Ouiatenon
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Ouiatenon ( mia, waayaahtanonki) was a dwelling place of members of the
Wea 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. Today, the descendants of the ...
tribe of Native Americans. The name ''Ouiatenon'', also variously given as ''Ouiatanon'', ''Oujatanon'', ''Ouiatano'' or other similar forms, is a French rendering of a term from the Wea dialect of the Miami-Illinois language which means "place of the people of the whirlpool", an
ethnonym An ethnonym () is a name applied to a given ethnic group. Ethnonyms can be divided into two categories: exonyms (whose name of the ethnic group has been created by another group of people) and autonyms, or endonyms (whose name is created and used ...
for the Wea. Ouiatenon can be said to refer generally to any settlement of Wea or to their tribal lands as a whole, though the name is most frequently used to refer to a group of extinct settlements situated together along the
Wabash River The Wabash River ( French: Ouabache) is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map accessed May 13, 2011 river that drains most of the state of Indiana in the United States. It flows fro ...
in what is now western
Tippecanoe County Tippecanoe may refer to several places or things in the United States: * The 1811 Battle of Tippecanoe in Indiana * A nickname for William Henry Harrison (U.S. President March 1841–April 1841) from his role in the battle ** Tippecanoe and Tyler t ...
,
Indiana Indiana () is a U.S. state in the Midwestern United States. It is the 38th-largest by area and the 17th-most populous of the 50 States. Its capital and largest city is Indianapolis. Indiana was admitted to the United States as the 19th s ...
.


History


Establishment

By the late 17th century the Miami speaking peoples, of which the Wea were a part, had begun to return to their homelands in the Wabash River Valley, an area they had earlier been driven from by the eastern
Iroquois The Iroquois ( or ), officially the Haudenosaunee ( meaning "people of the longhouse"), are an Iroquoian-speaking confederacy of First Nations peoples in northeast North America/ Turtle Island. They were known during the colonial years to ...
. The several tribal bands of Miami separated as they settled the valley, with the Wea occupying the middle Wabash Valley between the Eel River in the north and the Vermilion River in the south. Of the Wea's five major settlements, Ouiatenon was the largest concentration; it was described in August 1791 by U.S. General
James Wilkinson James Wilkinson (March 24, 1757 – December 28, 1825) was an American soldier, politician, and double agent who was associated with several scandals and controversies. He served in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War, b ...
as "the chief town of the Ouiatenon Nation." The Ouiatenon site was favorably located for trade and habitation, being situated on a fertile plain near what was considered to be the head of deep water navigation on the Wabash River. It was also well supplied with fish, plentiful near the mouth of Wea Creek, and with wild game in the surrounding prairie and woodlands.Craig, pp. 11–12 Ouiatenon consisted of two large villages and two or three smaller onesCraig, pp. 25–28. Based on the official report of Gen. Scott, who described two villages in the plains and two along the river, with another chiefly Kickapoo village on the far shore. located along or near the Wabash River between the mouth of Wea Creek in the east and mouth of Riviere de Bois Rouge (later Indian Creek) in the west, a distance of between four and five miles (8 km). One village, located on the north bank of the river opposite the main Ouiatenon town, was chiefly inhabited by Kickapoo.


French period

The French, in an effort to counter British influence over the area, established a military post on the north bank of the Wabash opposite Ouiatenon in 1717, a site now known as
Fort Ouiatenon Fort Ouiatenon, built in 1717, was the first fortified European settlement in what is now Indiana, United States. It was a palisade stockade with log blockhouse used as a French trading post on the Wabash River located approximately three miles ...
. European settlement in the area surrounding the fort was sparse because the post's commandants did not make grants of land to settlers as was done elsewhere;Craig, p. 18 however, it did become one of the most successful trading posts in the region. In 1760 the French agreed to withdraw from the valley and ceded the area to British control.


