INDIANA TRAILS
DELAWARE COUNTY
THE DAYS OF INDIAN
OCCUPANCY
There has been a great deal of controversy
concerning the origin of the
aboriginal races of America known to us as Indians so misnamed by
Christopher Columbus and his contemporaries because they were taken to
be natives of India. The Indians are now generally believed by the best
authorities to be descended from the races of Asia. One authority says
of them: “They are now generally believed to be a Mongolian people
separated from Asia by the comparatively recent subsidence of the
‘Pacific continent’.” Another authority says:
“By some ethnologists the American Indians are considered an aboriginal
or single stock; by others a mixture of Mongolian, Polynesian and
Caucasian types; and by others as derived from the grafting of Old
World races on a true American race.” Some authorities think the
ancestors of the Indians may have drifted across the Pacific from Asia,
or entered this continent by way of Behring strait. Be that as it may.
Where he came from or how he got here are hardly questions for such a
review as this. The Indian, once dominant throughout this region, is
gone. Of whatever ethnological stock, his was an arrested and non
progressive race and in the struggle with the white man and the
latter’s civilization he was worsted and required to withdraw.
MERE CARETAKERS FOR
THE REAL POSSESSORS.
As one thoughtful writer has pointed out: “Those who
preceded the
present occupants were the mere caretakers for the real possessors
whose coming these broad savannas, far reaching forests and teeming
hills plainly foreshadowed as the future domain of a mighty empire.
They left nothing behind them which in the slightest degree influenced
the character, laws or customs. of the present occupants.
The history of these people, though interesting
in itself, is a thing apart from our history. True, they occupied the
territory, but they never possessed it in any true sense of possession.
It is only by agricultural labor that man can be said to appropriate or
possess the soil, arid the Indian lived by the products of the chase.
He was marked for destruction by his fixed and ineradicable prejudices,
his fierce and ungovernable passions, his vices, and still more perhaps
by his savage virtues. The coming of the white man with his peculiar
civilization was. the death knell of the Indian, for it had come to be
an axiom of that civilization that barbarism has no rights which it is
bound to respect, and that axiom was the rule and guide of the white
man's conquest. So that the Indian has gone the way of the mastodon,
the cliff dweller and the mound builder. He has sped away like a bird
on the wing, leaving behind him no memorials of his passage save his
dishonored graves and his musical names which linger on mountain, lake
and river to tell the story of his sojourn and his exit.”
THE MELANCHOLY MUSINGS
OF SPRAGUE
To that generation in Indiana, now fast passing,
that “grew up” on the
McGuffey Readers, the melancholy musings of Sprague readily will recur:
“Not many generations ago where you now sit encircled by all that
exalts and embellishes civilized life, the rank thistle nodded in the
wind and the wild fox dug his hole unscared. Here lived and loved
another race of beings. Beneath the same sun that rolls over your head,
the Indian hunter pursued the panting deer; gazing on the same moon
that smiles for you, the Indian lover wooed his dusky mate. Here the
wigwam blaze beamed on the tender and helpless and the council fire
glared on the wise and daring. Now they dipped their noble limbs in
your sedgy lakes, now they paddled their light canoes along your rocky
shores. Here they warred; the echoing whoop, the bloody grapple, the
defying death song, all were here; and when the tiger strife was over,
here curled the smoke of peace.
As a race they have withered from the land. Their
arrows are broken,
their springs are dried up, their cabins are in the dust. Their council
fire has long since gone out on the shore, and their war cry is fast
fading to the untrodden west. Slowly and sadly they climb the distant
mountains, and read their doom in the setting sun. They are shrinking
before the mighty tide which is pressing them away; they must soon hear
the roar of the last wave, which will settle over them forever. Ages
hence, the inquisitive white man, as he stands by some growing city,
will ponder on the structure of their disturbed remains and wonder to
what manner of persons they belonged. They will live only in the songs
and chronicles of their exterminators. Let these be faithful to their
rude virtues, as men, and pay tribute to their unhappy fate, as a
people.”
The fact ought not to be overlooked, however, in any
sentimental
retrospection regarding the long departed redskin of the Midwest
country or in any review of his stormy conflicts, his defeats and his
gradual extinction, that his was not the type of the Indians of
Longfellow, mellowed and humanized by stately meter, nor of the
gentlemen redskins of Cooper’s fabrications. Here was the real Indian,
bitter, cruel, vindictive barrier to the progress of civilization and
the enemy of peaceful society. Yet, in the language of Elmore Barce
(“The Land of the Miamis”), there is something of pathos in the
Indian's complete obliteration.
