USA > Indiana > Allen County > Fort Wayne > History of Fort Wayne, from the earliest known accounts of this point, to the present period. Embracing an extended view of the aboriginal tribes of the Northwest, including, more especially, the Miamies with a sketch of the life of General Anthony Wyane; including also a lengthy biography of pioneer settlers of Fort Wayne. Also an account of the manufacturing, mercantile, and railroad interests of Fort Wayne and vicinity > Part 3
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As early as 1670, Great Britain had established, at different points, between the 32d and 45th degrees of north latitude, as many as nine colonial settlements in America : and it was not until about cighty years later that the English began to make any effort towards a settlement west of the Allegheny mountains.
In 1670, the French colonists in America had persevered in the extension of their settlements to the westward from Quebec, on the shores of the St. Lawrence, and the borders of lakes Ontario and Erie ; and their missionaries and traders had succeeded in explor- ing the bordering regions of the northern lakos, to the west, as far as Lake Superior ; and stations, with a view to the Christianization of the Indians, were established at several points, among a number of Indian tribes. To give protection and impetus to the fur trade, then coming to be very extensive in its operations, a number of
#That this point was visited before the establishment of settlements at Kaskaskin and Kahokia, or other points westward, seems to be generally admitted by all the mest. authenic historical rescarches that the writer has had occasion to refer to.
+For a more extended summary of these carly periods, see Bancroft's History of U. S., Dillon's History of Indiana, Parkman's Conspiracy of Pontiac, Sparks's Life of In Salle, Vol. 1, new series, do. Life of Marquette, &c.
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HISTORY OF FORT WAYNE.
stockade forts and trading posts were also erected at various points best suited for such establishments.
A little minutia as to the efforts, trials, and disappointments of these primitive missionaries and others, in connection with other points, will here be of interest to the reader, and tend to open a more extended view of the relations that surrounded, and, at an carly period, evidently influenced, the destiny of the present situa- tion and historic importance of the City of Fort Wayne.
At the period I now refer, Charles II. was King of England, and Louis XIV,-purported to have been a most ambitious man, - was monarch of the French. A statesman of considerable ability, of the name of Colbert, was minister of Finances to the latter, who is said to have inspirited the colonists of Canada with an arduous wish to widen their domain, as well as to increase the power of the French monarch. Thus animated and impelled, with the hope of enjoying the advantages and means of Christian civilization thought necessary to be 'exerted over the various Indian tribes of the west, at that early period, the civil and religious authorities of Canada were constrained "to engage earnestly in the support of the policy of in- creasing the number and strength of the forts, trading-posts and missionary stations in the vast regions lying on the borders of the rivers and lakes between Quebec and the head of Lake Superior.""
At this early period, the French civil and ecclesiastical authori- ties of Canada, having given considerable life to renewed action among the missionaries, "in the course of the years 1670, 1671 and 1672," says Dillon. in his researches, " the missionaries, Claude Al- lonez and Claude Dablon, explored the casternpart of Wisconsin, the north-eastern portion of Illinois, and, probably visited that part of Indiana which lies north of the river Kankakee. In the follow- ing year, M. Joliet, an agent of the French colonial Government, and James Marquette, a good and simple-hearted missionary, who had his station at Mackinaw, explored the country lying about the shores of Green Bay, and on the borders of Fox River, and the river Wisconsin, as far westward as the river Mississippi, the banks of which they reached on the 17th day June 1672." In the following month, on the 17th, many obstacles presenting themselves, they set ont on their return to Canada, by way 'of the Illinois river, and arrived at Green Bay, an outlet of Lake Michigan, in the latter part of the month of September, a distance of some 2.500 miles .- At a village of the Illinois Indians, it is related, they were feasted in a most friendly and hospitable manner, upon the choicest food of the tribe, consisting of roast buffalo, fish, hominy and dog meat.
But the curiosity and desires of the French colonists in Canada did not cease with the return of the missionaries. In the early part of 1682, Robert Cavalier de La Salle, with a small exploring party, made his way to the Illinois, and passed down"that stream to the Mississippi, thence continuing his voyage,-with short stoppages here and there at the presentation of the friendly calumet or attack
ANCIENT TERRITORY OF THE MIAMIES.
from the shore by unfriendly Indians, etc.,-to the Gulf of Mexico, where, on the 9th of April, 1682, they erected a column and cross, attaching thereto the arms of France, with the following inscription: "Louis the Great, King of France, and Navarre, reigns-the 9th of April, 1682." All being under arms, after chanting the Te Deum, they fired their muskets in honor of the event, and made the air to reverberate with the shouts of "Long live the King ! " at once taking formal possession of the entire country, to which they gave the name of Louisiane, in honor of their King.
