USA > Indiana > The history of Indiana > Part 11
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The military preparations were not yet far enough advanced to risk another campaign, and it was decided to try diplomacy yet one time more. The Indians, to the number of 2,000, were assembled on the Maumee. Here, in the neighborhood of the British traders, and easily accessible from Detroit, provi- sioned and counseled by the British officials, they lay feverishly watching every movement of the army under Wayne. Word was sent them by Chief Hendrick that American commissioners would meet them at San- dusky when the buds opened in the spring. For this mission the President selected Beverly Randolph, Benjamin Lincoln and Timothy Pickering. These men spent the summer of 1793 around Lake Erie vainly trying to secure an audience with the Indians, but the English succeeded in preventing it. The Indians
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remained firm in their demand for the Ohio river boundary. The last hope of a peaceable settlement passed, and the blame for the failure must rest on the head of Governor Simcoe and his fellow officers of Canada.35
As soon as Governor St. Clair had gathered his broken army into Fort Washington, he demanded a court-martial to determine the blame for the recent disaster. A court-martial being impossible, because there were not enough officers of the high rank re- quired to form the court, he resigned as commander. After canvassing the merits of several generals, Wash- ington chose Anthony Wayne to lead the new army of the west.
General Wayne arrived at Pittsburg in June, 1792, and began to drill the recruits. Washington directed him to spare neither powder nor lead in target prac- tice. After drilling till late in the fall, Wayne led his army, now called the Legion, to a place about twenty miles down the Ohio, which he named Legion- ville. Early in the spring he continued down to Cin- cinnati, where a camp ground called Hobson's Choice was laid off and drilling began again. Target prac- tice was a part of every day's work. The soldiers were taught to use the bayonet and to depend on it in fighting Indians. They drilled especially to fight in open order, like rangers, and yet to support each other. They were trained in camp-making, fortifying, forced marching, maneuvering, and above all in marksmanship.
Word finally came that the peace commissioners had failed and the army of about 2,600 effective men left Cincinnati October 7, 1793, for the scene of war. On October 13 Wayne camped in a strong position six
35 The documents connected with these different negotiations are given in American State Papers, Indian Affairs, I, 139-202, 215-225, 335-361, 524-529.
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miles north of Fort Jefferson, where he was joined by General Scott with 1,000 Kentucky militia. After keeping these troops in camp long enough to convince them that he was master of the army, Wayne dis- missed them for the winter. He established a winter camp at this place in order to protect the settlements. The Indians did not dare to separate and leave their towns exposed to this hostile army. The camp was fortified and named Fort Greenville. An advance party went on to the scene of St. Clair's Defeat and built Fort Recovery. At 7 o'clock on the morning of June 30, 1794, Little Turtle, with perhaps 1,000 war- riors, made a furious assault on the fort, but a strong detachment had reinforced the post lately, and he was defeated with heavy loss. A great many white men, including some officers in scarlet uniforms, fought with the Indians that day.
Wayne crept on slowly, drilling his men, covering his front with · scouts, who kept him posted on the numbers and location of the enemy. On August 8 he reached Grand Glaize, on the Maumee. This place he called the grand emporium of the Indian country. Here the Indian army had rendezvoused for the last ten years, but more especially since Harmar's Defeat. On all sides were fields of corn and pumpkins, indis- putable evidence that even these savages were taking the first feeble steps toward civilization.
General Wayne quickly built a fort here, which he named Defiance, and hastened on down the river after the Indians. These latter fell back sullenly before the Americans, watching eagerly but vainly for a chance to surprise them, and imploring from the Brit- ish that aid which they had been so often and so freely promised. To give this promise color, Governor Simcoe of Canada had led 300 British troops to the foot of the rapids of the Maumee and constructed a fort from which the Indians were supplied with pro-
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WAYNE'S VICTORY
visions and ammunition. A short distance above this fort was a dense forest strewn with fallen trees, the wreck of some previous tornado. Here the Indian army, under the Little Turtle, decided to offer battle.
