treachery correspond to his influence. When the leading influential traders came down the river with their fleets, the Spanish Governor granted them ex- traordinary privileges, and endeavored, in every way, to induce them to join forces with him, and help annex the whole eastern valley of the Mississippi to the western side. From this territory they would create a great internal Spanish domain, reaching from the Alleghanies to the Rocky Mountains. This was during the years 1795 to 1797.
Added to these complications, the new struggling Union had to contend with other foes threatening the continued adherence of the Western settlers. The
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Historic Indiana
British, who had kept control of Canada after the Revolutionary War, endeavored to win the frontiers- men to their standard. The country along the Ohio Valley north and south of that river was infested with emissaries of these insidious and crafty schemers from Canada and the Louisiana territory to win the settler from his loyalty to the United States, but it was all in vain. During all this time the Spanish governors realized the antipathy of the French element among their subjects, from Vincennes to New Orleans. Es- pecially was this so during the French Revolution and the war at that time between France and Spain. In the metropolis on the Gulf, in the little hamlet of Vincennes or Fort Chartres, from the river boatmen poling their batteaux of produce to market down the river, floated the strains of the Marseillaise. In the streets of New Orleans the mobs bawled the Jacobin songs, and drank toasts to liberty and equality. In- cendiary letters and documents had to be suppressed and a Spanish alliance with the Indians was made for fear of an uprising of the French against the Spanish rule. In spite of the interdicts on foreigners coming into Spanish territory, in 1795, when Bosa introduced the culture of sugar-cane, which proved so immensely profitable, there was a large immigration from the States.
Spain began to fear a dangerous preponderance of Americans in her meagre settlements. She passed laws restricting immigration, discriminating against Protestants, and denying navigation and the right of deposit of goods. Until the year 1800, these reg- ulations renewed the exasperation of the settlers, to the point of a threatened invasion, when the interdict was removed. Again trade revived, immigrants
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How Spanish Rule Affected Indiana
poured in from the United States, taking up the best lands and startling the Spaniards, until the king ordered that there should be no more grants of land to citizens of the United States, giving as the reason that it would be only a few more years until the tide would rise too high to be resisted. Louisiana would be lost to the king, lost to the Holy Pilgrims, given over to freedom, republicanism, and error. This is a mere outline of the Spanish occupation of that part of America, which so vitally affected the early set- lers in Indiana territory. It has left few traces of its connection with the history of the State, but is part of the story of the past. Indiana and Illinois were so dependent in that far-off time, for access to the outside world, upon the Mississippi River, that its century of contest for free navigation was the tragedy of the frontier, second only to the dangers from the Indians. The infant nation on the Atlantic coast hardly dared assert itself against the European Powers who alternately held the fortunes of the West in their hands. As ever, right made slow progress against might. Added to the actual weakness of the American government, some of the seaboard colonies regarded the Mississippi Valley as an undesirable dependency, much as Alaska was afterwards regarded, so that Congress was as slow to act in behalf of the valley as it is slow to act in behalf of suffering Alaska to-day.
During the administration of the Spanish governors, corruption in office was practised in the most unblush- ing way, indeed both French and Spanish officials, down to the close of foreign domination, were too far from home to pay any heed to an accounting. This, of course, had its effect on the city, and on the
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Historic Indiana
river tradesmen; creating very lax morality. To New Orleans came the river boatmen from Indiana and the adjoining territory with their produce. This was where they lingered "to see the world" until their money was squandered.
The more important traders and distinguished men from "up-the-river" also found in New Orleans a social circle that was attractive. The charmingly refined and engaging home life among the upper classes was most delightful after the crude life of the wilderness. We are reminded that throughout the eighty-seven years of foreign control, a steady, if slender, stream of the best blood of France and Spain had trickled into Louisiana. The French Revolution also drove many noble citizens into exile there. From these elements there grew to be a proud and exclusive, if limited, circle of citizens in this wilderness city. Owing to the possession of slaves, and the tropical climate, luxury and ease of life were most alluring to this class. A peculiar phase of society was gradually evolved from these conditions. Social circles possessed little learning perhaps, but the fine manners of the gay polite members could not be surpassed on the continent. French taste, speech, and customs dom- inated society. After years of control the Spanish had but one school in the city in 1795. Merchants and traders from the Ohio or the Wabash were fas- cinated with the hospitalities of the exporters with whom they had dealings. They brought home tales of the rose-embowered balconies overhanging the shaded streets, and the low rambling houses with the gay home life within; where light-hearted creole hospitality made New Orleans society famous. As time went on many elegant house furnishings and
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How Spanish Rule Affected Indiana
European importations of silver, mahogany, silks, laces, and satins found their way in the return loads up the rivers, to the homes of the settlers farther north.
Finally to this Spanish-ruled French city came vague rumors from overseas, that the great Napoleon, who was now ruler in France, had ambitions to regain France's dominion on the Western Continent, and was wringing the Louisiana province from Spain. Such a bargain had really been made, Napoleon ceding Parma in exchange, at Ildefonso, October 1, 1800. But the far-off colonists were left in a state of expectancy, and the Spanish officials were anxious and uncertain, until the treaty was ratified at Madrid in 1801. Even then the French did not come over to take up the government, and all was mystery in the colony. Napoleon had planned to advance to the control of the Louisiana territory from his West India islands, but, being at war with England, that government's fleet ruled the sea and prevented his entering into possession. Political complications on the continent were crowding the French Emperor. He dared not undertake the recovery of the American provinces, but he was determined he would not forfeit Louisiana to Great Britain. Without consulting his own statesmen, he suddenly opened negotiations with the commissioners from the United States, for the cession of that province to the American government. The American commissioners, Mr. Livingston and Mr. Monroe, were in Paris, interceding for free navigation of the Mississippi, and imploring the First Consul to sell their government the island of New Orleans, in order to insure control of the river. In the midst of these modest negotiations, the American gentle-
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