A marker on the border of the New Purchase near Delphi, Indiana
The Treaty of St. Mary's may refer to one of six treaties concluded in fall of 1818 between the United States and Natives of central Indiana regarding purchase of Native land. The treaties were
The main treaty was with the Miamis, who were the main tribe in Indiana. Unqualified references to the treaty usually refer to this one. The treaties acquired a substantial portion of the land area (dubbed the New Purchase) of the state of Indiana from the Miami, Delaware, Potawatomi, and others in exchange for cash, salt, sawmills, and other goods, effectively moving the northern boundary of the state from near the Ohio River to the Wabash River in the northwest and north. They also resulted in creation of Indian reservations and continued the process of Indian removals in Indiana begun by the Treaty of Greenville in 1795.
The treaties
In the fall of 1818 six separate treaties were completed at St. Marys, Ohio, between the United States and the Wyandot, Seneca, Shawnese, and Ottawas (September 17), with the Wyandot (September 20), the Potawatomi (October 2), the Wea (October 2), the Delaware (October 3), and the Miami (October 6).
The treaty with the Wyandot, Seneca, Shawnese, and Ottawas of September 17, 1818, established that the grants described in the Treaty of Fort Meigs (formally titled, "Treaty with the Wyandots, etc., 1817") would be considered only as reservations for the use of indigenous peoples. The 1818 treaty also granted additional land reservations and annuity payments to the involved indigenous groups.[1][2]
The treaty with the Wea of October 2 resulted in the Wea ceding their claims to all lands in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. In return, the U.S. government agreed to pay a sum total of $3,000 in silver annually to the Wea on a reservation the tribe had claimed earlier in the treaty. This reserved tract of land was described as "Beginning at the mouth of Raccoon creek; thence by the present boundary line, seven miles; thence, northeasterly, seven miles, to a point seven miles from the Wabash river; thence to the Wabash river, by a line parallel to the present boundary line aforesaid; and thence, by the Wabash river, to the place of beginning."[4]
The treaty with the Potawatomi of October 2 established cessions of land to the United States. The U.S. government also agreed to pay perpetual annuity to the Potawatomi, as well as to purchase any claim to the ceded land made by the Kickapoo. William Conner served as an interpreter.[5]
The treaty with the Delawares (Lenape) of October 3 established the cession of all Lenape land in Indiana to the United States. In return, the U.S. government was to provide a country for the displaced Lenape people west of the Mississippi River; full compensation for their improvements; perpetual annuity; grants of land to individuals; and the payment of certain claims. The U.S. government also agreed to provide and support a blacksmith for the Lenape after their removal to the west, and the Lenape were allowed to occupy their ceded territory for up to three years after the signing of the treaty. Signatories included, among others, Kikthawenund of the Unalatchgo Lenape clan and federal commissioner Jonathan Jennings. William Conner served as an interpreter.[6]
The treaty with the Miami was signed on October 6, 1818, at St. Mary's, Ohio, between representatives of the United States and the Miami tribe, as well as others living in their territory. Jonathan Jennings, Lewis Cass, and Benjamin Parke, acting as representatives of the United States, signed the treaty. William Conner served as an interpreter. The accord contained seven articles. Based on the terms of the accord, the Miami ceded territories south of the Wabash River covering a large portion of central Indiana, subsequently known as the "New Purchase", to the United States. This tract consisted of the entire central portion of Indiana between the Wabash River and the old boundary established by the Treaty of Fort Wayne (1809). It also established the first Indian reservation in Indiana, the Great Miami Reserve in the northern portion of the New Purchase. In another tenet of the accord, the United States agreed to pay the Miami a perpetual annuity of fifteen thousand dollars. Moreover, the United States agreed to construct one gristmill and one sawmill, as well as provide one blacksmith, one gunsmith, and agricultural implements. The Miami would also be provided one hundred and sixty bushels of salt annually.[7]
New Purchase tract
Extent of the treaty lands
The New Purchase was a jagged shaped area comprising most of the central third of the state. It had a large trapezoid "bite" out of the northern boundary that became the Great Miami Reserve, and a sawtooth in the northwest where the Tippecanoe and Wabash Rivers formed a gore. The treaties defined the northern and western boundary as the Wabash, Tippecanoe, and Vermillion rivers; the southwestern and southeastern boundaries were the treaty lines from the Treaty of Fort Wayne of 1809; the far southeastern and northeastern boundaries were treaty lines from the Treaty of Grouseland of 1805, and parts of the eastern and western boundaries were the borders of the state. The southern tip of the area extended to what is today central Jackson County near Brownstown.