The Indians were not hopeful. Wayne had, a few days before, sent a last offer to treat for peace and the Little Turtle had favored accepting it, but English counsels prevailed. At early morn, August 20, the American army approached in its usual battle forma- tion, with the dragoons on one flank, the mounted Ken- tucky militia on the other, a cloud of scouts far in advance, and the Legion following in double battle line with loaded guns and bayonets at a trail. There was no possibility of surprise. As soon as the scouts located the Indians, the Legion charged and, raising the enemy with the bayonet, fired individually at point blank range. After the first fire, it was tomahawk against bayonet and the Indians, though double the numbers of the Legion, were chased two miles in an hour. Nothing saved them from a massacre except the dense woods. The fugitives sought shelter in vain under the walls of the British fort. The Legionaries charged up to within pistol shot of the British guns and drove the Indians away from its walls to the woods for shelter. Not an Indian was allowed to enter the fort, where they had been welcomed before.
The battle of Fallen Timbers was the death-blow to the Miami Confederacy. The allied Indians were worn out with the long vigil. For two years they had been watching the steady approach of the invading army, buoyed up with the hope of taking it by sur- prise, as they had done Harmar and St. Clair, or by the aid of the English of defeating it in the open field. The result had shown them the futility of both hopes. After waiting three days on the field of battle and destroying all the property, both Indian and English, in the neighborhood, Wayne led his army slowly back
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HISTORY OF INDIANA
up the river to where Fort Wayne now stands, destroy- ing everything as he went. Fort Wayne was completed October 22 and named by Colonel Hamtramck. The Legion returned to Greenville to winter quarters, Ham- tramck, with his regiment, remaining at Fort Wayne.36
The Indians, after their defeat, gathered around the western shores of Lake Erie and spent the winter in hunger and misery, subsisting on the scanty rations dealt out by the British. Governor Simcoe, agent McKee, and the Mohawk chief, Brant, encouraged them to continue the war but their spirit was broken. The Little Turtle, Buckongahelas, Tarke, Le Gris, Blue Jacket, Captain Jonny, one after another, visited the Americans and promised to come for the council to be held at Greenville the next summer. The great Treaty of Greenville which ended this long war, was signed August 3 and exchanged August 7. This treaty opened about half of Ohio to settlement but none of Indiana except a narrow strip east of the line from Fort Recovery to the mouth of the Kentucky river. Eleven hundred thirty warriors, representing nine nations, were present and assented to the treaty. Everything looked promising for a long peace.
Capt. Thomas Pasteur, then stationed at Fort Knox, reported that many hostile Indians passed that post on the way across the Mississippi during the autumn following the battle of Fallen Timbers. Gen- eral Wayne learned the same from other sources. All these blamed the British for their misfortunes.37
36 The documents on Wayne's Campaign are printed in Amer- ican State Papers, Indian Affairs, I, 487, seq.
37 American State Papers, Indian Affairs, I, 550.
CHAPTER VI
TERRITORIAL GOVERNMENT, NORTHWEST TERRITORY, 1788-1800
§ 22 ORGANIZATION OF THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY
THE jurisdiction of France extended over the soil of Indiana from the period of its first discovery and habi- tation by white men down to the end of the Old French War in 1763. Part of what is now Indiana lay within the province of Canada and part within the province of Louisiana, the dividing line crossing near Terre Haute. The territory legally belonged to England from 1763 till 1783; but it is hardly proper to say there was a government from 1764, when St. Ange left Vincennes, till the arrival of Col. J. F. Hamtramck, in 1788. Such improvised forms as existed are fitter subjects for fiction than history. December 12, 1778, Virginia erected the Illinois Country into the county of Illinois and appointed John Todd county lieutenant.1 As soon as the western territory passed under the control of Virginia the Continental Congress, Septem- ber 6, 1780, recommended that it be ceded to the United States.
