CHAPTER VI. THE MIAMIS-THE MIAMI, PIANKESHAW, AND WEA BANDS. The people known to us as the Miamis formerly dwelt beyond the Mississippi, and, according to their own traditions, came originally from the Pacific. " If what I have heard asserted in several places be true, the Illinois and Miamis came from the banks of a very distant sea to the westward. It would seem that their first stand, after they made their first descent into this country, was at Moingona. At least it is certain that one of their tribes bears that name. The rest are known under the name of Peorias, Tamaroas, Caoquias and Kaskaskias." The migration of the Miamis from the west of the Mississippi, eastward through Wisconsin and northern Illinois, around the southern end of Lake Michigan to Detroit, and thence up the Maumee and down the Wabash, and eastward through Indiana into Ohio as far as the Great Miami, can be followed through the mass of records handed down to us from the missionaries, travelers and officers connected with the French. Speaking of the mixed village of Maskoutens, situated on Fox River, Wisconsin, at the time of his visit there in 1670, Father Claude Dablon says the village of the Fire-nation "is joined in the circle of the same barriers to another people, named Oumiami, which is one of the Illinois nations, which is, as it were, dismembered from the others, in order to dwell in these quarters. It is beyond this great river that are placed the Illinois of whom we speak, and from whom are detached those who dwell here with the Fire-nation to form here a transplanted colony." From the quotations made there remains little doubt that the Miamis were originally a branch of the great Illinois nation. This theory is confirmed by writers of our own time, among whom we may mention General William H. Harrison, whose long acquaintance and official connection with the several bands of the Miamis and Illinois gave him the opportunities, of which he availed himself, to acquire an intimate knowledge concerning them. "Although the language, manners and customs of the Kaskaskias make it sufficiently certain that they 58 - HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST. derived their origin from the same source with the Miamis, the connection had been dissolved before the French had penetrated from Canada to the Mississippi." The assertion of General Harrison that the tribal relation between the Illinois and Miamis had been broken at the time of the discovery of the Upper Mississippi valley by the French is sustained with great unanimity by all other authorities. In the long and disastrous wars waged upon the Illinois by the Iroquois, Sacs and Foxes, Kickapoos and other enemies, we have no instance given where the Miamis ever offered assistance to their ancient kinsmen. After the separation, on the contrary, they often lifted the bloody hatchet against them. Father Dablon, in the narrative from which we have quoted, gives a detailed account of the civility of the Miamis at Mascouten, and the formality and court routine with which their great chief was surrounded. " The chief of the Miamis, whose name was Tetinchoua, was surrounded by the most notable people of the village, who, assuming the role of courtiers, with civil posture full of deference, and keeping always a respectful silence, magnified the greatness of their king. The chief and his routine gave Father Dablon every mark of their most distinguished esteem. The physiognomy of the chief was as mild and as attractive as any one could wish to see; and while his reputation as a warrior was great, his features bore a softness which charmed all those who beheld him." Nicholas Perrot, with Sieur de St. Lussin, dispatched by Talon, the intendant, to visit the westward nations, with whom the French had intercourse, and invite them to a council to be held the following spring at the Sault Ste. Marie, was at this Miami village shortly after the visit of Dablon. Perrot was treated with great consideration by the Miamis. Tetinchoua " sent out a detachment to meet the French agent and receive him in military style. The detachment advanced in battle array, all the braves adorned with feathers, armed at all points, were uttering war cries from time to time. The Pottawatomies who escorted Perrot, seeing them come in this guise, perpared to receive them in the same manner, and Perrot put himself at their head. When the two troops were in face of each other, they stopped as if to take breath, then all at once Perrot took the right, the Miamis the left, all running in Indian file, as though they wished to gain an advantage to charge. " But the Miamis wheeling in the form of an arc, the Pottawatomies were invested on all sides. Then both uttered loud yells, which were the signals for a kind of combat. The Miamis fired a volley SUBDIVISIONS OF THE MIAMIS - 59 from their guns, which were only loaded with powder, and the Pottawatomies returned it in the same way ; after this they closed, tomahawk in hand, all the blows being received on the tomahawks. Peace was then made ; the Miamis presented the calumet to Perrot, and led him with all his chief escort into the town, where the great chief