RESULTS OF THE TREATY
_--Harrison's political enemies at Vincennes rally against him in the
open, and are defeated in the courts._
The Treaty of Fort Wayne having been consummated and certain disputes
relative to horse-stealing and other depredations having been arranged
between the two races, the Governor, on the fourth of October, 1809, set
out on his return to Vincennes. He travelled on horseback, accompanied
by his secretary and interpreter, passing through the Indian villages at
the forks of the Wabash and striking the towns of the Miamis at the
mouth of the Mississinewa. Here dwelt John B. Richardville, or Peshewah,
a celebrated chief of that tribe, who was later chosen as principal
sachem on the death of Little Turtle. Richardville had not been
personally present at Fort Wayne, but he now received the Governor
cordially, and gave his unqualified approval to the previous
proceedings.
The day before his arrival at Peshewah's town, the Governor met with a
singular experience, which not only served to illustrate the advancing
ravages of liquor among the tribes but Harrison's intimate knowledge of
Indian laws, customs and usages. On coming into the camp of Pecan, a
Mississinewa chieftain, he discovered that one of the warriors had
received a mortal wound in a "drunken frolic" of the preceding evening.
The chiefs informed him that the slayer had not been apprehended,
whereupon the Governor recommended that if the act "should appear to
have proceeded from previous malice," that the offender should be
punished, "but if it should appear to be altogether accident, to let him
know it, and he would assist to make up the matter with the friends of
the deceased." The payment of wergild or "blood-money" among the Indian
tribes in compensation of the loss of life or limb, is strongly in
accord with the ancient Saxon law, yet it seems to have prevailed as far
back at least as the time of William Penn, for in one of his letters
describing the aborigines of America, he says: "The justice they (the
Indians) have is pecuniary; in case of any wrong or evil fact, be it
murder itself, they atone by feasts and presents of their wampum, which
is proportioned to the offense, or person injured, or of the sex they
are of; for, in case they kill a woman, they pay double, and the reason
they render, is that she can raise children, which men cannot do." Later
on, at Vincennes, the Governor had another and similar experience which
affords additional proof that the custom above mentioned was still
prevalent. A Potawatomi chieftain from the prairies came in attended by
some young men. He found there about one hundred and fifty of the
Kickapoos, who were receiving their annuity, and he immediately made
complaint to the Governor as follows: "My Father," said he, "it is now
twelve moons since these people, the Kickapoos, killed my brother; I
have never revenged it, but they have promised to cover up his blood,
but they have not done it. I wish you to tell them, my father, to pay
me for my brother, or some of them will lose their hair before they go
from this." The Governor accordingly advised the chief of the Kickapoos
to satisfy the Potawatomi. On the following day the latter again called
upon the Governor, and said: "See there, my father," showing three
blankets and some other articles, "see what these people have offered me
for my brother, but my brother was not a hog that I should take three
blankets for him," and he declared his intention of killing some of them
unless they would satisfy him in the way he proposed. The Governor, upon
inquiry, finding that the goods of the Kickapoos were all distributed,
directed, on account of the United States, that a small addition be made
to what he had received.
At the villages on Eel river the Governor met with certain of the Weas
of the lower region, and dispatched them to summon their chiefs to meet
with him at Vincennes and ratify the treaty. He arrived at the latter
place on the twelfth of October, having been absent for a period of
about six weeks, and found that the complete success of his mission had
restored in a large measure that popularity which he had beforetime lost
on account of his advocacy of slavery. The acquisition was heralded far
and wide as a measure calculated in all respects to forward the
interests of the Territory. Not only was the total domain acquired, vast
in acreage, (being computed at about 2,900,000 acres), but it was
considered extremely fertile, well watered, and as containing salt
springs and valuable mines. Once the Weas and other tribes were removed
from close proximity to the settlements, it was confidently expected
that the old clashes would cease and that the new territory would be
speedily surveyed and opened up for entry and purchase to within twelve
miles of the mouth of the Vermilion. The Indians also, seemed well
satisfied. The Potawatomi had been urgent; Richardville, Little Turtle
and all the Miamis had given their consent; the Weas and Kickapoos were
about to ratify.