There were urgent reasons on the part of Virginia for making the cession. First of these was the ex- pense of protecting and governing the distant colony. The Virginia State government, then almost bank- rupt, had more than it could do to defend its own immediate borders. The second was the attitude of the other States. All would oppose Virginia's hold-
1 Henry, Life of Patrick Henry, III, 212; see also Hening's Statutes of Virginia, IX, 552.
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HISTORY OF INDIANA
ing this enormous territory, which would make it larger than all the other combined. Besides the other States had claims on the same lands. These claims were shadowy, indeed, as compared with that of Virginia; but in times of strife an excuse is fre- quently as good as a legitimate claim. The third rea- son for the cession was more statesmanlike and more worthy the noble Virginians who then ruled that State. The common ownership by all the States of this vast domain would be a powerful bond of union for the thirteen States. The sale of its land would bring to the national treasury the money to pay the soldiers of the Revolution. The first cession by Virginia, made January 2, 1781, was on such conditions that Congress could not accept it. On September 13 the new Con- gress of the Confederation specified to Virginia terms on which it could accept and these were agreed to by Virginia, December 20, 1783.2
The principal conditions of this cession, the oldest constitution of Indiana, were that out of the ceded territory federal republican States not less than one hundred nor more than one hundred and fifty miles square should be constituted, which in due time should be admitted into the Union on equal terms with the older States; that the United States should reim- burse Virginia for all the expenses incurred in the con- quest from the British and Indians; that the settlers who had become citizens of Virginia should be pro- tected in their personal rights and in the titles to their lands; and, lastly, that the United States should warrant to George Rogers Clark and his men the 150,000 acres of land promised them by the State of Virginia. The deed of cession was signed and deliv- ered to the United States on March 1, 1784, by Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Hardy, Arthur Lee and James Mon-
2 Ben Perley Poore, Constitutions, I, 427.
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THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY
roe, the delegates of Virginia to the Confederation Congress.3.
The Confederation Congress was anxious to obtain a revenue from the sale of western land at the earliest possible moment. The endless litigation over land titles, which was then distracting Kentucky, warned the government that some systematic scheme must be adopted for the survey and marking of boundaries. A committee, appointed May 1, 1782, reported in favor of marking the land off into lots six miles square, an early reference to our congressional township. Another committee, of which Madison was a member, recommended dividing the ceded territory into States and admitting them into the Union-a suggestion that was embodied in the Virginia deed of cession. A more pretentious, though less sensible, report by a committee, of which Jefferson was a leading member, was made March 1, 1784. The purpose of this commit- tee was to prepare for colonial government in the new territory. According to the latter report the territory should be divided by lines of latitude and longitude into ten States, for which the names Sylvania, Michi- gania, Chersonesus, Assenisipia, Metropotamia, Illi- noia, Saratoga, Washington, Polypotamia and Pelisipia were suggested. These States were to have republi- can governments and slavery was to be prohibited after 1800.
While these abstract discussions were going on in Congress, a company of men was organizing in Massachusetts to make a settlement north of the Ohio river. This company was composed largely of officers who had served in the Revolutionary army. Many of them held certificates of indebtedness against the Confederation which they intended to use in payment for the western land. Gen. Samuel H. Parsons, Gen.
3 Ben Perley Poore, Constitutions, 428. These documents are also in Thorpe's Constitutions and Charters.
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HISTORY OF INDIANA
Rufus Putnam and Rev. Manasseh Cutler were the directors of the company. Dr. Cutler was sent to Congress to make the purchase. His diary indicates that he found not only Congress but congressmen sorely in need of money. It is enough to state here that by catering to a number of speculating congress- men he succeeded in purchasing 1,500,000 acres of land on the Muskingum river. In connection with this purchase Congress drew up a scheme of colonial government which has since become famous as the Ordinance of 1787. The company demanded a free church, free schools, free labor, and a practically free territorial government.
These were the circumstances under which this charter was drawn. A wealthy company was ready to buy $3,500,000 worth of land. The New England congressmen were anxious to promote the purchase and thereby help the New England company. Many members from the Middle and Southern States were financially interested in the success of the company. Other members of Congress were in hopes of securing lucrative positions in the new government. It would have been impossible to interest New England peo- ple in a new colony where slavery was the condition of labor; consequently in order that it might sell its lands the Ohio Company demanded the exclusion of slavery.
The Ordinance passed Congress July 13, 1787.4 It provided for a temporary government to consist of a governor, secretary, and three judges, all appointed by Congress. The governor and judges, subject to some important exceptions, were to adopt from the old States laws suitable to the government of the new set- tlement. Freedom of worship and the personal and
4 Ben Perley Poore, Constitutions, I, 429. A good account of this land deal is given in McMaster, A History of the People of the United States, I, 505.
