Indiana Trails
Around this difficult
question a local literature has grown up. The difficulty seems destined
to
remain without final solution. As Joliet floated down the Mississippi
in the
summer of 1673 he noted the mouth of the Ohio river, giving to the
stream the
Indian name "Ouabouskigou," evidently the same name which we write
Wabash. This was, no doubt, the first sight of the mouth of the Ohio
had by a
civilized man. That it was then called the Wabash is significant/'
Marquette,
who, as a missionary, accompanied Joliet on this voyage of discovery
was
attracted by the Illinois Indians and in the autumn of 1674 returned to
found a
mission among them in the vicinity of the site of Chicago. He was
detained by
illness and did not reach the Indian village of Kaskaskia until the
following
spring. His health was fast failing and he started to return to St.
Ignace at
the outlet of Lake Michigan but died somewhere on the east shore of the
lake.
Effort has been made to prove that Marquette crossed by the Kankakee
St. Joseph
portage on his return journey toward St. Ignace but there is no
evidence on the
point and it must remain for the present pure conjecture.
There is good reason
to believe, however, that the St. Joseph Kankakee portage had been used
before
La Salle's voyage. It would have been a strange proceeding for La Salle
to lay
all his plans to cross by this route had he not known of its
possibilities. The
inference is that Claude Allquez, founder of the missions at St. Marie
and
Green Bay, had used this portage in his visits to the Illinois,
Pottawattamie,
and Miami Indians.
In the fall of 1700,
Gravier, then on a hunting trip with the Kaskaskia Indians, stopped at
the
mouth of the Ohio river. The main stream he called the Wabash. It was
formed,
he observed, of three rivers, the Wabash proper, which came from the
country of
the Miamis; the Ohio, which came from the lands of the Iroquois; and
the branch
from the southeast, which flowed from the land of the Shawnees who
traded with
the English. These remarks show that the Jesuits had an accurate
general idea
of the Ohio Valley.8
The next notice of
the Ohio river has nothing to do directly with the history of Indiana
though it
has given rise, through a misunderstanding, to a great deal of
controversy.
Charles Juchereau de St. Denis, in the autumn of 1702, established a
trading
post and tannery on the lower Ohio, perhaps where Fort Massac was later
built.
The purpose was to overawe the English traders on the Ohio. Father
Mermet
accompanied Juchereau from Kaskaskia. The site of Juchereau's post was
unhealthful and it was found impossible to keep the Indians there. The
commandant himself died two years later at which time the post was
abandoned.
It was only a temporary post and all trace of it was soon gone. The
earlier
historians of the West were confused by the Jesuit relations calling
this
"la poste sur la Vabache." It was thought to refer to the founding of
"Au Poste" or Vincennes. The French were driven away by the hostile
Miamis.
By this time a peace
had been patched up between the Seneca Indians, an Iroquois tribe, and
their
western neighbors. The Miamis were again settled in Indiana and
northwestern
Ohio. The Shawnees had returned to Ohio from their fastnesses in the
mountains
of Kentucky and Tennessee and fur traders were visiting regularly the
tribes on
the Indiana streams. A keen rivalry soon sprang up between the English
and
Dutch on the one hand and the French on the other.
During the closing years
of the seventeenth century the
Miamis, Ouiatanons, and other smaller tribes began settling, or
resettling, in
what is now Indiana. The reasons for this are not plain. Besides the
tradition
concerning a defeat of the Iroquois, it may be suggested that the
founding of
Detroit in 1701, the presence of at least 1,000 and perhaps 2,000 armed
Frenchmen in and around Detroit,11 the effort of the English to prevent
the
westward forays of the Iroquois which were preventing English traders
from
enjoying the patronage of the northwestern Indians, and an intertribal
war all
influenced the Miamis and their kinsmen to return to the eastward.
At first these tribes
gathered in pretty close around Detroit. But as fear of the English and
Iroquois diminished they moved farther and farther south. First on the
St.
Joseph of the Lakes in 1702; in 1712 they were down on the upper Maumee
trading
secretly with the English; and later they had ventured far down on the
Wabash
and the Scioto. The French soon realized their mistake in bringing the
Miamis
so far east, where they were falling under the control of the English.