Soon after this event, La Salle and his party returned to Canada, whither he soon after went to France, where he was received with much favor by the King, and the account of his and those of Joliet and Marquette's discoveries were made known. And thus it was that Louis the 14th of France at once laid claim to the whole of the soil lying between Canada and New Mexico,* disregarding all prior or subsequent claims set up by Spain, by reason of the dis- coveries of Juan Ponce de Leon, in 1512, and Hernando de Soto, during the years 1538 and 1542.
Not long subsequent to the discovery of the mouth of the Mis- sissippi, the French government began to encourage the establish- ment of a line of trading posts and missionary stations in the country west of the Allegheny mountains, from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, which policy they seem to have sustained with moder- ate success during a period of some seventy-five years. The greater part of this long period of time, a few missionaries pursued their labors, but with no lasting or general beneficial results, in so far, at least, as their efforts related to the Indians of the west.
In 1679, the same day that La Salle completed the erection of a fort at its mouth, the river St. Joseph, of Lake Michigan, received the name of "the River Miamies," from the Indians of that name; and it was on the banks of this river that the principal station for the instruction of the Miamies was founded, about that period ; after which it was called "the St. Joseph, of Lake Michigan."
Hennepin thus gave the account of the erection of the first French post within the territoryt of the Miamiest in 1679:
* Afterwards, for many years, called NEW FRANCE.
+Little Turtle, the distinguished chief of the Miamies, who lived here for many years with his tribe, and died here in 1812, at the famous treaty of Greenville, (Q.), 1795, thus, in part, addressed General Wayne regarding the territory of his people: " You have pointed out to us the boundary line between the Indians and the United States ; but I now take the liberty to inform you that that line cuts off from the Indians a large portion of country which has been enjoyed by my forefathers from time inmemorial, without molestation or dispute. The print of my ancestors' houses are everywhere to be seen in this portion. * It is well known by all my brothers present, that my forefather kindled the first fire at Detroit : from thence heextended his lines to the head waters of Scioto; from thence to its mouth ; from thenee to Chicago, on Lake Michigan." From the earliest period we have of them, the Miamies Have been a leading aud most powerful tribe.
*"When the Miamis were first invited by the French authorities at Chicago, in 1670," says Mr. Chas. B. Lasselle, in one of his interesting sketches, relating to the curly history of Fort Wayne, "they were a very powerful Indian nation. A body of them assembled near that place for war against the powerful Iroquis, (Five Nations), of th- Hudson, and the still more powerful Sioux, of the Upper Mississippi, copsisteel of at
HISTORY OF FORT WAYNE.
"Just at the mouth of the river Miamis there was an eminence with a kind of platform naturally fortified. It was pretty high and steep, of a triangular form-defended on two sides by the river, and on the other by a deep ditch, which the fall of the water had made. We felled the trees that were on the top of the hill, and having cleared, the same from bushes for about two musket shot, we began to build a redoubt of eighty feet long, and forty feet broad, with great square pieces of timber, laid one upon another ; and prepared a great number of stakes, of about twenty-five feet Jong, to drive into the ground to' make our fort the more inaccessi- ble on the river side. We employed the whole month of November (1769) about that work, which was very hard, though we had no other food but the bear's flesh our savage killed. These beasts are very common in that place, because of the great quantity of grapes that abound there ; but their flesh being too fat and luscious, our men began to be weary of it, and desired leave to go a hunting and kill some wild goats. M. La Salle denied them that liberty, which caused some murmurs among them ; and it was but unwil- lingly that they continued the work. This, together with the ap- proach of the winter, and the apprehension that M. La Salle had that his vessel ( the Griffin ) was lost, made him very melancholy, though he concealed it as much as he could. We made a cabin wherein we performed divine service every Sunday; and father Gabriel and I, who preached alternately, took care to take such texts as were suitable to our present circumstances, and fit to inspire tis with courage, concord and brotherly love.
