INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY PRESS The 1818 Saint Marys Treaties A. ANDREW OLSON III The 1818 Saint Marys Treaties A. ANDREW OLSON III Indiana Historical Society Press | Indianapolis 2020 © 2020 Indiana Historical Society Press. All rights reserved. Indiana Historical Society 450 West Ohio Street Indianapolis, IN 46202-3269 www.indianahistory.org 317-232-1882 Copies of the four issues of THG: Connections in which the article series first appeared may be purchased from: IHS Basile History Market Telephone orders: 1-800-447-1830 Fax orders: 1-317-234-0562 Online orders @ http://shop.indianahistory.org Originally published as a four-part series in the following issues of The Hoosier Genealogist: Connections Volume 57, Fall/Winter 2017 Volume 58, Spring/Summer 2018 Volume 58, Fall/Winter 2018 Volume 59, Spring/Summer 2019 No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner. Contents Part 1: Tribal and Euro-American Historical 1 Backdrop through 1817 Part 2: Brothertown and Stockbridge Indians 11 and Treaty Preparations Part 3: Concluding the Treaties: The Brothertowns’ 23 and Stockbridges’ Sagas Part 4: In the Aftermath of the Treaties: Removal 37 and Settlement Part 1: Tribal and Euro-American Historical Backdrop through 1817 The years 2017 and 2018 marked disinterment of remains at the site in the Initially the Saint Marys treaties were the two-hundredth year since six pivotal first half of the twentieth century. Upon tangential to my original object, but treaties were concluded at Saint Marys, assuming ownership of this parcel, my when I also discovered a historical error Ohio. They were undertaken between grandfather renamed it the “Indian Hill made in the tribal identities of those the United States and an extensive Stock Farm” in remembrance of those granted land under the treaty with the number of Great Lakes tribal groups buried there. Delawares, my focus shifted. The ratio- clustered around the southern shores One family line reports the departing nale for such grants soon became clear. of Lake Erie and in Indiana. The treaties Indian was either the famous Shawnee So, too, a plausible explanation for the would inalterably change the future Tecumseh or a Delaware (Lenape) chief. town name “Yorktown” came into view. trajectories of those who had called this Another line states it was a “York” In- More broadly, my research provided area home, and for the new states of dian.2 However, because Tecumseh had fascinating insights about how the Ohio and Indiana, huge swaths of virgin been killed during the War of 1812 (at lopsided discussions at treaty gatherings territory would be opened for settlement. the Battle of the Thames in 1813), when were arranged and conducted. I came to It is with a view to the cultural changes David Kilgore would have been only nine realize the Saint Marys outcomes repre- wrought by the Saint Marys treaties—on years old, the “Tecumseh” version seems sented the United States’ first tangible all involved—that they were observed unlikely.3 Similarly, nearly all Delawares steps toward what would be codified as in a series of four articles appearing were relocated from White River to its disruptive Indian removal policy by over eighteen months and are brought what is now southwest Missouri by 1821, 1830—mandating the relocation of all together here, in a special digital edition. under terms of the Saint Marys Treaties tribes to lands west of the Mississippi. of 1818.4 As I discovered, however, Kil- At the least, they set new cultural paths Introduction: The Kilgore Pact Legend gore did not arrive in Delaware County for all touched by these predetermined Several years ago I set about explor- until 1829–1830. Thus, a pact with a negotiations. ing a family legend. The story revolves Delaware chief is improbable. Finally, As a result, my focus shifted from around my great-great-great grand- historical research could not confirm the resolving the Kilgore pact legend—which father, David Kilgore (1804–1879), of existence of a “York” tribe, as had been I still sought to address—to dealing with the small east-central Indiana town of reported by my great-grand-uncle in a the more sobering and fundamental Yorktown in Delaware County. Family 1926 interview. This last possibility, then, truths revealed by these treaties. lore suggests that Kilgore made a pact appears far-fetched as well.5 with one of the Indians then departing Nevertheless, as with any such leg- Historical Context of the Saint the state. He vowed that neither he nor end, grains of truth are often intermixed Marys Treaties of 1818 his descendants would disturb an Indian with the fanciful storytelling passed By mid-September 1818, five thou- burial ground purportedly located on down from generation to generation. My sand village, war, and civil chiefs and property to which he was then gaining attempt to pluck such kernels of truth sachems of nearly all the southern