Kekionga

Coordinates: 41°5′19″N 85°7′26″W / 41.08861°N 85.12389°W / 41.08861; -85.12389
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

41°5′19″N 85°7′26″W / 41.08861°N 85.12389°W / 41.08861; -85.12389

Kekionga (meaning "blackberry bush"),

Northwest Indian Wars, the French, British and Americans all established trading posts and forts at the large village, originally known as Fort Miami, due to its key location on the portage connecting Lake Erie to the Wabash and Mississippi rivers. The European-American town of Fort Wayne, Indiana started as a settlement around the American Fort Wayne stockade after the War of 1812
.

History

Long occupied by successive cultures of

New France (Canada) and La Louisiane.[7] The area was full of wildlife as it had not been densely inhabited for years.[8]

The Miami at first benefited from trade with the Europeans, who were primarily

St. Joseph River, and later at Kekionga. Vincennes and the Miami developed a strong and enduring friendship.[9]

Kekionga remained a central site for the Miami for several decades; their other villages were more temporary. The large meeting house hosted official tribal councils. However, a smallpox epidemic struck Kekionga in 1733 and people evacuated the village for a year.[10] In a speech at the Treaty of Greenville (1795), Little Turtle called Kekionga "that glorious gate ... through which all the good words of our chiefs had to pass from the north to the south, and from the east to the west."[7]

Additionally, the village served as a gathering center for warrior natives of various tribes who engaged on the frontier. Approximately 26 war parties were known to have left the village throughout 1786.[11] There is strong tradition and evidence to support that a secret society of prominent Miami warriors periodically met at the Miamitown to burn a captive and eat their flesh.[12] There is additional information that for an extended period of time, the Shawnee would also torture captives here taken from southern Ohio, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania. The site of this torture ground was allegedly located near the present day Columbia street bridge in Lakeside.[13] This activity contributed to the outbreak of the Northwest Indian War.

Colonial period

British merchants, seeking to expand their economic base, convinced some Miami to travel East for trade, in violation of the 1713

Three Fires Confederacy destroyed Pickawillany, most of the surviving Miami returned to Kekionga, which stopped assisting the French.[15]

After the

Pontiac's Rebellion in the spring of 1763, capturing the British garrison and killing the two ranking officers. The following year, Pacanne emerged as the village chief when he spared the life of the captive Captain Thomas Morris and returned him to Detroit. By 1765, Kekionga had accepted the British. Deputy commissioner George Croghan
described Kekionga:

The Twightwee Village is situated on both Sides of a River called St. Joseph's ... The Indian Village Consists of about 40 or 50 Cabins besides nine or ten French Houses.[16]

As part of the Northwest Territory

A map of Kekionga

In 1780 during the American Revolutionary War, Kekionga was sacked by a force of French colonials led by Colonel Augustin de La Balme, who planned to take Detroit from the British. A Miami force led by Chief Little Turtle destroyed the French force. The Miami and the European-American traders of Kekionga remained economically tied to the British-held Fort Detroit, even after the British ceded all claims of the Northwest Territory to the new United States following the war in the Treaty of Paris (1783).

In 1790, the Canadian Governor Guy Carleton warned the government in London that the loss of Kekionga would result in grave economic hardships to Detroit. He estimated that Kekionga annually produced 2000 packs of pelts, worth about £24,000 sterling. This was twice the value of the next most important trade area, between Detroit and Lake Huron.[17]

During the winter of 1789/1790, the traders Henry Hay and John Kinzie stayed in Kekionga. Hay kept a daily journal, which recorded their regular routines of drinking, dancing, and parties, as well as weekly Mass. Hay played the flute and Kinzie played the fiddle, which made them popular with the inhabitants of Kekionga. Although Hay and Kinzie stayed primarily in the French-speaking village in Kekionga, they also described some of the Miami villages. They frequently talked with the chiefs Pacanne, Little Turtle, Blue Jacket, and Le Gris, as well as brothers James, George, and Simon Girty, who lived only three miles away.[18]

The new President of the United States George Washington, as early as 1784, had told Henry Knox that a strong U.S. post should be established at Kekionga. The large Native American city was important to the British trade economy,[17] and protected a strategic portage between the Great Lakes Basin and Mississippi watershed. Knox, however, was concerned that a U.S. fort at Kekionga would provoke the Indians and denied the request to build a fort there from Northwest Territory governor Arthur St. Clair. St. Clair, in 1790, had told both Washington and Knox that "we will never have peace with the Western Nations until we have a garrison there."[19] Western native leaders, meanwhile, met at Kekionga to determine a response to the Treaty of Fort Harmar.