Big Miami Reserve
By the treaty with the Miami, the Miami ceded most of their land south of the Wabash River, except for some individual plots and a parcel in north central Indiana between the Eel River and the Salamonie River called the Big Miami Reserve. The Reserve contained about 760,000 acres (3,100km2) and was the largest Indian reservation ever to exist within the state of Indiana. It encompassed all of present-day Howard County, and portions of seven surrounding counties: Wabash, Miami, Cass, Clinton, Tipton, Madison, and Grant. At its creation, the area was wilderness, and there were no colonial settlements between Terre Haute and Fort Wayne on the Wabash River.
The reservation was short-lived. By 1840, via several additional treaties, the state effectively acquired the reservation and removed the Indians to west of the Mississippi River.
The treaties resulted in the confinement of the Miami to the reserve area and the removal of the Delaware, who dominated central and east central Indiana, to west of the Mississippi River by 1820, clearing the way for colonization by settlers migrating north and west from Cincinnati and other Ohio River settlements.
The area was called the Delaware New Purchase until it was divided into Wabash County in the northwest and Delaware County in the southeast on January 2, 1820. Those counties were soon after dissolved, and the areas came to be called the "Wabash New Purchase" and "Delaware New Purchase" (renamed the "Adams New Purchase" in 1827). Subsequently, 35 new counties were carved out of the original area. The future state capital of Indianapolis was founded in 1822, roughly in the center of the New Purchase area.
Indian Territory and the Indian Territories are terms that generally described an evolving land area set aside by the United States government for the relocation of Native Americans who held original Indian title to their land as a sovereign independent state. The concept of an Indian territory was an outcome of the U.S. federal government's 18th- and 19th-century policy of Indian removal. After the American Civil War (1861–1865), the policy of the U.S. government was one of assimilation.
The Miami are a Native American nation originally speaking one of the Algonquian languages. Among the peoples known as the Great Lakes tribes, they occupied territory that is now identified as north-central Indiana, southwest Michigan, and western Ohio. The Miami were historically made up of several prominent subgroups, including the Piankeshaw, Wea, Pepikokia, Kilatika, Mengakonkia, and Atchakangouen. In modern times, Miami is used more specifically to refer to the Atchakangouen. By 1846, most of the Miami had been forcefully displaced to Indian Territory. The Miami Tribe of Oklahoma are the federally recognized tribe of Miami Indians in the United States. The Miami Nation of Indiana, a nonprofit organization of self-identified descendants of Miamis who were exempted from removal, have unsuccessfully sought separate recognition.
The Potawatomi, also spelled Pottawatomi and Pottawatomie, are a Native American people of the Great Plains, upper Mississippi River, and western Great Lakes region. They traditionally speak the Potawatomi language, a member of the Algonquin family. The Potawatomi call themselves Neshnabé, a cognate of the word Anishinaabe. The Potawatomi are part of a long-term alliance, called the Council of Three Fires, with the Ojibway and Odawa (Ottawa). In the Council of Three Fires, the Potawatomi are considered the "youngest brother" and are referred to in this context as Bodéwadmi, a name that means "keepers of the fire" and refers to the council fire of three peoples.
The Treaty of Greenville, also known to Americans as the Treaty with the Wyandots, etc., but formally titled A treaty of peace between the United States of America, and the tribes of Indians called the Wyandots, Delawares, Shawanees, Ottawas, Chippewas, Pattawatimas, Miamis, Eel Rivers, Weas, Kickapoos, Piankeshaws, and Kaskaskias was a 1795 treaty between the United States and indigenous nations of the Northwest Territory, including the Wyandot and Delaware peoples, that redefined the boundary between indigenous peoples' lands and territory for European American community settlement.
Tecumseh's War or Tecumseh's Rebellion was a conflict between the United States and Tecumseh's Confederacy, led by the Shawnee leader Tecumseh in the Indiana Territory. Although the war is often considered to have climaxed with William Henry Harrison's victory at the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811, Tecumseh's War essentially continued into the War of 1812 and is frequently considered a part of that larger struggle. The war lasted for two more years, until 1813, when Tecumseh and his second-in-command, Roundhead, died fighting Harrison's Army of the Northwest at the Battle of the Thames in Upper Canada, near present-day Chatham, Ontario, and his confederacy disintegrated. Tecumseh's War is viewed by some academic historians as the final conflict of a longer-term military struggle for control of the Great Lakes region of North America, encompassing a number of wars over several generations, referred to as the Sixty Years' War.
The Wea were a Miami-Illinois-speaking Native American tribe originally located in western Indiana. Historically, they were described as either being closely related to the Miami Tribe or a sub-tribe of Miami.