Great title in the 1830s. from the story led to a related discovery. Lakes tribal groups had gathered in west This tract of land, which remained in Two previously underreported, mission- central Ohio to make treaties with com- our family until 2002, is located along ary-led tribal amalgams were present missioners of the United States govern- 6 the west branch of White River, now along White River in the Yorktown vicin- ment. Encamped along the banks of known to archaeologists as the “Kilgore ity about the time of the Saint Marys the Saint Marys River near the small Village” site.1 True to the legendary pact, treaties. This new insight warranted garrison of the same name, the chiefs my maternal grandfather, Benjamin M. further investigation. represented a variety of tribal bands Nelson Sr., told me he had halted the 1 THE 1818 SAINT MARYS TREATIES with the Delaware put into written form Wyandots divided from the main body the developing government policy to of French-connected Hurons in Michi- remove all tribal groups to areas west of gan and also settled around Sandusky the Mississippi. The White River Dela- Bay.12 Similarly, a British-aligned band of wares of Indiana became the vanguard Miamis established a separate presence in this new aspect of U.S. government at the Pickawillany trade town near policy toward their subjugated native Piqua in west central Ohio. The Miamis’ populations. main body, reluctantly trading with the At the dawn of the nineteenth cen- French, was residing in northern Indiana tury, the United States government was along the Saint Joseph and Mississinewa faced with a grinding problem. Much Rivers and at the headwaters of the of the recently organized Northwest Maumee River.13 Territory remained under control of a As the Potawatomis left their north- substantial number of tribal groups, ern Wisconsin refuge, several bands as illustrated on the map “Principal settled along their migratory route in the Tribal Groups in the Northwest Terri- Milwaukee and Chicago areas. The ma- David Kilgore (1804–1879), Republican Congressional representative from Indiana, tory, c1800.” Years before, a whirlwind jority of the group, however, returned to 1857–1861 (Photograph by Julian Vanner- of seventeenth-century Indian wars their homeland along the Saint Joseph son, 1859, Library of Congress, Prints and to control fur trade with Dutch, then River in southern Michigan and northern Photographs Division) French, and finally English interests in Indiana. The Saint Joseph River band historically and broadly designated by the East had a domino effect around became the largest tribal contingent Euro-American interests for their own the Great Lakes. As a result, bands of and settled more widely across the area negotiating convenience as Wyandots, Miamis, Ottawas, Wyandots/Hurons, being vacated by the eastwardly-shifting 14 Senecas, Shawnees, Ottawas, Potawat- and Potawatomis were pushed off their Miamis. omies, Weas, Delawares, and Miamis.7 In ancestral homelands around Lakes Erie, Economically driven intermarriage many instances, however, they were ac- Huron, and Michigan by a confederacy between village women and French trad- tually smaller, near-independent regional of five (later six) Iroquois-speaking tribal ers was also prolific. So strong had these bands of these larger contrived tribal groups from the northeast. connections become that the languages groupings.8 For the most part, tribal gov- The mostly Great Lakes Algonquin- of trade during this period were Ojibwa/ 15 ernance was centered at the village level, speaking bands temporarily settled, for Ottawa and French. The descendants typically based on consensus. little more than a generation, in today’s of such mixed-race couples, known as 10 The U.S. War Department had northern Wisconsin and Upper Canada. métis, ultimately assumed prominent authorized treaty commissions and While these groups slowly returned to tribal leadership positions by the begin- funding in 1817 and 1818 with the design their homelands in the early years of the ning of the nineteenth century. This was of securing ownership and control of all eighteenth century, tribal intermarriage based on their familiarity with European lands in the northwest quarter of Ohio between people in closely proximate cultural notions of land ownership and and in the central third of Indiana. To the villages diluted their formerly homo- political imperialism, key concepts for extent possible, the object also encom- geneous kin composition. Increasingly, tribal survival during this era. The Mi- passed the removal of these tribal bands separate small group or village identities amis and Ottawas became particularly from their ancestral or sanctioned lands developed, such as with the Miami’s effective through such leaders, as they that were then being enveloped by the Wea and Piankeshaw bands that re- were among a small number of tribes new states of Ohio and Indiana.