United States General

invade Kekionga. In 1790, his army counted seven distinct villages in the vicinity of Kekionga, known collectively as "the Miami Towns" or Miamitown,[20] in spite of large villages of Shawnee and Delaware also located there.[21] The collected villages of Kekionga had advance knowledge of the army, and most of the people evacuated the area, carrying as many of their food stores as possible. The traders took their trade goods to Fort Detroit, after giving out all their arms and ammunition to the Miami defenders.[22] Major Ebenezer Denny, an officer with the US, drew a map of Kekionga in 1790, which showed a collection of eight distinct villages, surrounded by 500 acres of cornfields.[23][24]
Denny described the rivers with “several little towns on both branches, but the principal one is below the confluence on the north side. Several tolerable good log houses, said to have been occupied by British traders; a few pretty good gardens with some fruit trees and vast fields of corn in almost every direction.”

The United States army burned some villages and food stores, but was forced to retreat after suffering high casualties in a series of battles with forces led by Little Turtle.

The Miami victories over General Harmar's army encouraged anti-U.S. sentiment in Kekionga, and

greatest victory over United States forces.[22]

Decline

Seal of Fort Wayne

Following the 1790 attacks by Harmar, the Native American confederacy moved their center away from Kekionga, to the Auglaize River.[21]

In 1794, the American General

U.S. fort, which was named for him.[25] It was finished by 17 October, and was capable of withstanding 24-pound cannons.[26] Despite their objections, the Miami lost control of the long portage by the Treaty of Greenville (1795), since the Northwest Ordinance passed by Congress guaranteed free use of important portages in the region.[27] At that time, the Miami claimed the portage brought them $100 per day.[28]

After the construction of Fort Wayne, Kekionga's importance to the Miami slowly declined. The Miami village at the

Forks of the Wabash (modern Huntington, Indiana) became more prominent.[29] Despite the strong U.S. presence and loss of portage revenue, however, the Miami maintained sovereignty in Kekionga through the War of 1812. Under the Treaty of Ghent in 1814, they were forced to cede this and other central Indiana land in punishment for their not having supported the United States in the war.[30] The site was redeveloped as the city of Fort Wayne, Indiana
between 1819 and 1823.

The old name was used for one of the first professional baseball teams, the Fort Wayne Kekiongas. It also appears on Fort Wayne's city seal.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ According to J. Dunn, Jr., the name "usually said to mean "blackberry patch," or "blackberry bush," this plant being considered an emblem of antiquity because it sprang up on the sites of old villages. This theory rests on the testimony of Barron, a longtime an old French trader on the Wabash. It is more probable that Kekioqa is a corruption or dialect form of Kiskakon, or Kikakon, which was the original name of the place." J. P. Dunn, INDIANA: A REDEMPTION FROM SLAVERY New York: HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY, 1888, 48, Note 1.
  2. ^ Michael McCafferty, an Algonquian and Uto-Aztecan linguist professor at Indiana University, exhaustively examined the etymology of 'Kekionga' and dismissed Dunn's explanation and several others. See the chapter "Trails to Kekionga" in the relevantly titled 'Native American Place Names of Indiana' (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2008), esp. p. 76.
  3. ^ Charles R. Poinsatte, Fort Wayne During the Canal Era 1828-1855, Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Bureau, 1969, p. 1
  4. Odawa
    nation. At a very early time, they had a village on the Maumee River. Poinsatte, pg 23, fn 1
  5. ISBN 0-253-33048-3
    ), 86.
  6. ^ a b Esarey, Logan (1953). The Indiana Home. p. 51.
  7. ^ a b Poinsatte (1976), pp. 1–3.
  8. ^ Poinsatte (1976), p. 4.
  9. ^ "Vincennes, Sieur de (Jean Baptiste Bissot)," The Encyclopedia Americana (Danbury, CT: Grolier, 1990), 28:130.
  10. ^ Carter, 66
  11. ^ Poinsatte, 42
  12. ^ Poinsatte, 42
  13. ^ Roberts, Bessie. Fort Wayne, the frontier post. p. 7.
  14. ^ Barnhart, 100-111
  15. ^ Wheeler-Voegelin, Pg 73 Archived 2008-03-15 at the Wayback Machine.
  16. ^ Rafert, 41
  17. ^ a b Poinsatte (1976), p. 17.
  18. ^ Poinsatte (1976), pp. 18–19.
  19. ^ Poinsatte 1976, pp. 21–23.
  20. ^ Poinsatte (1976), p. 14.
  21. ^
    ISBN 9780199387991
    .
  22. ^ a b Poinsatte (1976), p. 22.
  23. ^ Winkler, 14
  24. ^ Denny, Ebenezer (1859). Military Journal of Major Ebenezer Denny, an Officer in the Revolutionary and Indian Wars. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co. Retrieved 11 December 2011.See map, between pages 146 and 147.
  25. ^ Poinsatte (1976), p. 27.
  26. ^ Poinsatte (1976), p. 28.
  27. ^ Poinsatte (1976), p. 30.
  28. ^ Birzer (2000), p. 141.
  29. ^ Allison, 213
  30. ^ Birzer (2000), p. 151.

References

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