VA OHIO VALLEY J.Blaine Hudson Vice Chairs Judith K.Stein,M.D. HISTORY STAFF University ofLouisville Otto Budig Steven Steinman lane Garvey Merrie Stewart Stillpass Editors R.Douglas Hurt Dee Gettler John M.Tew,Jr.,M.D. Christopher Phillips Purdue University Robert Sullivan James L.Turner DepartnientofHutory At Vontz,III Cincinnati James C. Klotter Treasurer University of Joey D.Williams MarkJ.Hauser Georgetown College Gregory Wolf A.Glenn Crothers Department ofHistory Bruce Levine Secretary THE FILSON University ofLouisville Uniwisity ofIllinois Martine R. Dunn at HISTORICAL Director GfResearch Urbana-Champaign SOCIETY BOARD OF Fbe Fihon Historical Society President and CEO DIRECTORS Harry N. Scheiber Douglass W McDooald Managing Editors UitioersityCalifoi' < nia at President Erin Clephas Berkeley Vice President of 7be Filson Historical Society Museums Orme Wilson,III Steven M. Stowe Tonya M.Matthews Ruby Rogers Indiana University Secretary Cincinnati Mt,3ftim Center David Bohl Margaret Roger D.Tate Cynthia Booth Barr Kulp EditorialAssistant Somerset Community College Stephanie Byrd Treasurer Brian Gebhat John E Cassidy J Walker Stites,m Department ofHistory Joe W.Trotter,Jr. David Davis Edwad D. Diller University ofCincit:,tati Carnegie Mellon University David L.Armstrong Deanna Donnelly J.McCauley Brown Editorial Board Altina Walier James Ellerhorst S.Gordon Dabney Stephen Aron University of Connecticut David E.Foxx Louise Farnsley Gardner Univer:ity ofCatifornia at Richard J.Hidy Holly Gathright LosAngeles CINCINNATI Francine S. Hiltz A.Stewart Lussig, MUSEUM CENTER Ronald A. Koetters 7homas T Noland,Jr. Joan E.Cashin BOARD OF Gary Z.Lindgren Anne Brewer Ogden Obio State Univmity TRUSTEES Kenneth W.Lowe H. Powell Starks Shenan R Murphy Ellen T.Eslinger Chair Robert W.Olson John R Stern William M. Street D¢Paul University Keith Harrison Ihomas Quinn Scott Robertson CraigT.Friend Past Chair Yvonne Robertson Director North Carolina State Uni·uersity George Vincent Lois Rosenthal Mark V.Wetherington Page composition:Paul Christenson,Blue Mammoth Design Cincinnati Museum Center and'Ihe Filson Historical Society are private, non-profit orgenizations supported almost entirely by Obio Palley History ISSN( 746-3472)is published quarterly in gifts,grants,sponsorships,admission,and membership fees. Cincinnati, Ohio, and Louisville, Kentucky,by Cincinnati Museum Center and 'lhe Filson Historical Society Periodical The Filson Historical Society membership includes a subscription postage paid at Cincinnati,OH,with an additional entry at to OVH. Higher-level Cincinnati Museum Center memberships Louisville,KY. also include an OVH subscription, Back issues are $8.00. Postmaster,send address changes to fhe Filson Historical Society, For more information on Cincinnati Museum Center,including 1310 S. Ihird St.,Louisville,KY 40208. membership,visit www.cincymuseum,org or call 513-287-7000 or 1-800-733-2077. Editorial offices are located at the University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH 45221-0373. Contact the editorial offices at For more information on'Ihe Filson Historical Society,including [email protected]. membership,visit www.filsonhistorical.org or call 502-635-5083. Obio V,//ey Histog is a collaboration of Ihe' Filson Historical © Cincinnati Museum Center and Ihe' Filson Historical Society Society,Cincinnati Museum Center,and the Department of 2008 History,University of Cincinnati. Tbe Filson CFNC1MNIT1 MUSEUM CENTER Historical Society AT UNION TERMINAL 0021-282 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY Volume 8, Number 4, IVinter 2008 AJournal of the History and Culture of the Ohio Valley and the Upper South, published in Cincitin·ati, Ohio, and Louisville, Kentucki, by Cincinnati Museum Center and Ihe' Filson I listorical Society. Contents Essays 1 A Commercial Embassy in the Old Northwest ibe US.Indian Trading Factory at Fort Wayne, 1803-1812 David A. Nichols 17 Beyond Cane Ridge Ibe Great" Western Rerivals"in Louisville and Cincinnati,1828-1845 Bridget Ford 38 Searching for Slavery Fugitive Slaves in tbe Obio River Valley Borderland, 1830-1860 Matthew Salafia Collections 64 Medical History at The Filson Essays Historical Society Collections Essay James J. Holmberg 70 Records of the Cincinnati Union Terminal Company Collections Essay Christine Engels Book 75 Reviews Announcements 8-5 On the cover: Methodist Camp-Meeting in Kentucky at Night. From Henry Cas\Na\\,America and the American Church London: Gilbert and Rivington,1839).CINCINNATI MUSEUM CENTER Contributors David A. Nichols is an assistant professor of history at Indiana State University. He is the author of Red Gentlemen and White Savages:Indians, Federalists, and the Search for Order on tbe American Frontier,published by the University Press of Virgini·a in 2008. Bridget Ford