Destruction

On 9 March 1791, U.S. Secretary of War
Henry Knox Henry Knox (July 25, 1750 – October 25, 1806), a Founding Father of the United States, was a senior general of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, serving as chief of artillery in most of Washington's campaigns. Following the ...
issued orders from President
George Washington George Washington (February 22, 1732, 1799) was an American military officer, statesman, and Founding Father who served as the first president of the United States from 1789 to 1797. Appointed by the Continental Congress as commander of th ...
to Brigadier General Charles Scott of Kentucky to lead a
punitive expedition A punitive expedition is a military journey undertaken to punish a political entity or any group of people outside the borders of the punishing state or union. It is usually undertaken in response to perceived disobedient or morally wrong behavio ...
against the Wea settlements in the Wabash Valley. Just after noon on 1 June 1791, Scott with a force of 33 officers and 760 mounted Kentucky volunteers crested High Gap Hill and entered the Wea Plains. Perceiving two villages to the northwest, at two miles (3 km) and four miles (6 km) out, Scott sent a small detachment under Colonel
John Hardin John Hardin (October 1, 1753 – May 1792) was an American soldier, scout, and frontiersman. As a young man, he fought in Lord Dunmore's War, in which he was wounded, and gained a reputation as a marksman and "Indian killer." He served in the Con ...
to destroy them while he and the bulk of his force continued north toward the main Ouiatenon village near the mouth of Wea Creek, where the smoke of cooking fires could be seen. Rounding the fringe of trees at the bend in Wea Creek, Scott's forces found the Ouiatenon town in the bottom land near the Wabash and descended upon it, causing panic amongst the inhabitants. Some in canoes tried to escape to the Kickapoo village opposite, but were killed by riflemen before reaching the opposite shore; 41 women and children were taken prisoner; the remainder were killed, dispersed or escaped. Scott burned the town and several hundred acres of growing corn.


Post-destruction

Vestiges of Ouiatenon remained visible for many years after its destruction, and artifacts could be easily found after the grass had been burned off in the autumn. A small town named Granville or Weaton was founded in 1834 near the site of the westernmost Ouiatenon village and prospered from the presence of the
Wabash and Erie Canal The Wabash and Erie Canal was a shipping canal that linked the Great Lakes to the Ohio River via an artificial waterway. The canal provided traders with access from the Great Lakes all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. Over 460 miles long, it was th ...
, built through the area in the 1840s. Both the canal and town declined in the 1850s and were defunct by the 1870s. The towns of Glen Hall and Shadeland remain on the southern and eastern periphery of the plain. Tippecanoe Labs, a large chemical laboratory and manufacturing complex operated by
Evonik Industries Evonik Industries AG is a stock-listed German specialty chemicals company headquartered in Essen, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is the second largest chemicals company in Germany, and one of the largest specialty chemicals companies in the ...
, stands just east of the mouth of Wea Creek; the site of the main Ouiatenon town and surrounding area is owned by the labs and is partly contained within the Tippecanoe Labs Wildlife Habitat.


Geography

The villages of Ouiatenon occupied a fertile area known as the Wea Plains, a roughly area in what is now northern Wayne and
Union Union commonly refers to: * Trade union, an organization of workers * Union (set theory), in mathematics, a fundamental operation on sets Union may also refer to: Arts and entertainment Music * Union (band), an American rock group ** ''Un ...
townships.
To the north lies the long range of the Indian Hills, crowned with forest trees, and scarped with many a sharp ravine. At the southern edge of these hills flows the Wabash, winding in and out with graceful curves, and marked in its courses by a narrow fringe of woodland. To the east lies Wea creek, jutting out into the plain with a sharp turn, and then gliding on again to the river. Within this enclosure of wood and stream lie the meadows of the Ouiatenons...
Lost Creek, a small waterway with no distinct end, flows west-northwest through the Wea Plains.


See also

*
Fort Ouiatenon Fort Ouiatenon, built in 1717, was the first fortified European settlement in what is now Indiana, United States. It was a palisade stockade with log blockhouse used as a French trading post on the Wabash River located approximately three miles ...


References


External links


The Wea Indian Tribe of IndianaFrances Krauskopf (ed.), ''Ouiatanon Documents'', Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1955.
{{authority control Former populated places in Indiana Tippecanoe County, Indiana Wea Native Americans in Indiana