USA > Indiana > Indiana, a redemption from slavery > Part 5
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In presenting the evidences that Post Quiatanon was founded about the year 1720, and Post Vincennes in
1 Kaskaskia and its Parish Records, p. 15; Mich. Pion. Coll., vol. v. p. 104.
2 Law's Vincennes, p. 19.
3 Ibid., pp. 19, 20.
4 Vincennes Sun, March 16, 1822.
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INDIANA.
1727, we have used only the affirmative testimony of French official documents. There is, however, a mass of negative testimony in these documents which clearly limits the foundation of Vincennes to the period from 1724 to 1731. Considering how great collections of documentary history of the Mississippi valley have been made of recent years, the total failure to find any men- tion of a post before a certain date, or any indication of it on any map, is very strong evidence that there was no such post until that date. Of especial weight are a number of documents which purport to give exhaustive accounts of all posts and settlements and yet make no mention of our posts. On the Louisiana side we have the Journal of La Harpe and the Relation of Penicaut giving very full accounts of all occurrences in Louisi- ana, including the Illinois and Ouabache countries, from 1698 to 1722, but in neither of them is there any men- tion of a post or settlement that could possibly be Vin- cennes. In the Canadian documents there is no mention of the Quiatanon post before the one of 1719 quoted above ; nor is there any intimation of the existence of any other post on the Ouabache until 1731-2, when Beauharnois went beyond his territorial jurisdiction in giving directions to guard against the approach of the English.1 In the Canadian papers and in the British papers, which show an almost equal knowledge of the country, although there are lengthy descriptions of the Wabash country in 1718 and 1719, there is no mention of any post or settlement on the Wabash.2
Recurring to the testimony of tradition, it will be remembered that four years - 1680, 1702, 1716, and
1 N. Y. Col. Docs., vol. ix. pp. 1027, 1035.
2 Ibid., vol. ix. pp. 885, 892; Ibid. vol. v. pp. 620-621.
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THE FRESH POSTS.
1735 - have been given by various authors as the date of the founding of Vincennes. The first, which so eminent an authority as Thomas H. Benton asserted positively in the Senate of the United States to be the correct date,1 evidently had its origin in the exploration of the region by La Salle. The second has been adopted chiefly on account of confounding Vincennes with Juche- reau's post at the mouth of the Ohio. The third would not, perhaps, have been suggested by Mr. Bancroft if he had reflected that at that time the French were trying to induce the Indians to leave the Wabash; and that the line of communication which they were then commonly using, and which in fact they then strengthened, was the Mississippi and Illinois rivers route. The date 1735, which Volney and others following him adopted, had its source in the first arrival of families in that year. Al- though this variegation of error shows that tradition is a very unreliable guide, there is still a satisfaction in knowing that the conclusions which we have reached are confirmed by the oldest known traditions, for there were records of traditions before Volney visited Vincennes. General Harmar was sent there in 1787 by the United States authorities, and in his letter to the Secretary of War, dated August 7, 1787, he says of the post : " Monsieur Vincennes, the French officer from whom it derives its name, I am informed, was here and com- menced the settlement sixty years ago."2 This places the foundation of the post exactly in 1727. Major Ebenezer Denny, who accompanied Harmar, is not so exact, but is sufficiently so to bar all the earlier dates. He says : " It was first settled by a Monsieur Vincennes
1 Cong. Globe, 2d Sess. 28th Cong. p. 80.
2 St. Clair Papers, vol. ii. p. 27.
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near 70 years ago, from w - it takes its name." 1 Colo- nel Croghan, who was carried prisoner up the Wabash in 1765, does not give the date of the settlements, but he says that Post Ouiatanon "was the first on the Oua- bache." 2 This statement is of more weight than ordi- nary tradition, for Croghan had then been engaged for at least fifteen years in trade with the Miamis, and dur- ing much of this time he was acting as an agent of the British officials, in which service he would naturally make careful inquiries as to French establishments in territory claimed by the English.
Post Vincennes, from its foundation to the close of the French occupation, was included in the District of Illinois, in the Province or Colony of Louisiana. Fort Chiartres was the seat of government of the District, and New Orleans of the Province. Post Quiatanon and Fort Miamis belonged to Canada, and were under con- trol of the commandant at Detroit. ( The dividing line between Louisiana and Canada was not very well ascer- tained, and, as Du Pratz says, " It is of little importance to dispute here about the limits of these two neighbor- ing colonies, as they both appertain to France." 3 ( The boundary limit on the Wabash, however, was fixed at an early day, probably soon after the Mississippi Company surrendered its charter, in 1732, at the site of the city of Terre Haute. This locality was always called Terre Haute by the French, and the English, by an enlarged translation, called it " the Highlands of the Wabash." 4
1 Denny's Journal in Penn. Hist. Soc. Publications, p. 311.
2 Butler's Ky., App. p. 373.
8 Hist. of La., Lond. ed. of 1774, p. 181.
4 Western Sun, November 9, 1811; Itinerary from Detroit to the Illinois, in Haldimand Coll., Can. Archives.
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THE FRIENENPOSTS.