The
policy of France in the west during the next forty years was dominated
by the
purpose of preventing the English from enjoying the trade with these
Indiana
and Ohio tribes. The expedition of Celoron Bienville down the Ohio, and
the building
of Fort Duquesne on the site of Pittsburg were parts of the same
general
program. Sieur de Vincennes had been sent by Frontenac, governor
general of
Canada, as early as 1697 to command a post among the Miamis. The exact
location
of this post does not appear but most probably it was the one
established by La
Salle near the mouth of the St. Joseph in southwestern Michigan.
In 1704 Vaudreuil,
who succeeded Frontenac in 1698, sent Vincennes again on a mission to
the
Miamis to prevent them, if possible, from attacking the Iroquois. The
governor
added that Captain Vincennes was "much beloved" by these Indians. He
took with him some goods, six men, and two canoes. Several times, on
later
occasions, Vaudreuil sent Vincennes on missions to the Miamis. Finally
in his
communication of October 28, 1719, he stated that the Sieur de
Vincennes had
died at his post among the Miamis, where the city of Fort Wayne,
Indiana, now
stands.
It seems that the
Indians were on the point of migrating with Vincennes to the northern
St.
Joseph river but upon his death they refused to leave what they called
their
ancestral town of Kekionga.
In 1672 the Wea
Indians were in central Wisconsin, gathered with their kinsmen around
the
mission of St. Jaques on the Fox River, under the care of Claude
Allquez. They
were at this time a small band.12 By 1710 they had returned to northern
Indiana
and were under the control of missionaries from Detroit.1:! In an
official
report on the Indians of the Lake-Erie country, dated 1718, the agent
said five
villages of Ouiatanons or Weas dwelt on the Wabash. In language,
customs, and
dress they resembled the Miamis. They had a "fort" situated on a high
hill from which one could see countless buffalos grazing on the
prairie. These
Indians had earned an enviable reputation among the traders for their
cleanliness. They allowed no dirt or filth to remain on the floor of
their
"fort" which they kept sanded like the "Tuilleries." They
had, at that time, over two leagues of cleared land where they raised
corn,
pumpkins and melons. The men numbered one thousand or twelve hundred,
wore very
little clothing, and played and danced incessantly.14
To keep the Iroquois
out the French constructed a stockade at Ouiatanon on the north bank of
the
Wabash in 1720. This was on the main western trail from Post Miami at
the site
of Fort Wayne.
Governor Vaudreuil
was very apprehensive lest all the Miamis go to New York to trade, as
eight or
ten canoes had done the previous summer. In order to forestall this
movement,
the governor had decided to send Sieur Dubuis- son to take charge of
the post
at Ouiatanon. This was in the autumn of 1719. He wrote as if the post
had
already been established.
The purpose of
Dubuisson was to get the confidence of the Indians as soon as possible
and lead
them to the St. Joseph river, away from the Maumee-Wabash route, which
seems to
have been much frequented at that early day by English traders. On the
St.
Joseph of the Lakes the Indians would be under the control of the
garrison and
traders of Detroit.
Dubuisson remained in
command but a short time until he was relieved by Francois Morgane de
Vincennes, thought to be the founder of Post Vincennes. He seems to
have been a
nephew of the Sieur de Vincennes who died at the post where Fort Wayne
now
stands. It is probable that Vincennes remained in command at Ouiatanon
until he
was called down the river to take charge of the post that has since
borne his
name. Ouiatanon remained an occupied post till its destruction by the
Indians
in Pontiac's War.
In his report to the
Lords of Trade May 24, 1765, Sir William Johnson, the British .agent
for the
northern Indians, stated that several French families of the worst sort
lived
at the Miami (Fort Wayne) and several at Ouiatanon, and, in short, at
all the places
where they formerly had had posts or trading houses.18 The same person
writing
in 1767, after Pontiac's war, complained that Ouiatanon had not been
re-established as he had recommended. Its convenient location in the
neighborhood of several tribes, he observed, would make it a most
convenient
post for the traders.
Nicholas Ignace de
Beaubois took charge of the parish of Kaskaskia, July, 1720. September
15,
following, the Company of the Indies filed a petition with the
government
asking that a post be established on the Wabash. It seems, however,
that no
action was taken; for Charlevoix, writing November 8, 1721, after
visiting the
Illinois country, points out the great advantage a post on the Wabash
would
have. La Harpe, in 1724, and Boisbriant, the commandant at Chartres,
wrote in
1725 as if no post had yet been established.
In the accounts of
the colony of Louisiana for 1726 is the following item: At the Wabash,
when it
is established, one priest, 600 livres; for a servant 185 livres. De
Beaubois,
then at Chartres, was especially urgent that a post be established in
the direction
of the Ohio, since all reports indicated that English traders were
making deep
inroads on the Indian trade in that quarter.
