Description of the First French Fort in Present day Ft. Wayne in 1749
WHERE THE FIRST FRENCH FORT. A map drawn by Father Jean Bonne- camps while on the site of Fort Wayne in 1749 (forty-five years before the coming of General Wayne) shows that the French fort of that period (Post Miami) stood on a site which may now be described as a point on the right bank of the St. Mary's river, a short distance north of the Nickel Plate railroad tracks (see map) M. de Ralmond (1748). Ralmond ln 1750 abandoned the. place and erected the last French fort on a site at the junction of the present St. Joe boulevard and Delaware Avenue, on the St. Joseph river, a point also within the present city of Fort Wayne.
Site of the first French fort in present day Ft. Wayne, Indiana. The fort was adjacent to Coldfoot village that was located on the east side of Van Burean Street. The sign erected by the Allen County Historical Museum is incorrect.
THE SITE OF FORT WAYNE was the scene of growing bitter strife between the two powerful European nations which told of the waning power of France in the West. Slowly but certainly the English gained the alliance of the powerful leaders of the more easterly Indian tribes, and even the friendship of the Miamis for their French brothers became a doubtful matter.
"The fort of the Miamis was in a very bad condition when we reached it. Most of the palisades were decayed and fallen into ruin. There were eight houses, or, to speak more correctly, eight miserable huts which only the desire of making money could render endurable. The French there number twenty-two; all of them, including the commandant, had the fever. Monsieur Raimond did not approve the situation of the fort and maintained that it should be placed on the bank of the St. Joseph a scant league from the present site. He wished to show me the spot, but the hindrances of our departure prevented me from going hither. All I could do for him was to trace the plan for his new fort. The latitude of the old one is 41 degrees, 29 minutes."10.
This decaying fort stood on the right bank of the St. Mary's river in the bend of the stream a short distance north of the present Nickel Plate railroad bridges. It is not difficult to picture the commandant, ill with fever, seeking the advice and assistance of these visitors from a civilized section of the world, who declined to discommode themselves to aid him further than to give him a rough draught to guide him in the building of a new fort. But, perhaps, the depression of spirit extended also into the heart of the Celeron. "On the 26th," said he, "I called to me Cold Foot, chief of the Miamis at Kiskakon. and other principal Indians, to whom I repeated, in the presence of M. de Raimond and the officers of our detachment what I had said at the village of LaDemoiselle and the answers I got from them. After listening with much attention, he [Cold Foot] arose and said to me : 'I hope I am deceived, but I am sufficiently attached to the French to say that LaDemoiselle will be false. My grief is to be the only one who loves you, and to see all the nations of the earth let loose against the French." Cold Foot's prophecy was true. LaDemoiselle grew stronger in his opposition to the French and finally drew upon himself a tragedy which marked the beginning of the French and Indian war. Unable to secure a sufficient number of canoes to transport his company by water down the Maumee, Celeron sent some of his men overland to Detroit, at which place the expedition arrived eight days later.
The Last French Fort in Present Day Ft. Wayne, Indiana
FRENCH RELICS DUG UP ON THE SITE OF FORT WAYNE.
These three relics of the seventeenth century days of the occupation of the site of Fort Wayne by the French — B medallion bearing the date 1693, a copper kettle and a copper box are of incalculable historical value. The medal lion and the kettle are the property of Kenton P. Baker, 1008 Delaware Avenue. In 1870, while he was superintending some work of excavation at the junction of the present Delaware avenue and St. Joe boulevard, Henry J. Baker, Sr. (grandfather of Kenton P. Baker), uncovered the kettle shown here. It was found to contain some Indian arrowheads and the large brass medallion of which the picture shows the two sides. The indentations of the kettle were made by the ads in the hands of the workman who unearthed the relic. The place of finding the reminders of the French occupation, is the site of the last French fort, erected In 1750. It would seem that the medallion and the kettle have reposed within the limits of the present city of Fort Wayne for a period of nearly two centuries. The medallion was for a time the property of Mrs. C. E. Stapleford, now a resident of Colorado Springs, Col. Mrs. Stapleford ascertained, through correspondence with the mayor of Bordeaux. France, that Gull (William) de Nesmond, whose portrait appears on the medallion which was issued in commemoration of his death In 1963, was a member of a noble family in France. It is interesting to note that an exact duplicate of this medallion, found in the same locality. Is the property of Byron F. Thompson, residing north of Fort Wayne. The small copper box, with a hinged, embossed cover, undoubtedly a relic of the French occupation, is owned by L. W. Hills. It was unearthed by boys while at play in the vicinity of the site of the French fort.