In 1736 came a call to & von the Louisiana side. A part of the Natchez Indians, after their defeat and dispersion by the French, had taken refuge with the Chickasaws, who, urged on by English traders, also committed some acts of hostility. Bienville, who had been reappointed Governor of Louisiana in 1733, deter-
mined to crush them. He repelled all proposals for peace, and ordered the forces of Illinois to unite with him in the Chickasaw country. D'Artaguiette departed from Fort Chartres in February, 1736, with the greater part of his garrison, a company of volunteers from the villages, and a large band of Illinois Indians. Vin- cennes met him at the mouth of the Ohio with his little garrison, forty Iroquois, and a number of the Wabash Indians. They reached the rendezvous, but the New Orleans troops had not arrived, and the Army of the Illinois was almost out of provisions. A council of war was held, and it was determined to attack an isolated village of about thirty cabins, which it was supposed could be easily taken. The cabins of the Chickasaws were made with mud walls, a foot or more in thickness, and had thick roofs of mud plastered over a framework of sticks. They were usually surrounded by palisades. In such a village the forces of D'Artaguiette could have defended themselves against the Chickasaws, and there, probably, they would have found enough provisions to supply them until the arrival of Bienville. The attack was made with spirit, but scarcely was it begun when a force of five hundred Indians and thirty Englishmen swept down on the flank of the attacking party from behind a little hill. The Indian allies of the French fled, except the Iroquois and twenty-eight Arkansas, who had joined them on the Mississippi, and the French
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were overwhelmed with terrible slaughter. Lieutenant St. Ange was the first to fall, and Vincennes soon fol- lowed him. D'Artaguiette and fifteen others were cap- tured and burned at the stake.1 Charlevoix tells us that, " Vincennes ceased not until his last breath to ex- hort the men to behave worthy of their religion and their country." Be that his epitaph ; and be it a matter of pride to Indiana that her first ruler was so brave a man and so true.
His successor also was a man of merit. Soon after the Chickasaw campaign, Jean St. Ange de Belle Rive, the former commandant of Fort Chartres, made a peti- tion to Bienville reciting his service to the king of more than fifty years, the death of his son Pierre Grosson St. Ange in the late disastrous battle, and the vacancy of a half-pay lieutenancy by the death of Sieur de Vin- cennes ; he asked "this advancement for the son who re- mains to him, now commanding a post on the Missouri." 2 Bienville favored the request, and the king granted the promotion. This second son, Louis St. Ange, had already been appointed to the command of Post Vin- cennes.3 His occupancy lasted through the French possession of the country. In a certificate made by him on August 30, 1773, he says that he "commanded at Poste Vincesnes in the name of His Most Christian Majesty, with a garrison of regular troops, from the year 1736 until the year 1764, and that my first com- mission as commandant of the said post was from His
1 Gayarre's La., vol. i. pp. 485-489; Old Fort Chartres, pp. 29, 30.
2 Margry, vol. vi. p. 448, note.
3 His order to take command of the post was dated July 1, 1736; his commission as lieutenant réforme was dated October 16, 1736. Mag. of West. Hist., vol. ii. p. 64.
·
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THE FRENCH POSTS.
Most Christian Majesty under the government of M. de Bienville, Governor General of Louisiana in the said year 1736 ; that thereafter I was continued under the government of Messieurs de Vaudreuille, de Kerlerec, and D'Abadie, successors one to another in the said government, until the said year 1764 ; . . . that further, the said post was established a number of years before my command, under that of M. de Vincesne, officer of the troops, whom I succeeded by order of the king." 1
It should be noted here that the name of Vincennes does not appear to have attached to the post for a long time after its establishment. The oldest known refer- ence to it by that name was in 1752.2 The first men- tion of the post, in the deed of Vincennes above re- ferred to, is in the indefinite term " poste du Ouabache."' This, or simply the " poste," was the most common name for it, and from the French phrase au poste the early American settlers commonly wrote the name Opost. There were, however, other names for the place in early times. In the order to St. Ange to take command, it is designated as "the post of Pianguichats," referring of course to its location among the Piankeshaws.8 On many of the English maps of the last century the only indications of any posts or settlements on the Wabash are at two points, the upper one marked "G. Wiaut," and the lower one " L. Wiaut." An explanation of this is found in a report of Lieutenant Fraser, who visited the country during Pontiac's war. He says the French had " two forts on the Ouabach ; the one called the great Ouiachtonon was dependant on Canada, and the other
1 Haldimand Coll., Can. Archives.
2 N. Y. Col. Docs., vol. x. pp. 248, 249.
8 Mag. of West. Hist., vol. ii. p. 64.
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INDIANA.