A list of the
missionaries supported by the Company of the Indies, written by some
clerk of
the Company, or perhaps a monk, and dated November 21, 1728, included
Pere
d'Outrelay at the "Ouabache." A long struggle had been going on
between the Capuchins and the Jesuits for the control of the missionary
posts
in Louisiana. Pere de Beaubois, who was no doubt the promoter of the
mission at
Vincennes, had in 1728 just been displaced by Pere Petit. Most of
Beaubois'
papers are, unfortunately, lost.
Etienne d'Outrelay, a
Jesuit who spent twenty years in the Mississippi Valley, returning to
France in
1747, is mentioned as having been at the fort on the Wabash in 1728.
A memorandum by M. de
St. Denis, commandant at Nachitoches, dated November 30, 1731, stated
that the
War bash post had always been neglected, that it guarded the only
avenue by
which the English could attack Louisiana, and that he would favor a
station
there with 400 men rather than one with 300, as seems to have been
intended.
The commandant, he added, should receive 800 livres. This latter
allowance
Maurepas, the royal minister, had also fixed upon.
Finally the letters
of M. de Vincennes to the governor, dated March 7, 1733, and March 21,
1733,
leave no doubt that a permanent post had been established before that
date, at
a point eighty leagues up the Wabash from its mouth. The date of the
founding
of the post, he left in obscurity. The position, he wrote, was well
suited to
the establishment of a large post, and he would have established one
had he had
the necessary troops. There had never been so great a need of troops
during the
three years of his stay at the post as there was at that time. The
Illinois and
the Miami were growing insolent, due no doubt to the contact with the
English.
The fortifications had been begun three years previous but nothing much
had
been done toward their completion. There was a stockade with two houses
enclosed. The immediate construction of a guard house and barracks for
the
soldiers was recommended. Without more troops it would be impossible
for him to
remain there longer. The post, in his opinion, needed thirty men and an
officer. The garrison consisted of ten men, and the "fort" was not
large enough to accommodate even that number. There were evidently some
French
settlers around the post, since in the second letter the writer said
the
Chickasaws had, during the previous fall, killed six Frenchmen who
lived at the
Wabash.
That the dominating
motive in the establishment of the post was the protection of the fur
trade is
evident from the tone of the correspondence. "It is possible,"
observed Sieur de Vincennes, "to send out from this post every year
about
30,000 skins. That, Monsieur, is all the skins that can be secured for
the
present." The commandant was accustomed to borrow large sums of money
from
the voyageurs who frequented the place. There is evidence to show that
quite a
large number of these independent traders were then on the Wabash and
its
branches and doubtless they had other stockade posts in what is now
Indiana.
Louis Vivier was
stationed there as a Jesuit missionary, 1754-1756.-- Francais Philibert
Watrin,
writing from Paris, September 3, 1764, said the "post called Vincennes
or
Saint Ange, from the names of the officers who commanded there," was
about
eighty leagues from Kaskaskia and about seventy leagues up the Wabash
from its
mouth. He says nothing about its founding or its founders, unless we
should
infer that since he named two commanders he would have named them had
there
been others. Winsor thought the post Vincennes was known among the fur
traders
as early as 1722.23
These Indiana posts,
excepting Vincennes, never came to be real settlements. For a while
Ouiatanon
remained the most important fur-trading and missionary post on the
Wabash; but
its importance diminished after eight or ten years. The old French post
at
Kekionga, or as it was usually called Fort Miami, if any fort was ever
built,
disappeared entirely, later, but Vincennes maintained its existence
unbroken.
The dates of the
first settlement of these places will, from the nature of the case,
always
remain uncertain. Each marks the location of an important Indian
village. Fur
traders made these places their temporary headquarters doubtless as
early as
1700. Missionaries visited them as early or perhaps earlier. We do not
even
have the record of the first military stations established here. In
1736, a man
by the name of Francois Morgane Sieur de Vincennes was stationed at the
Piankeshaw village, Chipkawke, with a considerable body of French
troops. From
the name of the officer comes the name of the city of Vincennes. This
commandant
was killed by the Chickasaws and his place taken by St. Ange. Whether
Vincennes
was the founder of the post, or even its first commandant, no one at
this time
can say with certainty.
A History of Indiana
By Logan Esarey Published by W.K. Stewart co., 1915