*: This fort was at last perfected, and called Fort Miamis. "
This same missionary, Hennepin, in 1680, visiting some of the Indian villages on the Illinois river, speaks thus of the peculiar ideas and manners of the savages he met there at that early period ; which must give the reader to infer that, though the natives of the forest, in their untutored state, had but a poor sense of the Christi- anity taught by the missionaries of the time, they yet possessed a singular intelligence regarding life and the religious nature of man ; and were, withal, strangely liberal in their views and actions toward
least three thousand, and were under the head of a chieftain who never sallied forth But with a body-guard of forty warriors. He could at any time lead into the field an anny of five thousand men." Of all their villages," says he, "Ke-ki-ong-a was con- sidered by the Miamis the most important, as it was the largest and most central of all their possessions-being situated near the head waters of the Wabash, The Miami, ( Mainmec). and the St. Joseph of Lake Michigan." Says Bancroft: "The Miamis was the most powerful confederacy of the west, excelling the Six Nations, (Iroquois.) * Their influence reached to the Mississippi, and they received frequent visits from tribes bevond that river." As the messenger of St. Clair, An- toine Gamelin, in the spring of 1790, proceeded from Vincennes toward this point with a view to friendly relations with the Indians, he was told at the different villages on his route to go to Ke-ki-ong-a. "You know," said they, "that we can terminate nothing without the consent of our brothers, the Miamies." ""The impress of its name," says Mr. Williams, of our city, "upon so many western rivers, shows the predominance of die tribe. The two Miamies of the Ohio will ever perpetuate it. The Miami of Lake Erie (now Maumee) was likewise named for the tribe. * Our own St. Mary's was marked . Miamics' river,' on the, rude skeleton map, made to represent the western country at the time of Colonel Bouquet's expedition in 1703."
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HENNEPIN'S ACCOUNT.
those differing from them. But the Indian was a rude child of nature-born in the woods, with the great spirit of the forest deeply' impressed upon his soul. He had ever seen the Great Father " In clouds, and heard him in the winds."
Says Hennepin :- "There were many obstacles that hindered the conversion of the savages, but in general the difficulty proceeds from the indifference they have to every thing. When one speaks to them of the creation of the world, and of the mysteries of the Christian religion, they say we have reason; and they applaud, in general, all that we say on the great affair of our salvation. They would think themselves guilty ofa great incivility, if they should show the least suspicion of incredulity, in respect to what is proposed. But, after having approved all the discourses upon these matters, they pretend, likewise, on their side, that we ought to pay all possible «lefference to the relations and reasonings that they may make on their part. And when we make answer that what they tell us is false, they reply that they have acquiesced to all that we said ; and that it is a want of judgement to interrupt a man that speaks, and to tell him that he advances a false proposition. The second obstacle which hinders their conversion, proceeds from their great superstition. The third obstacle consists in this,- that they are not fixed to a place.
The traders who deal commonly with the savages, with a design to gain by their traffic, are likewise another obstacle. They think of nothing but cheating and lying to become rich in a short time. They use all manner of stratagems to get the furs of the savages cheap. They make use of lies and cheats to gain double, if they can. This, without doubt, causes an aversion against a rolig- ion which they see accompanied, by the professors of it, with so > many artifices and cheats. " Continues the same missionary, " the. Illinois ( Indians ) will readily suffer us to baptise their children, and would not refuse it themselves; but they are incapable of any pro- vious instruction concerning the truth of the Gospel, and the efficacy of the sacraments. Would I follow the example of some other mis- sionaries, I could have boasted of many couversions; for I might easily have baptised all those nations, and then say, ( as I am afraid they do, without any ground, ) that I had converted them. * Our ancient missionary recollects of Canada, and those that suc- ceeded them in that work, have always given it for their opinion, as I now own it as mine, that the way to succeed in converting the bar- barians, is to endeavor to make them men, before we go about to make them Christians. * America is no place to go to out of a desire to suffer martyrdom, taking the word in a theological sense. The savages never put any Christian to death on the score of his religion. They leave everybody at liberty in belief; they like the outward ceremonies of our church, but no more. They do not kill people but in particular quarrels, or when they are bru- tish or drunk, or in revenge, or infatuated with a dream, or some
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HISTORY OF FORT WAYNE.
extravagant vision. They are incapable of taking away any person's life ont of hatred to his religion."