Jean Baptiste de Richardville, also known as Pinšiwa or Peshewa in the Miami-Illinois language or John Richardville in English, was the last akima 'civil chief' of the Miami people. He began his career in the 1790s as a fur trader who controlled an important portage connecting the Maumee River to the Little River in what became the present-day state of Indiana. Richardville emerged a principal chief in 1816 and remained a leader of the Miamis until his death in 1841. He was a signatory to the Treaty of Greenville (1795), as well as several later treaties between the U.S. government and the Miami people, most notably the Treaty of Fort Wayne (1803), the Treaty of Fort Wayne (1809), the Treaty of Saint Mary's (1818), the Treaty of Mississinewas (1826), the treaty signed at the Forks of the Wabash (1838), and the Treaty of the Wabash (1840).
The Treaty of Mississinewas or the Treaty of Mississinewa also called Treaty of the Wabash is an 1826 treaty between the United States and the Miami and Potawatomi Tribes regarding purchase of Indian lands in Indiana and Michigan. The signing was held at the mouth of the Mississinewa River on the Wabash, hence the name.
The Treaty of Fort Meigs, also called the Treaty of the Maumee Rapids, formally titled, "Treaty with the Wyandots, etc., 1817", was the most significant Indian treaty by the United States in Ohio since the Treaty of Greenville in 1795. It resulted in cession by bands of several tribes of nearly all their remaining Indian lands in northwestern Ohio. It was the largest wholesale purchase by the United States of Indian land in the Ohio area. It was also the penultimate one; a small area below the St. Mary's River and north of the Greenville Treaty Line was ceded in the Treaty of St. Mary's in 1818.
The Northwestern Confederacy, or Northwestern Indian Confederacy, was a loose confederacy of Native Americans in the Great Lakes region of the United States created after the American Revolutionary War. Formally, the confederacy referred to itself as the United Indian Nations, at their Confederate Council. It was known infrequently as the Miami Confederacy since many contemporaneous federal officials overestimated the influence and numerical strength of the Miami tribes based on the size of their principal city, Kekionga.
Indian removals in Indiana followed a series of the land cession treaties made between 1795 and 1846 that led to the removal of most of the native tribes from Indiana. Some of the removals occurred prior to 1830, but most took place between 1830 and 1846. The Lenape (Delaware), Piankashaw, Kickapoo, Wea, and Shawnee were removed in the 1820s and 1830s, but the Potawatomi and Miami removals in the 1830s and 1840s were more gradual and incomplete, and not all of Indiana's Native Americans voluntarily left the state. The most well-known resistance effort in Indiana was the forced removal of Chief Menominee and his Yellow River band of Potawatomi in what became known as the Potawatomi Trail of Death in 1838, in which 859 Potawatomi were removed to Kansas and at least forty died on the journey west. The Miami were the last to be removed from Indiana, but tribal leaders delayed the process until 1846. Many of the Miami were permitted to remain on land allotments guaranteed to them under the Treaty of St. Mary's (1818) and subsequent treaties.
The Treaty of Tippecanoe was an agreement between the United States government and Native American Potawatomi tribes in Indiana on October 26, 1832.
The Treaty of Fort Wayne was a treaty between the United States and several groups of Native Americans. The treaty was signed on June 7, 1803 and proclaimed December 26, 1803. It more precisely defined the boundaries of the Vincennes tract ceded to the United States by the Treaty of Greenville, 1795.
Tecumseh's confederacy was a confederation of indigenous peoples of the Great Lakes region of North America that began to form in the early 19th century around the teaching of Tenskwatawa, called The Prophet by his followers. The confederation grew over several years and came to include several thousand warriors. Shawnee leader Tecumseh, the brother of The Prophet, developed into the leader of the group as early as 1808. Together, they worked to unite the various tribes against the European settlers who had been crossing the Appalachian Mountains and settling on their land.
The Miami Nation of Indiana is a group of individuals who identify as Miami and have organized as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. The group's headquarters are at Peru, Indiana.
Mekinges Conner was a Lenape woman.
Kikthawenund, also known as William Anderson, was a leader of the Unalatchgo Lenape people. His Lenape name is said to mean "creaking boughs." The city of Anderson in Indiana is named after him.
Indian removals in Ohio started in the late eighteenth century after the American victory in the Revolutionary War and the consequent opening of the Northwestern United States to European-American settlement. Native American tribes residing in the region banded together to resist settlement, resulting in the disastrous Northwest Indian War where the Native tribes ceded large swathes of territory to the American government. After the American victory in the war, several Indian reservations were established to forcibly relocate landless tribes to. The process of obtaining full American sovereignty over Indian territories in Ohio was complete around 1818, but continued in Indiana until 1840.
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