at little Ouiachtonon or St. Vincent dependant on Or- leans." 1 Post Vincennes also occasionally took name from M. St. Ange, but in these cases it was generally cor- rupted to Ft. St. Anne or Ft. Anne. These are found chiefly on French maps. Some map-makers, misled by the various names, have placed on their maps as many posts as there were names.
The greater portion of St. Ange's rule was a quiet, hum-drum period for the little post of Vincennes, as also for Ouiatanon and Fort Miamis. The great con- flicts in other portions of the Mississippi valley seldom reached the Wabash, and when they did they touched it but lightly. The inhabitants devoted their attention to agriculture and the fur trade, and lived in quiet and happiness. Much of their peaceful prosperity was due to St. Ange. He was not an educated man, for the unsettled life of his father in the frontier service had given him no opportunities for instruction. Pierre Chou- teau, the elder, who knew him well, deposed that " he could not write well, but that he could sign his name." 2 He was, however, a discreet officer and a wise ruler. That he always possessed the affection and confidence of the people of the Wabash, the Illinois, and the Mis- sissippi is unquestionable. Tradition describes him as prudent, pacific, generous, and philanthropic. All of the existing documentary evidence confirms this esti- mate, while his promotion to a half-pay captaincy in 1738,8 and his long continuance in office at Vincennes, show that his administration was satisfactory to his superiors as well as to the people. In marked contrast
1 Report dated Pensacola, May 4, 1766, in Can. Archives.
2 Admrs. of Wright v. Thomas, 4 Mo. 577.
8 Mag. of West. Ilist., vol. ii. p. 64.
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THE FRENCH POSTS.
with his term at Vincennes was the frequent changing of his superiors, the commandants at Fort Chartres. D'Artaguiette, the victim of the Chickasaws, was suc- ceeded by Alphonse de la Buissonière, who remained in command for four years ; and he by Captain Benoist St. Claire, who two years later gave place to the Chevalier de Bertel. This officer held through the period of the War of the Austrian Succession ; and at the close of the forties Benoist St. Claire again took command and held until the arrival of the Chevalier de Makarty, the re- builder of Fort Chartres, in 1751. After the battle of Fort Du Quesne, Makarty was succeeded by Neyon de Villiers, who was the last appointed French governor of the District of Illinois.1
During this period the only Indians in Indiana lived along the Wabash and to the north of it. There were no villages and no resident tribes to the south of the Wabash valley. The Shawnees moved to the east - nearly all of them to within the present bounds of Penn- sylvania - in 1697, and did not begin the movement to the west for more than thirty years. None of them relocated in Indiana until 1745, and the greater number of them at a much later period. The Delawares were eastern Indians. Our tribes called them Elanabah, or People from the Sunrise. Portions of their tribes were straggling westward all through the French occupation, but their great migration from Pennsylvania was be- tween the years 1763 and 1768. The Wabash Indians and the Miamis of the Maumee lived in most amicable relations with the French until 1747, the only trouble before that time being a drunken affray between some
1 Old Ft. Chartres, pp. 30-37.
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INDIANA.
Ouiatanon youths and two or three voyageurs.1 Belts were sent to them occasionally by the English, and they had not a little clandestine trade through the Ohio val- ley with the enterprising traders of Pennsylvania and Virginia. The French were unable to prevent this, for the English paid twice as much for skins as they did, and were also liberal in presents, hoping thereby to se- cure the trade. About the year 1745 a band of Hurons, under a war chief named Nicholas, settled at Sandusky Bay, where they were visited by English traders and won to the English side. With much finesse Nicholas stirred up feeling against the French, and arranged a conspiracy of portions of nearly all the tribes except the Illinois, under which, on one of the holidays of Pentecost, 1747, each tribe was to strike the French nearest it, and so exterminate all who were in the country. The plot was discovered and largely thwarted by Chevalier de Lon- gueuil, then commanding at Detroit, though numerous depredations were committed.2 The most effective blow was struck at Fort Miamis. Ensign Douville, who com- manded there, had gone on a visit to Montreal with Coldfoot and the Hedgehog, two of the most reliable Miami chiefs, when the plot ripened. The hostile Mia- mis took the fort by surprise and burned it to the ground. The eight men who formed the garrison were captured, but afterwards released.8 Governor de la Galissonière, of Canada, sent troops to the relief of the western posts, but before they arrived the hostile tribes were all beg- ging for peace or fleeing to the wilderness. Kekionga was abandoned. Part of the Miamis, under a chief
1 N. Y. Col. Docs., vol. ix. pp. 1050, 1051.
2 Ibid., vol. x. pp. 114, 115, 119.
8 Ibid., vol. x. p. 140.
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THE FRENCH POSTS.
