Читать книгу The Land of the Miamis - Barce Elmore - Страница 2

– A general view of the Indian Wars of the Early Northwest.

The memories of the early prairies, filled with vast stretches of waving grasses, made beautiful by an endless profusion of wild flowers, and dotted here and there with pleasant groves, are ineffaceable. For the boy who, barefooted and care-free, ranged over these plains, in search of adventure, they always possessed an inexpressible charm and attraction. These grassy savannas have now passed away forever. Glorious as they were, a greater marvel has been wrought by the untiring hand of man. Where the wild flowers bloomed, great fields of grain ripen, and vast gardens of wheat and corn, interspersed with beautiful towns and villages, greet the eye of the traveler. "The prairies of Illinois and Indiana were born of water, and preserved by fire for the children of civilized men, who have come and taken possession of them."

In the last half of the eighteenth century, great herds of buffalo grazed here, attracting thither the wandering bands of the Potawatomi, who came from the lakes of the north. Gradually these hardy warriors and horse tribes drove back the Miamis to the shores of the Wabash, and took possession of all that vast plain, extending east of the Illinois river, and north of the Wabash into the present confines of the state of Michigan. Their squaws cultivated corn, peas, beans, squashes and pumpkins, but the savage bands lived mostly on the fruits of the chase. Their hunting trails extended from grove to grove, and from lake to river.

Reliable Indian tradition informs us that about the year 1790, the herds of bison disappeared from the plains east of the Mississippi. The deer and the raccoon remained for some years later, but from the time of the disappearance of the buffalo, the power of the tribes was on the wane. The advance of the paleface and the curtailment of the supply of game, marked the beginning of the savage decline. The constant complaint of the tribes to General William Henry Harrison, the first military governor of Indiana, was the lack of both game and peltries.

From the first the Indians of the Northwest were pro-British. Following the revolutionary war they accepted the overtures of England's agents and traders, and the end of the long trail was always at Detroit. The motives of these agents were purely mercenary. They were trespassers on the American side of the line, for England had agreed to surrender all the posts within the new territory by the treaty of 1783. The thing coveted was the trade in beaver, deer and raccoon skins. In order that this might be done, the Americans must be kept south of the Ohio. The tribes were taught to regard the crossing of the Alleghenies as a direct attempt to dispossess them of their native soil. To excite their savage hatred and jealousy it was pointed out that a constant stream of keel-boats, loaded with men, women, children and cattle, were descending the Ohio; that Kentucky's population was multiplying by thousands, and that the restless swarm of settlers and land hunters, if not driven back, would soon fill the whole earth. Driven as they were by rage and fear, all attempts at treaty with these savages were in vain. The Miamis, the Potawatomi and the Shawnees lifted the hatchet, and rushed to the attack of both keel-boats and settlements.

The wars that followed in the administration of George Washington are well known. Back of them all stood the sinister figure of the English trader. Harmar was defeated at Miamitown, now Fort Wayne; St. Clair's army was annihilated on the head waters of the Wabash. For a time the government seemed prostrate, and all attempts to conquer the savages in their native woods, futile. But finally General Anthony Wayne, the hero of Stony Point, was sent to the west. He was a fine disciplinarian and a fearless fighter. At the battle of Fallen Timbers, in 1794, he broke the power of the northwestern Indian confederacy, and in the following year forced the tribes into the Treaty of Greenville.

On July 11th, 1796, the British, under the terms of Jay's Treaty, evacuated the post of Detroit, and it passed into the hands of its rightful owners, the American people. Well had it been for the red men, if, with this passing of the British, all further communication with the agents of Great Britain had ceased. Already had the tribes acquired a rich legacy of hate. Their long intercourse and alliance with the English; their terrible inroads with fire and tomahawk, on the settlements of Kentucky; their shocking barbarities along the Ohio, had enraged the hearts of all fighting men south of that river. But the British in retiring from American soil had passed over to Malden, near the mouth of the Detroit river. Communication with the tribes of the northwest was still kept up, and strenuous efforts made to monopolize their trade. At last came Tecumseh and the Prophet, preaching a regeneration of the tribes, and a renewal of the contest for the possession of the lands northwest of the Ohio. All past treaties were to be disregarded as impositions and frauds, and the advance of the paleface permanently checked. The joy of the British agents knew no bounds. Disregarding all the dictates of conscience and even the welfare of the tribes themselves, they whispered in the ears of the Wyandots of Sandusky and began to furnish ammunition and rifles. As a result of this fatal policy the breach between the United States and the Indian confederates was measurably widened. The end was Tippecanoe, and the eternal enmity of the hunters and riflemen of southern Indiana and Kentucky who followed General Harrison on that day. One of the ghastly sights of that sanguinary struggle, was the scalping by the white men of the Indian slain, and the division of their scalps among the soldiers after they had been cut into strips. These bloody trophies were carried back to the settlements along the Ohio and Wabash to satisfy the hatred of all those who had lost women and children in the many savage forays of the past.

With the death of Tecumseh at the battle of the Thames and the termination of British influence in the west, the tribes soon surrendered up their ancient demesne, and most of them were removed beyond the Mississippi. The most populous of all the tribes north of the Wabash were the roving Potawatomi, and their final expulsion from the old hunting grounds occurred under the direction of Colonel Abel C. Pepper and General John Tipton, the latter a hero of the Battle of Tippecanoe, and later appointed as Indian commissioner. At that time the remnants of the scattered bands from north of the Wabash amounted to only one thousand souls of all ages and sexes. The party under military escort passed eight or nine miles west of the city of Lafayette, probably over the level land east of the present site of Otterbein, Indiana.

Thus vanished the red men. 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 have 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.