The best accounts agree that it was through the agency and perse- vering exertions of missionaries, combined with the active and enter- prising movements of traders, that amicable relations and a moder- ate trade were brought about between the colonists of Canada and the Miami Indians-which occurred before the end of the 17th century.
M. de la Barre, governor-general of Canada, in 1684, in a re- monstrance to the English authorities, at Albany, complained that the Iroquois, or Five Nations, ( a league of friendship between whom and the English, it was understood, then existed, ) had been inter- meddling with the rights and property of French traders among the western tribes. To which the Iroquois, upon learning of this remonstrance, said their enemies were furnished with arms and. ammunition by the French traders ; and, at a subsequent council, held by M. de la Barre with the Five Nations, he accused the Iroquois, Senecas, Cayugas, Onondagas, Oneidas, and Mohawks, with having mistreated and robbed French traders going westward. To which Grangula, chief of the Onondagas, replied that they plundered nono of the French, excepting those who took guns, powder, and balls to the Twightwees, ( or Miamis ) and Chicktaghicks. " These arms," said he, " might have cost us our lives. We have done less wrong, " continued he, in a spirit of upbraiding, " than either the English or French, who have taken the lands of so many Indian nations."
, In this we have much of the true spirit and trials of those times, which will be found more in detail in many of the prominent histo- ries relating to colonial and subsequent periods. But the intima- tions of the chief Grangula would seem to have been a forerunner of further and still more extended troubles between the French and " the Five Nations; * for, from 1689 to the treaty of Ryswick, in 1697, wars and conflicts, of an almost interminable nature, occur- red between the French colonists and the Five Nations, which, it is presumed, tended, in a large degree, to check the ambitious and grasping policy of Louis XIV, and also to prevent and retard the settlement of the French colonists in the Mississippi valley.
Some time during the years 1680 and 1700, a number of mission- aries, in succession, used strong endeavors to Christianize and other- wise instruct the Illinois tribes ; and historical records state that a church, consisting of a small number of French, with a few Indians, was established on the banks of the Illinois river, at or near the site of a fort called St. Louis, and founded by La Salle at an ear- lier period.
The traders began carly to form matrimonial alliances with the Iulian women, and are said to have lived quite amicably with them.
Attracted by a sense of beauty, and with a view to enterprise in
* A century before the signal defeats of Harmar and St. Clair, near this place, Chas. B. Laselle, Esq .. in his researches of the early history of Ft. Wayne, says : " In a contest. which they, ( the Miami Indians ) with their kindred. the Illinois, waged for three or four years against the invineible Iroquois, of New York, these ' Romans of Amor- ica' ( Iroquois ) rer: wersted. "
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EARLY FRENCH SETTLEMENTS.
the accumulation of furs, a small body of French adventurers, from the Illinois, near the close of the 17th century, moved toward and settled upon the borders of the Kaskaskia, a small river emptying into the Mississippi, about one hundred miles above the mouth of the Ohio, where they founded the little village of Kaskaskia.
Among the first movements of the French in an effort to extend dominion over their western dependencies, from Canada, during the seventeenth century, were the establishment of small settle- ments at Detroit and Michilimackinac, while many are said to have given themselves up wholly to a life of adventure, rambling here and there, as their inclinations and necessities impelled thent, among the different tribes "north-west of the river Ohio."
Among these adventurous spirits, were to be found several quite intelligent, as well as enterprising and ambitious men, who lived in daily hopes of realizing immense " profits and advantages from the prosecution of the fur trade." "This trade, " says Dillon, in his interesting researches, "was carried on by means of men * who were hired to manage small vessels on the lakes, and canoes along the shores of the lakes, and on the rivers, and to carry burdens of mer- chandise from the different trading posts to the principle villages of the Indians who were at peace with the French. At those places the traders exchanged their wares for valuable furs, with which they returned to the places of deposit. The articles of merchandise used by the French traders in carrying on the fur trade, were, chiefly, coarse blue and red cloths, fine scarlet, gun's, powder, balls, knives, hatchets, traps, kettles, hoes, blankets, coarse cottons, ribbons, beads, vermillion, tobacco, spiritnous liquors, etc. The poorest class of fur traders sometimes carried their packs of merchandise, by means of leather straps suspended from their shoulders, or with the straps resting against their foreheads. It is probable that some of the Indian villages on the borders of the Wabash were visited by a few of this class of traders before the French founded a settle- ment at Kaskaskia. It has been intimated, conjecturally, by a learned. writer, ( Bishop Brute ), that missionaries and traders, before the close of the seventeenth century, passed down from the river St. Joseph, ' left the Kankakee to the west, and visited the Tippecanoe, the Eel river, and the upper parts of the Wabash. '" -
" The Miami villages, " continues the same researches, "which stood at the head of the river Maumee, the Wea villages, which were situated about Quiatenon, on the Wabash river, and the Piankeshaw villages which stood on and 'about the site of Vinechnes, were, it seems, regarded by the early French fur traders as suitable places for the establishing of trading-posts. It is probable, that, before the close of the year 1719, temporary trading-posts were erected at the sites of Ft. Wayne, Quiatenon, and Vincennes. These points had, it is believed, been often visited by traders before the year 1700."
