When I was in grade school during the ‘50s studying Indiana history, my teacher told the class that “Indiana was named for the Indians who lived here; but that no Indians live here today.” At that time, except for a few place names memorializing tribes like Miami, Delaware, and Potawatomi, and chiefs like Anderson, Kokomo, Muncie, Wawasee, and Winamac, the Indian presence in the land named for them had all but been erased.
For millennia, hunters and gathers called the land we know today as Indiana “home.” They walked the vast dark forests, camped along the winding rivers and streams, and hunted the marshes and prairies. Little is known of these paleo-inhabitants apart from a scattering of flint spearheads, flint tools, and stone axe heads found in various parts of the state and in Marion County near Glenn’s Valley. Later, the Woodland People representing the Adena and Hopewell cultures, left more evidence which can be seen in the Great Mound near Anderson, Indiana which was built around 160 BCE. In Marion County “there were two considerable mounds” along Morris St., one a couple of blocks west of Meridian St. at the intersection of the former canal and the “other a little further east” — one was destroyed by the construction of the canal and the other was “gradually plowed down.”
While today’s Indiana had a thriving Native American population at the time of European contact with the New World, and long before French explorers encountered them in the mid-17th century, a silent killer — smallpox — brought by the Conquistadors spread from the Caribbean and Mexico through the native peoples of North America, sweeping the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Coast. The Great Epidemic of 1519-24 killed at least a third of tribal populations and the disruption in food gathering caused by the illness killed countless more. A century later, an epidemic of measles in the Great Lakes region weakened native populations further.
The traditional Miami (Myaamiaki) lands were around the southern end of Lake Michigan. After being driven out of the area by 1640 by marauding Iroquois war bands, armed by New Amsterdam Dutch who were challenging the French in the trade of beaver pelts, the Miami regained their homeland in the 1670s with the aid of the French and took advantage of trade opportunities to expand their territory, establishing towns at portage sites along the Wabash River and other streams. By the end of the 17th century, war and disease had reduced the number of Miami to a little over 4,000, an estimated third of the pre-contact population.
Forced from their homes in the east, the Delaware (Lenape) were granted permission in the mid-18th century by the Miami to settle in the lands between the valley of White River (Wah-me-ca-me-ca) to the valley of White Water (Wah-he-ne-pay). The Miami had reserved this vast forested region, in what is now central Indiana, for hunting by Native American tribes. Along White River, Fall Creek (Chănk’-tŭn-oon’-gi), and other streams, the Delaware established towns and camps.
In what would become Marion County, Delaware towns clustered along White River below the northern county line and “on the long rise or ridge of ground” overlooking Pleasant Run where the former Lincoln School No. 18, 1001 E. Palmer, stands today, was “a fine sugar camp where the Delaware Indians used to gather and boil the sap” in the spring. A Delaware village was also on Fall Creek at the site of today’s Boy Scout camp and in Washington Park, 30th St. and Dearborn. At the confluence of White River and Fall Creek, where there was an “excellent ford that crossed the river.” Delaware chiefs gathered from time to time to discuss important matters.
It was here in the late summer of 1811 that a Delaware grand council met to hear the great Shawnee chief Tecumseh. By chance, Lieutenant Zachary Taylor (later General and President), who was on his way to build Ft. Harrison on the Wabash with 300 troops, was startled when he came upon this encampment of 500 Delawares. Tecumseh met with Taylor and assured him the Indians were not hostile, however in his speech to the Delaware the Shawnee chief appealed to their passions. Chief Anderson (Kŏk-tō-wha-nŭnd) “counteracted the effect of Tecumseh’s speech,” and Tecumseh failed to rally the Delaware to his cause of an Indian confederacy. When war came, the Delaware remained at peace.
Several miles south of this meeting site, on the bluffs along the west bank of White River near today’s Marion-Johnson County line, Lenape chiefs Big Fire, Little Duck, and Johnny Quack established towns and were at peace with their neighbors when a militia known as the Madison Rangers attacked in the spring of 1813 in retaliation to the Shawnee massacre of the white settlement at Pigeon Roost, eighty miles to the south. The towns and crops were burned leaving little evidence of their existence. The site was strewn with “large numbers of leaden bullets.”
With the 1818 Treaty of St. Mary’s, the Miami and Delaware ceded the land (The New Purchase) of Central Indiana to the United States. The following year, Ute Perkins was the first known white man to make his way from the White Water region along an Indian trail that would become Brookville Rd. to stake a claim and build a cabin near the mouth of Fall Creek at White River. Before completing the last few miles of his journey, he paused at a Delaware village north of where Buck Creek crossed the well-worn Indian trail. Other sojourners — George Pogue and John McCormick — also stopped at the village before proceeding to the settlement that would become Indianapolis.
The Delaware living in the area had three years to leave, but it wasn’t until 1832 that the last migrating Native Americans passed through Indianapolis. In northern Indiana, the Potawatomi clung onto their lands until 1838, when through trickery, they were forced out of their Indiana homes, and compelled to walk the “Trail of Death” under military guard to new lands west of the Mississippi. Two years later, the Miami sold the Big Reserve in north central Indiana to the United States and, with a few exceptions, six years later in the autumn of 1846 “300 Miami people were herded onto canal boats at gunpoint” and began their journey from Peru, Indiana to western lands.
Today, the Miami Nation of Indiana has 4,600 members and holds two significant tribal gatherings a year — the Official Pow Wow and Miami Heritage Days at the Seven Pillars. Illegally stripped of its federal recognition in 1897, the Miami of Indiana continue legislative efforts to have it restored. The Pokagon Band of Potawatomi, in northeastern Indiana, is federally recognized with 6,000 members. Indiana is the Land of Indians.