THE LAST FRENCH FORT IN PRESENT DAY FORT WAYNE, INDIANA
Whatever Captain Rai mond may have thought of the refusal of the visitors to interest themselves in the location of his new fort, it is certain that he lost little time in beginning its erection. By the spring of 1750, this new home of his men, high above the surrounding territory, was ready for occupancy. While the former location was on low ground, the new fort occupied a commanding position on the east bank of the St. Joseph river (at the present St. Joe boulevard and Delaware Avenue, formerly Baker Avenue), where today the automobilist, as he hurries past the historic spot looks out upon a landscape to the westward very similar to that which gladdened the vision of these hardy Frenchmen, now made unromantic, of course, by the evidences of civilization. The coming years were destined to weave about this fort of Captain Raimond many thrilling tales of romance, horror and bloodshed. Here were to be enacted the scenes of the love story of the Englishman, Holmes, and its tragic climax of massacre; the tale of Morris who faced death at the stake ; of Croghan and the remnants of the French and British during the days when the young republic was training a Wayne and a Harrison in the school of warfare.
With the abandonment of the old fort on the St. Mary's, the discarded buildings of the past became the center of an Indian settlement known as a Cold Foot's village, over which Chief Cold Foot presided until his death, which came at a time when his friendship was most keenly needed by the French commandant.
"My people are leaving me for Detroit. Nobody wants to stay here and have his throat cut. All of the tribes who go to the English at Pickawillany come back loaded with gifts. I am too weak to meet the danger. Instead of twenty men, I need five hundred q • q We have made peace with the English; yet they try continually to make war on us by means of the Indians. They intend to be masters of all this upper country. The tribes here are leagued together to kill all the French, that they may have nobody on their lands but their English brothers. This I am told by Cold Foot, a great Miami chief, whom I think an honest man, if there be such thing among the Indians. * * • If the English stay in this country, we are lost. We must attack them and drive them out."1 To add to the distress of mind of the commandant of Post Miami, an epidemic of smallpox spread over the Maumee- Wabash region during the winter of 1751-2 and carried away as its victims, two of his true Indian friends, Chief Cold Foot and Chief LeGris, as well as many of the Miamis who formed the Cold Foot village.
Miami Indian Territory and Land Cessions
It has been correctly said that the Miamis were of the Algonquin family. whose dominions extended from the most eastern extremity of New England westward to the waters of the Mississippi, embracing the territory north from the Gulf of Mexico to the land of the Esquimaux Everywhere throughout this vast expanse, branches of their primitive family were to be found, tracing their lineage back to the parent stock. But, while it is true that they were descendants in direct line " of those who greeted the colonists of Raleigh at Roanoke, of those who welcomed the Pilgrims at Plymouth," they only sustain that relation in common with numerous other kindred tribes, and are only entitled to special consideration because of their enjoyment, by inheritance, of more of the elements in affinity with the parent stem than their less consanguineous neighbors, being, also, more powerful in competition with them. Bancroft says, too: "The Miamis were more stable, and their own traditions preserve the memory of their ancient limits, illustrated by the regular tracing of Little Turtle. at the treaty of Greenville, elsewhere noted. The same reputable historian says further: “ The forests beyond Detroit were at first found unoccupied, or, it may be, roamed over by bands too feeble to attract a trader or win a missionary; the Ottawas, Algonquin fugitives from the basin of the magnificent river whose name commemorates them, fled to the Bay of Saginaw and took possession of the whole north of the peninsula as of a derelict country; yet the Miamis occupied its southern moiety, and their principal mission was founded by Allouez, on the banks of the St. Joseph, in the limits of the present State of Michigan.” In 1670, the Miamis were the most powerful confederacy in the West, when, it is said, an army of five thousand men could be called into the field. It is also stated that, in the early part of the eighteenth century, the Pottawatomies had crowded the Miamis from their dwellings, at Chicago. The intruders came from the islands near the entrance of Green Bay, and were a branch of the great nation of the Chippewas. That nation, or, as some write, the Ojibwas, held the country from the mouth of Green Bay to the head waters of Lake Superior. and were early visited by the French at Sault St. Mary and Chegoimegon." Notwithstanding the fact that they met with occasional reverses, they continued‘ to be a leading and influential tribe, leaving the impress of their name on many of our Western rivers.