Nothing was then heard of the pretensions of the Shawnee Prophet or his
abler brother. In a message to the territorial legislature in 1810,
reviewing the events of this period, Harrison said: "It was not until
eight months after the conclusion of the treaty, and after his design of
forming a combination against the United States had been discovered and
defeated, that the pretensions of the Prophet, in regard to the land in
question, were made known. A furious clamor was then raised by the
foreign agents among us, and other disaffected persons, against the
policy which had excluded from the treaty this great and influential
character, as he is termed, and the doing so expressly attributed to the
personal ill-will on the part of the negotiator. No such ill-will did in
fact exist. I accuse myself, indeed, of an error in the patronage and
support which I afforded him on his arrival on the Wabash, before his
hostility to the United States had been developed. But on no principle
of propriety or policy could he have been made a party to the treaty.
The personage, called the Prophet, is not a chief of the tribe to which
he belongs, but an outcast from it, rejected and hated by the real
chiefs, the principal of whom was present at the treaty, and not only
disclaimed on the part of his tribe any title to the land ceded, but
used his personal influence with the chiefs of the other tribes to
effect the cession."
The "principal chief" of the Shawnees above alluded to was undoubtedly
Black Hoof, or Catahecassa, who at this time lived in the first town of
that tribe, at Wapakoneta, Ohio. Being near to Fort Wayne he had no
doubt attended the great council at that place. He had been a renowned
warrior, as already shown, and had been present at Braddock's Defeat, at
Point Pleasant, and at St. Clair's disaster, but when Anthony Wayne
conquered the Indians at Fallen Timbers, Black Hoof had given up, and he
had afterwards remained steadfast in his allegiance to the United States
government. When Tecumseh afterwards attempted to form his confederacy,
he met with a firm and steady resistance from Black Hoof, and his
influence was such that no considerable body of the Shawnees ever joined
the Prophet's camp. Black Hoof died in 1831 at the advanced age of one
hundred and ten years, and tradition says that like Moses, "his eye was
not dim; nor his natural force abated." The fact that Black Hoof, who
was of great fame among his tribe, as both orator and statesman, made no
claim to any of the lands sold below the Vermilion, is strong cumulative
proof of the assertion afterwards made by Harrison to Tecumseh, that any
claims of his tribe to the lands on the Wabash were without foundation.
The personal admirers and intimate associates of Harrison, were, of
course, overjoyed. They were no doubt influenced to some extent by the
fact that another long lease of power was in sight. Their leader's
victory would inure to their own benefit. Still, there were no cravens
among them. A banquet followed, participated in by a number of the
leading citizens of the town and adjacent country. Judge Henry
Vanderburgh, of the Territorial Court, presided, and toasts were drank
to the treaty, Governor Harrison, his secretary, Peter Jones, and the
"honest interpreter" Joseph Barron. Of those present on that occasion,
some were afterwards officers at Tippecanoe, and one, Thomas Randolph,
fell at the side of his chief.
There were those, however, who were not to be silenced by the Governor's
triumph. The political battles of that time were extremely vitriolic,
and the fights over territorial politics had been filled with hate.
Certain foes of the Governor not only appeared in Knox county, but
eventually in the halls of the national congress, and there were those
who did not hesitate to question the Governor's integrity. Among those
who bitterly opposed Harrison was one William McIntosh, "a Scotchman of
large property at Vincennes, who had been for many years hostile to the
Governor, and who was not believed to be very partial to the government
of the United States." Harrison terms him as a "Scotch Tory." One John
Small made an affidavit before Judge Benjamin Parke that prior to the
year 1805, McIntosh had been on good terms with Harrison, but that
Harrison's advocacy of a representative government for the territory, or
its advancement to the second grade, had turned him into an enemy.