“Thus vanishes the red men,” says he. “In their day,
however, they had
been the undoubted lords of the plain, following their long trails in
single file over the great prairies and camping with their dogs, women
and children in the pleasant groves and along the many streams. They
were savages and left no enduring temple or lofty fane behind them, but
their names still cling to many streams, groves and towns and a few
facts gleaned from their history cannot fail to be of interest to us
who inherit their ancient patrimony.”
“Their name is on your waters,
Ye may not wash it out.”
THE STRUGGLE FOR
RACIAL SUPREMACY
Though long gone from the haunts he once dominated
hereabout, the
Indian left many memories not all of which are bad. His was a
distinctive part in the history of the region now comprised within the
confines of Delaware county and his memory is perpetuated not only in
the names of our county and of our county town but in other instances
of our geographical nomenclature. Here was long his favorite hunting
ground. It hardly could have been otherwise. As fair a land as the sun
shines on, it occupies the summit of a divide which separates the
waters of the north and the waters of the south, offering a singularly
advantageous situation for the aboriginals, as the headwaters of the
Mississinewa and the headwaters of the White afforded admirable village
sites from which their canoes might have ingress (by a narrow portage)
into the waters of Lake Erie and by an easy course into and down the
Wabash and into the Ohio, and profit by the rich hunting in between.
And thus he came to establish his villages here and to make this a
center for his hunting grounds. But the white man came, with desire in
his heart to possess these lands. And the white man won and the red man
departed, and of the latter we have only the name to remind us of his
former occupancy of these lands. The savage had to go. There was no
place for him here.
“It must never be forgotten,” says the historian
Barce (“The Land of
the Miamis”), “that despite his stoicism in facing danger, his skill in
battle, his power to endure privation, and his undoubted valor and
bravery, that the Indian was a savage. Toward those who, like the
French, pampered his appetites and indulged his passions to secure his
trade, he entertained no malice. . . . Thus the British government,
through its duly authorized agents, its governor and army officers,
retained the posts belonging to the new republic, encouraged the tribes
in their depredations, and defeated the pacific intentions of the
American people, and all from the sordid motives of gain. On April 30,
1789, when George Washington was inaugurated as the first president,
every savage chieftain along the Wabash or dwelling at the forks of the
Maumee, was engaged in active warfare against the people of the United
States, largely through the instrumentality of the British officials. .
. . The star of the Little Turtle was in the ascendant. He was now
thirty eight years of age, and while not a hereditary chieftain of the
Miamis, his prowess and cunning had given him fame. The Indians never
made a mistake in choosing a military leader. He watched the Americans
from the very time of their leaving Fort Washington and purposed to
destroy them at the Indian town. . . . Gen. William Henry Harrison, who
was aide to Wayne at the battle of Fallen Timbers, said to him:
‘General Wayne, I am afraid you will get into the fight yourself and
forget to give me the necessary field orders.’ ‘Perhaps I may,’ replied
Wayne, ‘and if I do, recollect the standing order of the day is, Charge
the damned rascals with the bayonet.’”
A STORY THAT HAS BEEN
TOLD AND RETOLD
The historical literature of Indiana though perhaps
not equal in volume is fully equal in interest to that of any state in
the Union. The story of a rich and proud state has been told and retold
and many volumes are accessible to the student who would seek to know
he whole wondrous tale in full. No detail of this story is more
engrossingly interesting than that relating to the Indian wars,
beginning with the dashing adventure of Gen. George Rogers Clark in 179
in wresting from the British their dominance of the lands later erected
into the Territory Northwest of the River Ohio, commonly ailed the
Northwest Territory and out of which Indiana Territory was erected in
1800. This naturally operated as an incentive to settlement in the Ohio
country and to inquiries concerning the availability of lands for
settlement along the Indiana frontier, and it was not long untill the
Indians began that system of bloody reprisals against what hey regarded
as encroachment upon their lands which necessitated military
expeditions against their centers. General Harmar’s defeat in the
Maumee in 1790, followed by General St. Clair’s even more rushing
defeat at the headwaters of the Wabash, just over the state me at the
site of the present town of Ft. Recovery, in 1791, were followed by an
ineffectual council with the victorious Indians at the north of the
Auglaize (Defiance, Ohio), in 1792, and the beginning f the operations
of Gen. Anthony Wayne (“Mad Anthony”) which culminated in his defeat of
the Indians at Ft. Recovery in June, 1794, and his conclusive defeat of
the redskins at the decisive battle of ‘Fallen Timbers in the following
August.