The great treaty entered into by the Miamis and the Commissioners on the part of the United States, under the provisions of which the first important cession of territory in this part of Indiana was made, was concluded on the 6th of October, 1818, at St. Mary’s, Ohio. The boundaries of the territory embraced in this cession were substantially the following: “Commencing near the town of LaGro, on the Wabash, where the Salamonie unites with the Wabash River; running thence through Wabash and Grant Counties into Madison County, its southeast corner was about four miles southeast of Independence, at the center of Section 17; thence running south of west, with the general course of the Wabash River, across Tipton County, close to the town of Tipton, just north thereof, to where it intersects a line running north and south from Logansport, which is the western boundary of Howard County, one mile west of Range line No. 1, east; thence north to Logansport; thence up the Wabash to the mouth of the Salamonie, the place of beginning. There was contained within these boundaries 930,000 acres. The greater part of this reservation remained in the hands of the Indians until November, 1840, when it was relinquished, being the last of their claims in Indiana.
By the treaty of October 23, 1826, held at Paradise Springs, known as the old “ Treaty Grounds," the chiefs and warriors of the Miamis, in council with Lewis Cass, James B. Ray and John Tipton, Commissioners representing the United States, ceded to the latter power "all their claim to lands in the State of Indiana, north and west of the Wabash and Miami Rivers, and of the cession made by the said tribe to the United States, by the treaty concluded at St. Mary's, October 6, 1818." By further provision of the same treaty, the State of Indiana was authorized to lay out a canal or road through any of the reservations, and for the use of a canal, six chains along the same were appropriated.
By treaty of November 6, 1838, they made a further cession to the United States of certain lands reserved by former treaties. Finally, on the 28th of November, 1840, they relinquished their right to all the remaining lands in Indiana, except certain specific reservations, for which they re ceived the sum of $550,000, and agreed to vacate these lands within five years. They did not move, however, until 1847.
Terror on the Ohio Frontier: 'Old Britain' is Boiled and Eaten For Being Allies With the British
While conditions at the head of the Maumee and throughout the Wabash valley grew more alarming for the French, there was increased activity at the English settlement at Pickawillay. Chris Topher Gist, sent on an exploring expedition to the west in the interest of the Ohio Land Company (of which George Washington was a member) visited the place in February, 1751. His journal tells of the activity of the village and of the re-construction of the post — the first established by the English in the west, and which was designed to prove a menace to the Kekionga and Detroit strong holds of the French. But the scenes were soon to shift. Celeron, commandant of Detroit, had been directed by Governor Jonquiere, of Canada, to proceed to Pickawillany and accomplish its destruction. Whether Celeron shirked the undertaking or was too deliberate in his preparations, it does not appear, but it is true that another arose to the occasion and accomplished the work which had been outlined for him. This leader was Charles Langlade. The Indians at Kekionga, no less than the garrison at the post, were taken by surprise one day in June, 1752, when a small army of French and two hundred Chippewas and Ottawas, came rapidly up the Maumee and turned westward into the St. Mary's on their way to the portage point nearest the Pickawillay post. (Piqua Ohio) It was the army come to drive out the English. Langlade had gathered his followers from the Green Bay region and piloted them to Detroit, where their assistance was offered to the commandant. Celeron accepted their service, supplemented the force by the addition of a few French regulars and Canadians, under M. St. Orr (or St. Orr), and directed the expedition against Pickawillany. No word had reached the British post to warn it of the approach of the attacking party. "Langlade," says one writer, after describing the landing of the canoes on the bank of the St. Mary's, "led his painted savages through the forest to attack La Demoiselle and his English friends."" The assault was spirited and decisive. "Among the Indians who had been captured was the principal chief of the Piankeshaws, called 'Old Britain' [La Demoiselle], on account of his friendship for the British ; he was killed, cut in pieces, boiled and eaten in full view of the fort, after which the French and their allies moved away."