However this may be, Harrison and his friends, in order to vindicate
his fame at home and abroad, now resolved to bring an action for
damages in the territorial courts against McIntosh, "for having asserted
that he had cheated the Indians, in the last treaty which had been made
with them at Fort Wayne." The suit being brought to issue, it was found
that of the territorial judges then on the bench, one, probably Judge
Parke, was a personal friend of the Governor, and one a personal friend
of McIntosh. These gentlemen, therefore, both retired, and the Honorable
Waller Taylor, who had recently come into the territory assumed the
ermine. A jury was selected by the court naming two elisors, who in turn
selected a panel of forty-eight persons, from which the plaintiff and
defendant each struck twelve, and from the remaining twenty-four the
jury was drawn by lot. With this "struck jury," the cause proceeded to a
hearing. The following account, given in _Dawson's Harrison_, will prove
of interest: "Before a crowded audience, this interesting trial was
continued from ten A. M., till one o'clock at night. Every person
concerned in the Indian Department, or who could know anything of the
circumstances of the late treaty at Fort Wayne, was examined, and every
latitude that was asked for, or attempted by the defendant, in the
examination, permitted. Finding that the testimony of all the witnesses
went to prove the justice and integrity of the Governor's conduct in
relation to everything connected with the Indian Department, the
defendant began to ask questions relating to some points of his civil
administration. To this the jury as well as the court objected, the
latter observing that it was necessary that the examination should be
confined to the matter at issue. But at the earnest request of the
Governor the defendant was permitted to pursue his own course and
examine the witnesses upon every point which he might think proper. The
defendant's counsel, abandoning all idea of justification, pleaded only
for a mitigation of damages. After a retirement of one hour the jury
returned a verdict of $4,000 damages. To pay this sum, a large amount of
the defendant's lands were exposed for sale, and in the Governor's
absence in the command of the army the ensuing year, was bought in by
his agent. Two-thirds of his property has since been returned to
McIntosh and the remaining part given to some of the orphan children of
those distinguished citizens who fell a sacrifice to their patriotism in
the last war."
The head chief of the Weas at this time was Lapoussier, whose name would
indicate that he was of French extraction. He arrived at Vincennes on
the fifteenth day of October, with fifteen warriors and was later
followed by Negro Legs, Little Eyes and Shawanoe, who came in with other
companies of the tribe. On the twenty-fourth, the Governor assembled
them for the purpose, as he stated, of ascertaining whether they "were
in a situation to understand the important business he had to lay before
them." He said that he had shut up the liquor casks, but that he found
that his proclamation prohibiting the sale of liquor had been disobeyed.
He was glad to find however, that they were sober, and expressed a wish
that they would not drink any more while the deliberations were in
progress. On the twenty-fifth he explained fully all the provisions of
the Treaty of Fort Wayne, the benefit the Weas would derive from an
increase in their annuity, and the removal from the vicinity of the
settlements to the neighborhood of their brothers, the Miamis, who lived
farther up the river. He also told them that they would be granted the
same amount of goods in hand received by the larger tribes, on account
of the inconvenience they would suffer by moving from their present
habitations. The Governor's conduct in refusing to negotiate while any
evidences of liquor were manifest was in strict keeping with his
attitude at Fort Wayne, and his generous treatment of a smaller and
weaker tribe certainly redounds to his credit. The Treaty of Fort Wayne
was duly ratified and approved on the twenty-sixth day of October, 1809,
and the convention was signed by Lapoussier and all the Wea chieftains
without a single dissent.
Only one tribe now remained who had any manner of claim to any of the
lands in the Wabash valley. This tribe was the Kickapoos, who lived at
the mouth of the Vermilion river and in that part of Indiana now
comprising practically all of Vermilion county and parts of Warren and
Parke. Accordingly a treaty was concluded with them at Vincennes on the
ninth of December, 1809, whereby they fully ratified all the proceedings
at Fort Wayne, and further ceded to the United States "all that tract of
land which lies above the tract above ceded (the north line of which was
Raccoon creek), the Wabash, the Vermilion river, and a line to be drawn
from the north corner of said ceded tract, so as to strike the Vermilion
river at a distance of twenty miles in a direct line from its mouth."
Among the interesting names attached as witnesses to the articles is
that of Hyacinthe Laselle.