This was followed by the establishment of a chain of
forts throughout the disturbed frontier country and the consequent
effectual subjugation of the Indian fighting spirit, paving the way for
the treaty of Greenville in 1795 whereby the several fighting tribes
acknowledged the white man's superiority and for a season kept off the
war path, or until Tecumseh began to cause trouble by his efforts to
establish a great Indian confederation, a dream which Harrison’s
victory at the battle of Tippecanoe, November 7, 1811, effectually
dissipated. Then came on the War of 1812, in which many of the Indians,
under Tecumseh’s leadership, took part as allies of the British. Upon
the reassertion of American dominance the Indians recognized that the
fight was over so far as they were concerned and at he second treaty of
Greenville in 1814 made further concessions as o their rights in the
frontier country, this being followed by additional concessions at the
treaty of the Mumee in 1817 and in the treaty at St. Marys (Ohio) in
the next year (1818), by which the renaming lands held by the Indians
south of the Wabash in Indiana were ceded to the United States and a
great domain, including the lands in this county, was opened to white
settlement, all constituting a story that in the full telling would
require volumes.
ORIGIN OF THE DELAWARES
The Delaware Indians were an important Algonquin
tribe which at the
beginning of the settlement period in this country lay in the path of
white settlement on both sides of the Delaware river, and therefore
fill a large part in Colonial history. The name Delawares became
attached to them by the whites by reason of this circumstance of
location. In their own tongue they were known as the Renno Renappi, or
Lenno Lenape (Leni-lenape), meaning “true men,” “real men” or “native,
genuine men.”
Previously to their contact with the whites these
“real men” had been
subjugated by the powerful Iriquois, who, instead of exterminating
them, exacted tribute from them, called them “women” and dictated their
action, so that at the time of the coming of the white man they were
but a subsidiary tribe.
The early Dutch settlers within the scope of the
hunting grounds of the
Delawares were massacred as usual, but the Swedes who settled on the
Delaware upheld Indian titles to land to secure their own possession
against the Dutch, compelling the latter in turn, to buy instead of
seizing, so there was peace with the Delawares in this period of early
settlement. The Swedes tried to christianize them with Luther’s
catechism, without much success.
In October, 1682, William Penn made his famous
treaty with the
Delawares, which was as well and as ill kept by his successors as
others of the kind. That the Delawares did not revenge the white
encroachments by massacre was due to Penn’s sagacity in buying up their
overlords, the Iriquois, who threatened to destroy them if they
molested “Onas” people. The infamous trick of the “Walking Pur-. chase”
in 1737 (denounced by the Quakers) ousted the Delawares from half a
million acres in the forks of the Delaware above Easton, and the
Iroquois with furious menaces compelled them to retire to the
Susquehanna.
This “walking purchase” of 1737 has passed into
history as one of the
tricks whereby the white man’s cunning often proved superior to the red
man’s guile. Penn’s purchase of 1682 comprised a tract of land in the
present counties of Bucks and Northampton (Pennsylvania), bounded on
the east by the Delaware river and in the in-the lands at that point
about forty miles. from the starting In 1737, after Penn’s death, the
tract was increased by a f expert walkers to a point seventy miles in
the interior in-forty miles.
WANDERING TRIBE
GRADUALLY PUSHED WESTWARD
In Their new hunting grounds on the Susquehanna
settlement still the
Delawares and, not daring to resent it, a large part of them by 1750
had
removed to the Alleghany and Muskingum rivers, they recovered Indian
courage and ferocity. The Moravian missionaries converted part of the
remainder, and these always remained peaceful. The others, maddened by
aggression and the continued encroachments of the advancing tide of
white
settlement, joined the French and Iriquois in the French and Indian
war, and helped in Braddock’s defeat. Sullenly yielding in 1758, after
the Senecas had turned
against them, they broke out again in Pontiac’s conspiracy or uprising
in 1762
and were among the besiegers of Detroit, Ft. Pitt and Duquense.