is an assistant professor ofhistory at California State University, East Bay. Her Ph.D. dissertation, completed in 2002 at the University of California, Davis, is entitled American" Heartland: The Sentimentalization of Religion and Race Relations in Cincinnati and Louisville, 1820-1860." Matthew A. Salafia is a doctoral student at the University of Notre Dame where he will receive his Ph.D. in May 2009. His broad research interests encompass nineteenth-century America with special emphases on slavery, borderlands, and the Ohio River Valley. A Commercial Embassy in the Old Northwest Ibe U.S.Indian Trading Factory at Fort Wayne, 1803-1812 David A. Nichols etween 1795 and 1822, the American federal Mt LJgovernment conducted ati ambitious experi- ment in public enterprise: it created and 4 ' operated i: network of publicly funded K. 4* * fur-trading posts on the frontiers of , ,k< '. 41. the United States. The posts, or fac- tories as they were called, purchased Native Americans' furs at prevailing 1 ' local prices and sold them manufac- A tured goods-cloth, ironware, gunpow- 9. der, tobacco-well below the prices offered by private traders. The facto- known factors, then ries man·agers, as Si ''1. shipped the furs and pelts to coastal , »4 - seaports for sale or export. The found- ers of the factory system, in particular President George Washington, hoped e.,"*r,8.2*,MEN* that the factories would tie the Trans- 9' m.m..Winalt*« Appalachian Indians the U.S. to gov- 4„'„*#=73*4 ernment with cords of economic interest, and at the same time drive private ped- dlers ·and British Can·adian fur traders, William Henry with ofwhose conduct and motives American Harrison vignette from Indian Wars. CINCINNATI MUSEUMCENTER officials were deeply suspicious, out of business. During the presidency of Thomas Jefferson, Congress and the War Department expanded the factory system from two posts to twelve, extending from Fort Wilkinson in Georgia to Michilimackinac in the upper Great Lakes to Fort Osage on the Missouri River. The trading-house system survived the Embargo of WINTER 2008 1 A COMMERCIAL EMBASSY IN THE OLD NORTHWEST 1807-09, during which Congress temporarily stopped all American trade with the rest of the world, and the War of 1812 though( British troops and Indian warriors destroyed some of them during the latter conflict) The last factories remained open until 1822, when private fur traders, western territorial governors, and other opponents of the system finally convinced Congress to shutter the remaining trading houses i Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri, who led the charge to ter- the factory minate system, characterized the program in his memoirs as twenty-five of P ier ' years injurious operation and costly expense, 1 T' ND I ANA 1'*'.18 1 1 and claimed that it clearly dem- 4- onstrated the" unfitness of the S *,50 rte ECS,4 *** flif, j'' izz/'% federal government to carry on 5« 1 F A c all®*any system of trade " Past his- 7 41 r %,8 L r - 6/,4#torians of the factory system, 7?tt-<f'St like Edgar Wesley,Ora Brooks 40. Peake, and Russell Magnaghi, 14%*have accepted most of Benton's argument Ihey' disagreed that A i A the trading houses were in any to the Indians- 9 4 .- way injurious one Progressive-era scholar promising experiment for the A,/ amelioration of the condition r*q:W.49 r- »D f .4* 15,,_4 + of the red but concurred ilifi man"- i : . h with Benton that the factories' unsuited undertake such to a T<.'0 Puf»442. complex commercial enterprise ilARRilki'10»01.1, 1118¢!'ANE,Off10& fAK<N* ]8N FR*i¢*I » t».,,fl», .''1 '. ' Peake, in the only published book-length study of the facto- General Harrison' line of march from Vincennes Prophet' s to s Town concluded that the fur trade In 1811 CINCINNATIMUSEUMCENTER ries, was a complex business requir- ing a highly motivated workforce and ample capital, assets that the under- capitalized and often)( amateurishly managed federal factories lacked 2 It is important to remember, however, that the federal trading houses were not primarily businesses They were, instead, diplomatic enter- prises, whose function was to facilitate friendly relations between Native Americans and the U S government-so that the federal government could avoid costly Indian wars and more easily induce Indian leaders to sell tribal lands to the United States The American officials who established 2 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY DAVID A. NICHOLS them understood that, fi,r Woodland Indians, tr·,ide and diplomacy were conceptually interlocked pursuits; the friendly and ritualized exchange of goods was not only a product of peace but its prerequisite as well. In 1735, an Iroquois diplomat had observed, The trade 1 and the peace we take to be one thing, atia in fact Natiz'e Americ·,ins and Europeans had established