called La Demoiselle, located on the Big Miami, and the remainder established a village on a small tributary of the Ohio called White River.1 In December Nicholas and others were at Detroit, suing for peace, and La Demoiselle promised to return to Kekionga, but he did not do so.
The fort was rebuilt by Sieur Dubuisson soon after its destruction, and through the influence of Coldfoot a part of the Miamis on White River were induced to re- turn. The others did nothing but promise and break their promises. In 1748 the fugitive Miamis sent dep- uties to Lancaster, Penn., and entered into a treaty of alliance with the English.2 They traded with the Eng- lish continuously thereafter, and from them the English influence soon spread to the Ouiatanons and Pianke- shaws. In 1749 M. de Celoron made his famous expe- dition down the Allegheny and Ohio, holding councils with the tribes and depositing, at important points, lead plates on which were inscribed the reentry of the French to possession of the Ohio valley.8 He returned by way of the Big Miami, reaching La Demoiselle's village on September 13, 1749. Here he held councils for two days, urging the Miamis to return to " Kiskakon, which is the name of their old village." La Demoiselle and
1 Rivière Blanche. It was probably what is now called White Oak Creek, in Brown County, Ohio. Map in Mag. of West. Hist., vol. ii. p. 130; Margry, vol. vi. p. 714.
2 Penn. Archives, vol. ii. pp. 9, 11.
8 One of these plates was brought to Sir William Johnson by the Senecas in 1750. N. Y. Col. Docs., vol. vi. pp. 608, 611. Another was found at the mouth of the Muskingum in 1798. Archeologica Americana, vol. ii. p. 537 ; Hildreth's Pion. Hist. of the Ohio Valley, p. 20. A third was found at the mouth of the Kanawha in 1846. Mag. of Am. Hist., vol. ii. p. 145.
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his people promised surely to return in the following spring, and De Celoron proceeded on his way to Fort Miamis in high spirits. At this point he met Coldfoot and informed him of what had passed. That sagacious chief replied : " I would that I were deceived, but I am sufficiently attached to the French to tell them that La Demoiselle lies. My sole regret is to be the only one who loves you, and to see all the tribes to the south drawn away from the French."1 He was right. La Demoiselle had no intention of returning. In the fall of 1750 he gave the English traders permission to build a fort at his town of Pickawillany, at the mouth of Loramie's Creek, and they erected one at once. This fort thenceforward served as a refuge for deserters from the French posts, as well as for a trading-place.
The disaffection of the Wabash Indians increased rapidly, and within a year they began open warfare. Early in the autumn of 1751 La Demoiselle's Indians killed two Frenchmen belonging to the Kekionga post, and sold their scalps to the English. On October 19, the Piankeshaws killed two Frenchmen below Vin- cennes ; and two days later they killed two slaves in sight of the post. St. Ange at once put the place in condition for defense, and notified De Ligneris, who commanded at Quiatanon, " to use all means to protect himself from the storm which is ready to burst on the French." At Christmas five more Frenchmen were killed by the Piankeshaws at the Vermillion.2 Early in 1752 the French influence was more seriously weakened. Coldfoot and a part of his Indians had gone to White River to endeavor to induce Baril's band to return, and
1 Margry, vol. vi. pp. 716-723.
2 N. Y. Col. Docs., vol. x. pp. 247-249.
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THE FRENCH POSTS.