Defeated by Bouquet at Bushy Run (1763), they made
peace in 1764-65. In 1768 all
the remnants of the Delaware tribe east of the Alleghanies migrated
West and the Christian Delawares founded the village of
Gnadenhutten at the headwaters of the Muskingum in what in now
Tuscarawas
county, Ohio. Roving bands of the others kept the field until the
crushing
defeat of Point Pleasant in 1774. In the Revolution they were divided.
Part
went with the British and part made a treaty with Congress in 1778. The
Christian Delawares remained quietly at Gnadenhutten till in 1781 the
English
broke it up and removed them to Sandusky. Part of them returned thither
to
their crops and were attacked by the Americans and ninety of them
slain. The rest
fled, mostly to Canada. Land was given them on the Thames and they
founded
Fairfield, with others who came in 1787 from Muskingum, where Congress
had
settled them.
The wild tribesmen of the Delawares continued
hostile and contributed to St.
Clair’s bitter defeat at what is now Ft. Recovery, over the in Ohio, in
1791; but General Wayne’s decisive victory at
the battle of Fallen Timbers three years later forced them to
make peace, which was ratified at the treaty of Greenville in 1795.
Successive treaties removed them from Ohio and by 1800 the main body of
the Delawares were over here on the White river. They did not join
Tecumseh in the War of 1812 and in 1818 at the treaty of St. Marys
(Ohio) they ceded all their lands east of the Mississippi and moved to
lands on the White river in Missouri. There were then about 1,800
Delawares in all, a few remaining in Ohio. Later some went south to Red
river on the Texas border, by Spanish permission. By a treaty of
October 24, 1829’, the main body (about 1,000 in number) settled on the
Kansas and the Missouri, where they had schools and missions. In 1853
they sold all but a reservation in Kansas and invested the money in
improving their farms. During the Civil war, out of 201 warriors they
sent 170 to the Union side, these proving good soldiers and guides. In
1866 their land was cut up by the Union Pacific railroad and in 1867-8
they sold the whole and took up lands on the Verdigris and Cane, bought
from the Cherokees. A special treaty in 1866 permitted them to take
lands in severalty and become citizens, since which time they no longer
have been considered as a “tribe.” It is said the remnant of the
Delawares now in Oklahoma number something like 1,700.
THE MUNSEES OR LOUPS
(WOLVES)
The Delawares had three clans, the Turtle, the
Turkey and the Wolf or Munsee, the latter differing strongly from the
rest and
called by the French by the name of Loups (wolves), from their chief
totemic division, a term probably applied originally to the Mohicans on
the Hudson river and afterward extended to the Munsee division and the
whole group. To the more remote Algonquin tribes they, together with
all their cognate tribes along the coast far up into New England, were
known as Wapanachki easterners or eastern land people, a term which
appears also as a specific tribal designation in the form of Abnaki. By
virtue of admitted priority of political rank and of occupying the
central home territory, from which most of the cognate tribes had
diverged, they were accorded by all the Algonquin tribes the respectful
title of “grandfather,” a recognition accorded by courtesy also to the
Hurons. When the Delawares made their first treaty with Penn in 1682
they bad their council fire at Shackamaxon, about the site of the
present Germantown, a suburb of Philadelphia. To their early period
belongs the great chief Tamenend, from whom the Tammany Society ( New
York) takes its name.
In the older chronicles it is narrated that upon the
settlement of the
Delawares or Munsees at what then was the head of pirogue navigation
on the White river about the year 1800, when by the terms of the treaty
of Greenville they were dispossessed of their lands in Ohio, a
missionary effort was set on foot among them, which was afterward
broken up by the interference of The Prophet, brother of. Tecumseh and
evil genius of the Midwest country Indians, during the
height of his career of popular jugglery and imposition. They
apparently, however, presently recognized the falseness of his
pretensions to statesmanship and from all accounts steadfastly declined
to become parties to the plans or willing tools of the ambitious
Tecumseh and his unscrupulous brother, The Prophet, in their conspiracy
to effect an Indian confederation against the whites, which conspiracy
was effectually suppressed by General Harrison and his force at the
battle of the Tippecanoe in the fall of 1811, and it is pleasing to
recall that in his report of this campaign to the Secretary of War,
General Harrison specifically mentions the Delawares as “this faithful
tribe.”