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ORDINANCE OF 1787
property rights common to Englishmen were guar- anteed to the settlers. Schools and the means of educa- tion were to be encouraged forever as a necessary con- dition of free government. The Indians were to be treated fairly and their title to the land respected. There were to be constituted out of the territory not less than three nor more than five States, which were, as soon as they could be shown to have at least 60,000 free inhabitants each, to be admitted into the Union with all the privileges of the older States.
Primogeniture and slavery were forbidden, and a high property qualification was required both for voters and officeholders. As soon as there should be 5,000 freemen a representative government was promised in which the people might choose their own legislature. Over this legislature the governor retained an absolute veto, and the power to convene, prorogue and dissolve. This territorial legislature was empowered to nominate ten men, from whom Congress should select five to act as a legislative council-a cumbersome and useless pro- cess of election quite as impracticable as the later electoral college.
In this liberal scheme of colonial government some of the conditions of Virginia's cession had been vio- lated, which made it necessary to go back to that State for a ratification. This having been generously given in 1788, in the next year Virginia granted to the States that might in the future border the Ohio river on the north the right of free navigation and concurrent juris- diction on its waters.5
When the constitution of the United States went into effect in 1789 it was necessary to make some new arrangements concerning the Northwest Territory. This was done by an act of Congress August 7, 1789,
5 Hening's Statutes, also St. Clair Papers, I, 212; Burnet Notes on the Northwest Territory, 308.
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HISTORY OF INDIANA
which gave to the President the appointive powers and duties formerly exercised by Congress.6
§ 23 THE GOVERNMENT AT MARIETTA
THE first settlers of Marietta began to cross the Appalachian Mountains during the winter and spring of 1788.7 Dr. Cutler, after a consultation with the United States surveyor, had decided on the Muskingum Valley as the most suitable site for the new colony. Here the first settlers landed April 7. Arthur St. Clair, the president of Congress when the sale of land was made to Dr. Cutler, had been appointed governor of the new territory October 5, 1787, but did not arrive at Marietta, the name given to the settlement on the Mus- kingum, till July 9, of the next year.
The Northwest Territory, of which Indiana was a a part, now had a regularly constituted, if not very efficient, government. St. Clair's chief concern was for the Indians. He was directed to notice their dispo- sition, remove all causes of friction, regulate their commerce with the settlers, keep up a friendly inter- course with their chiefs, prevent confederacies among them, and lose no opportunity of acquiring their lands by purchase.
The first territorial legislature for the Northwest Territory convened at Marietta in July, 1788, and held numerous sessions during the remainder of the year. It was composed of Judges Samuel H. Parsons, James M. Varnum and John Cleves Symmes. Even in the ex- ercise of its limited powers it was subject to the veto of Congress. In the organization of this government, Congress emphasized the value of property qualifica- tions in office holding. The governor was required to
6 United States Statutes at Large, Sess., I, ch. 8.
7 The facts given in reference to the purchase of land and settlement in Ohio can be found in St. Clair Papers, and in Life, Journal and Correspondence of Manassah Cutler.
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GOVERNMENT OF MARIETTA
he a resident freeholder of 1,000 acres, the secretary and judges to own and occupy 500 acres each.
The judges were not regarded as lawmakers pri- marily. Besides having a general common law juris- diction, they had the power, when sitting with the gov- ernor, to borrow or adopt a statute from one of the original States. When the temporary government came to an end they surrendered all pretense to legislative power, though, as judges, they held office during good behavior.
Congress instructed Governor St. Clair to proceed as soon as possible to Kaskaskia and Vincennes to organize regular county governments and adjust their troublesome land claims. In pursuance of these orders, St. Clair, Secretary Winthrop Sargent, and the judges left Marietta for the west December 30, 1789.8 After stopping a few days at Cincinnati, where they organ- ized Hamilton county, they reached Clarksville, at the Falls of the Ohio, January 8, 1790. No county was organized at Clarksville, but a temporary government was authorized by appointing William Clark, of Clarks- ville, justice of the peace and captain of the militia.
From here the governor and his party continued on down the river. They reached Kaskaskia by way of the Mississippi river, but had scarcely entered into the work there before the threatening aspect of Indian affairs on the Ohio called St. Clair back to Fort Wash- ington for a consultation with General Harmar. Sarg- ent was left in charge at Kaskaskia. As soon as he had finished the organization of St. Clair county and put the machinery of government in motion he set out for Vincennes.