had them in preparation for doing so, when small-pox broke out among them with disastrous effect. Coldfoot and his son died of it, as did also Le Gris, the chief of the Tepicon band, who had always been a good friend to the French.1 The French now concluded that per-
1 N. Y. Col. Docs., vol. x. p. 246. The existence of a band of Miamis called Tepicons suggests a meaning for Tippecanoe whose import is as yet very uncertain. The full name of the town at the mouth of the Tippecanoe River was Keth-tip-pe-can-nunk. This is rendered by some " the place of the great clearing," from Keth or Kehti, meaning " great," tippena, " open," " clear," and nunk, the terminal locative. I should think a more reasonable transla- tion would be " the great place of the Tepicons," or "the great place on the Tepicon River," as old translations indicate that the stream took name from the tribe ; thus " River de Thopicanos " on Hutchins's map, and "River Trippecans" in the Haldi- mand itinerary. Usually the name is said to refer to some fish found in the stream. Barron, the old trader, gave the meaning to Hon. C. B. Lasselle as "Catfish River." Flint says it is " from a kind of pike called Pic-ca-nau by the savages." Geog. and Hist. of West. States, vol. ii. p. 125. Judge Beckwith insists on having it from "Ke-non-ge or Ke-no-zha, meaning the long- billed or wall-eyed pike." (Hist. Notes on the N. W., p. 218, n. ; Ind. Geol. Rept. 1882, p. 39.) The following very plausible con- jecture is furnished to me by Rev. Joseph Anderson, of Water- bury, Conn. : "I think the name is substantially identical with Tuppeek-hanna, one of the sources of the Little Lehigh in Penn- sylvania. Hanna, in composition, occurs in most of the Algonquin languages as meaning a rapidly flowing stream. Thupeek (tuppik) is given in Zeisberger as meaning a well or spring; and Hecke- welder, in his essay on Indian names, translates Tuppeek-hanna as meaning 'the stream that flows from a large spring,' - Big Spring River." The Tippecanoe might very appropriately bear this name, for it is peculiarly a river of springs ; and the possi- bility of the name coming from the Delawares is heightened by the fact that there is no known reference to the stream by that name prior to the British occupation. The Topicanich of Dubuis- son's Journal of the Siege of Detroit was a locality on the upper
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INDIANA.
suasion was useless, and an expedition against the Picka- willany town was ordered, with instructions that "two of the chiefs are to have no mercy," but that the others would be pardoned if they submitted.1 On the morning of June 21, 1752, a party of two hundred and forty French and Indians attacked La Demoiselle's town by surprise, but most of the people escaped to the fort, which they defended resolutely. In the afternoon, having done all the damage they could outside the fort, and realizing that its capture would be difficult, the besiegers offered to withdraw if the Pickawillanies would surrender the Englishmen who were with them. After consultation, there being no water in the fort, the Englishmen agreed to this, and were surrendered, with the exception of two who were kept concealed. One of the prisoners, who was wounded, was at once killed before the fort, and the others were held captive. Among the Indians who had been captured was the principal chief of the Pian- keshaws, called " Old Britain " on account of his friend- ship for the English. He was killed, cut in pieces, boiled, and eaten, in full view of the fort; after which the French and their allies moved away.2
In the following year M. Du Quesne established a post at the site of Erie, Penn., and another on French Creek. George Washington, then Adjutant-General of the Virginia militia, was sent to him to notify him to withdraw, but the French commander gave no heed to the notice. In 1754 a party of English who were build- lakes. Other forms of the name are Quitepiconnae, Gamelin's journal ; Tepeconnae, Hough's map; Kithtipaconnou, letter of Jolin Conner and Wm. Wells, in Liberty Hall, July 23, 1808; Rippacanoe, Imlay's Top. Desc., p. 403.
1 N. Y. Col. Docs., vol. vi. p. 730.
2 Journal of Captain Trent, Cincinnati, 1871.
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THE FRENCH POSTS.
ing a fort at the site of Pittsburg were driven away by the French, and Fort Du Quesne was built at that point. It is not our intention to trace the events of the French and Indian War. Suffice it to say, that, by these active measures at its inception, the whole Ohio country was brought under French control, and, from the time of Braddock's defeat at least, the tribes continued loyal. The friends of the English were either awed into sub- mission or driven from the country, and the Indians generally were engaged in active assistance of the French. The seat of war was transferred to the fron- tiers of Pennsylvania and Virginia, and the Wabash country was left quiet, save for the beat of the war-drum as the warriors marshalled for the conflict of the white kings, and the voice of lamentation for the dead, and the shriek of the tortured captive, when they returned.
When Canada was surrendered at the capitulation of Montreal, Major Robert Rogers was sent west to take possession of the posts. The great chieftain Pontiac stopped him for a few hours, but apparently only to im- press the new-comers with a proper respect for himself, for he acted favorably towards the English for many months afterward. On November 29, 1760, Rogers took possession of Detroit, and soon after officers were sent to take possession of posts Ouiatanon and Miamis. Post Vincennes, not being within Canada, and therefore not included in the capitulation, was still held by St. Ange for His Most Christian Majesty. The three years that passed before the final treaty, by which all the terri- tory east of the Mississippi was surrendered to England, formed an era of disquietude in the West, though there were no outbreaks. The English, feeling sure of their conquest, took little trouble to retain the favor of the
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