During the year 1733, an affray having occurred "between some # d'allerl by the French voyageurs, engagees, and coureurs des bois.
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HISTORY OF FORT WAYNE.
drunken young Quiatenons and two or three French voyageurs, in an affair of trade," M. de Armand, with a small body of militia, was ordered to make an attack upon the Ouiatenons ; but, soon after his arrival at the Miami village here, was persuaded to forego his intentions upon that tribe, and a friendly intercourse was soon re-established between the French and the Oniatenons, whose villa- ges were near the present site of Lafayette, in this State.
The late Judge Hanna, our esteemed fellow-citizen's, Hon. J. W. Borden and J. L. Williams, Esq., in their interesting sketches of Fort Wayne, all make mention of a small French fort that was carly creeted on the south bank of the St. Mary, not far from the canal acqueduct, and near the residence of Judge McCulloch. The histor- ical account of this fort is, that, as early as 1734, the famous Captain D. M. D'Vincennes, founder of Vincennes, Ind., visited this point in a military capacity, and erected the fort in question; and Vincennes is said then to have referred to this locality as " the key of the west." * How long this fort remained or was garrisoned by the French, it is now unknown.
Two years later, in 1736, by order of his superior officer at New Orleans, Monsieur d'Artaguette, " commandant for the King in Illi- nois," Captain Vincennes ( or, as originally spelt, Vinsenne.) left his post at Vincennes with an expedition against the Chickasaws. In a charge against this tribe of Indians, with a small body of French, aided by about 1000 friendly Indians, Vincennes received a severe wound, and fell soon after, and because of which, his Indian allies became disheartened and Hed, leaving Vincennes, D'Artaguette, and the Jesuit, Senat, at the mercy of the savage foe ; and on the 31st of May, 1736, the three prisoners were lashed to the stake and burn- ed by their wily captors.
Vincennes had visited the Miamies at this point as early as 1705. M. de Vaudreuille, at that period Governor-general of Canada, in a
* NOTE .- It will readily be seen by the reader, that, at this early period of the history of our country, the west, beginning, as we may say, with the Alleghanies, and beyond, and extending to the borders of Mexico, was an interminable forest, broken only by lakes, water courses, and prairie regions ; and every point, in a general sense, was alike a point of relationship and interest to the other ; while this, more especially, both tothe Indians and to the whites, was, beyond doubt, very early the key to the north-west. As will be seen, in subsequent pages, there was no point looked upon with greater interest, or which was inore beloved or more resolutely and jealously defended by the red man, againstany encroachment of a war-like nature, from the first efforts of the formidable Iroquois, or Five Nations, of the east, in the latter part of the 17th century, to the strenuous efforts of Harmar, St. Clair, Wayne, and Harrison; or which was more eagerly sought to be reached and held by the whites, than the ancient site of the present populous city of Fort Wayne. In considering its history, therefore. from the earliest known period, up to the struggles of 1812-14, it is found at once connected, in some way, with every important movement made in the north- west ; and instead of forming an extensive Appendix, the connecting links are preserved in future chapters by the interweaving of the general events of the north-west with those more directly transpiring at this point, from the carly efforts of LaSalle to discover the Mississippi, to the latest period of warfare, etc., with the Indians of the west. And in thus blending the early and general events of the country, for a long period of years, at onee so intimately connected with the history of Fort Wayne,-preserv- ing valuable data, as well as, in many instances, presenting the most important ontlines of sieges, marches, etc., the volume readily assumes a more interesting and valuable character.
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