§ 24 VINCENNES LAND CLAIMS
ON his arrival at Vincennes, Secretary Sargent found a complication of land claims which defied settle-
8 St. Clair Papers, II, 121.
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HISTORY OF INDIANA
ment. The depository for the orders of the command- ant during the period of French and English control had been the notary's office. The loose scraps of paper on which concessions of land had been made were lost, trifled with, or stolen. On this account Acting Gov- ernor Sargent was unable to do justice immediately in but few cases.
The earliest of these land claims rested on a reputed grant by the Indians. According to a memorial to Con- gress, filed by the inhabitants, the Indians of the Wa- bash, at a council in 1742, ceded all the land from Point Coupee above to White river below to the inhabit- ants of Vincennes. The record of the treaty had long remained with the register of deeds at the old Post, but an absconding officer, Raumer by name, took it away with him at the beginning of the French and Indian War. The petitioners claimed that the Indians had often ratified this gift, afterward extending it forty leagues west and thirty leagues east.
A committee of the House of Representatives, to which all these claims were referred, rejected the claim described above, on the ground that if such a grant were made it was to the French government and would thus revert to the United States under the treaties of 1763 and 1783.9
A far larger and more dangerous claim resulted from the activity of land speculators during the Eng- lish rule. For presents of trifling value large tracts of land had been obtained from the Indians. One of these tracts was claimed by the Illinois Land Company. Its agent, William Murray, a trader of the Illinois Coun- try, had bought from ten Kaskaskia chiefs, July 5, 1773, two large tracts of land bordering the east bank of the Mississippi, and equal in size to the State of Illinois.
In the same manner Louis Viviat, also an Illinois . 9 American State Papers, Public Lands, I, 26.
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LAND CLAIMS OF THE NORTHWEST
trader representing an association of adventurers known as the Wabash Land Company, purchased, October 18, 1775, from some Piankeshaw chiefs a block of land 279 miles long and 210 miles wide lying on either side of the Wabash. The deed, which purported to convey about 60,000 square miles of land, was duly registered at Kaskaskia and Vincennes. These gigantic frauds had been consummated while Hugh Lord was commandant at Kaskaskia. It seems that the promot- ers were aided and encouraged by the officials, many of whom were stockholders in the land companies. They were already making arrangements for settlements when the Revolution put an end temporarily to their activities. After that storm had subsided things did not look so favorable for the adventurers. The two companies were accordingly merged April 29, 1780, and their joint affairs placed in the hands of a com- mittee of three, James Wilson, William Smith and John Shee. The Old Congress, having taken no notice of a memorial presented to it by these men in 1781, nothing further was done until December 12, 1791, when the agents of the company offered to surrender their whole claim if the United States would re-convey to them one- fourth of the land in the original claim.
On this modest claim of some 30,000 square miles the Senate made an adverse report, basing it on the ground that contracts between Indians and private parties for the conveyance of land were void. How- ever, a House committee reported, April 3, 1792, that since this contract was made before the Declaration of Independence and had extinguished the Indian title there was no other title remaining and the deed was therefore voted. To this it was answered that the proclamation of George III, October 7, 1763, strictly forbade anyone except government buying land from the Indians. This policy laid down by King George was adopted and has been followed by the United
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HISTORY OF INDIANA
States. On this account all these western land claims, laid before the Revolution, and based on cessions by the Indians, have been held invalid.10
The next series of claims in order of time were those based on grants by the French and English com- mandants. From the earliest settlement down to 1779, the commanders of the post had exercised the sovereign power of the medieval king in granting land to any one whom they thought worthy. These concessions, or deeds, written of necessity on any scrap of paper pro- curable were in most cases lost or misplaced. There was no official register of land titles except the notary. One of these, as we have noticed, during the time of St. Ange, ran away with all the public records, while another, Mr. LeGrand, who served from 1777 to 1788, was guilty of so many forgeries that it was impossible to use his papers in adjusting claims. As Mr. Sargent observed in his report to Congress, not one out of twenty of the ancient inhabitants could produce a clear legal title.
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