Miami Indian Battle in Noble County, Indiana 

Late in the summer of 1895 Mr. W. A. Kuhn, of Albion, told me of the existence 
of mounds and of the discovery of a large number of bones, skulls, etc., in a 

 peninsula formed by a sharp northeast bend of the Elkhart river, in section 16,  York township. The excavation

took place in 1842, Mr. Kuhn, then a youth of eighteen years, being a participant in

 the work.  An Indian trail, deeply worn and running from Lake Wawassee northeastward toward Mongo-

 quinong, crossed the river at the bend, where there was a fording place. A little  

southwest of  the point where the trail on the Eversole farm crossed the river certain 

peculiarities of  formation in some of the mounds suggested artificial work and led to 

excavation.   The result, as above stated, was the uncovering of many human skulls and other  parts of  human frames. 

    On exposure to the air most of the hones crumbled to  dust, but some retained 

their forms long enough to show a physician and anatomist of the party, Dr. W. H.  

Ninmon, that they belonge to a race different from the European, and probably to 

aborigines or Indians. Everything about the place indi- cated that it was not an ordinary 

burial ground: Together   with the great number of stone implements of war — arrow and 

spearheads,    fragments of  hatchets, and war- clubs — found at different times in the 

vicinity, the trail and ford commanded on either side of the riser by morainic bluffs, 

all told of a savage battle of a past century, long  anterior to the advent of civilized men. 

    Here, at this strategic point, the warriors of the Denizen tribe, probably the  

Miami, met the southward advance of invading foes, who crossed in the face of strong 

resistance and a bloody battle raged on the southern bank, the Miamis lighting desperately

for their ancient homes and hunting grounds; the fierce northern hordes for possession of a

richer country in a  milder climate than their own, the sterile and stormy north and northwest. Such incursions 

are historic. About two hundred and fifty years ago an avalanche of Chippewas,

 Winnebagos,  Sacs and Foxes and Pottawatomies descended upon northern Illinois and Indiana, the beautiful country of the Minnewas, or Miamis, whose ancestral possessions stretched 

from   the Scioto to the Mississippi, and from the St. Joseph valley in southern Michigan to 

the Ohio  river, in- habited by peaceful tribes of the common Minnewa stock, of whom the

 Miamis   were the parent and ruling family, with the capital    home at Ke'-ki-on-ga 

Fort Wayne). 

                     Gruesome stories of Indian capture and torture