assigned him a guard of fifty men, regaled him magnificently after the custom of the country, and gave him the diversion of a game of ball. The Miami chief never spoke to his subjects, but imparted his orders through some of his officers. On account of his advanced age he was dissuaded from attending the council to be held at Ste. Marie, between the French and the Indians; however, he deputized the Pottawatomies to act in his name. This confederacy called themselves "Miamis ," and by this name were known to the surrounding tribes. The name was not bestowed upon them by the French, as some have assumed from its resemblance to Mon-ami, because they were the friends of the latter. When Hennepin was captured on the Mississippi by a war party of the Sioux, these savages with their painted faces rendered more hideous by the devilish contortions of their features, cried out in angry voices, " `Mia-hama! Mia-hama !' and we made signs with our oars upon the sand, that the Miamis, their enemies, of whom they were in search, had passed the river upon their flight to join the Illinois." " The confederacy which obtained the general appellation of Miamis, from the superior numbers of the individual tribe to whom that name more properly belonged," were subdivided into three principal tribes or bands, namely, the Miamis proper, Weas and Piankeshaws. French writers have given names to two or three other subdivisions or families of the three principal bands, whose identity has never been clearly traced, and who figure so little in the accounts which we have of the Miamis, that it is not necessary here to specify their obslete names. The different ways of writing Miamis are : Omniamwek, Oumamis, Maumees, Au-Miami (contracted to Au-Ali and Omee) and Mine-ami. The French called the Weas Ouiatenons, Syatanons, Ouyatanons and Ouias; the English and Colonial traders spelled the word, Onicatanon, Way-ough-ta-nies, Wawiachtens, and Wehahs. For the Piankeshaws, or Pou-an-ke-ki-as, as they were called in the earliest accounts, we have Peanguichias, Pian-gui-shaws, Pyan-ke-spas and Pianquishas. The Miami tribes were known to the Iroquois, or Five Nations of New York, as the Twight-wees, a name generally adopted by the 60 - HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST. British, as well as by the American colonists. Of this name there are various corruptions in pronounciation and spelling, examples of which we have in "Twich-twichs;" "Twick-twicks," "Twis-twicks," " Twigh-twees," and "Twick-tovies." The insertion of these many names, applied to one people, would seem a tedious superfluity, were it otherwise possible to retain the identity of the tribes to which these different appellations have been given by the French, British and American officers, traders and writers. It will save the reader much perplexity in perusing a history of the Miamis if it is borne in mind that all these several names refer to the Miami nation or to one or the other of its respective bands. Besides the colony mentioned by Dablon and Charlevoix, on the Fox River of Wisconsin, Hennepin informs us of a village of Miamis south and west of Peoria Lake at the time he was at the latter place in 1679, and it was probably this village whose inhabitants the Sioux were seeking. St. Cosine, in 1699, mentions the " village of the ' Peanzichias-Miamis, who formerly dwelt on the of the Mississippi, and who had come some years previous and settled' on the Illinois River, a few miles below the confluence of the Des Plaines." The Miamis were within the territory of La Salle's colony, of which Starved Rock was the center, and counted thirteen hundred warriors. The Weas and Piankeshaws were also there, the former having five hundred warriors and the Piankeshaw band one hundred and fifty. This was prior to 1687. At a later day the Weas " were at Chicago, but being afraid of the canoe people, left it." Sieur de Courtmanche, sent westward in 1701 to negotiate with the tribes in that part of New France, was at " Chicago, where he found some Weas (Ouiatanons), a Miami tribe, who had sung the war-song against the Sioux and the Iroquois. He obliged them to lay down their arms and extorted from them a promise to send deputies to Montreal." In a letter dated in 1721, published in his "Narrative Journal," Father Charlevoix, speaking of the Miamis about the head of Lake Michigan, says: "Fifty years ago the Miamis were settled on the southern extremity of Lake Michigan, in a place called Chicagou, from the name of a small river which runs into the lake, the source of which is not far distant from that of the river of the Illinois; they are at present divided into three villages, one of which stands on the river St. Joseph, the second on another river which bears their name and runs into Lake Erie. and the third upon the river A WAR WITH THE SIOUX - 61 Ouabache, which empties its waters into the Mississippi. These last are better known by the appellation of Ouyatanons." In 1694, Count Frontenae, in a conference with the Western Indians, requested the Miamis of the Pepikokia band who resided on the Maramek, to remove and join the tribe which was located on the Saint Joseph, of Lake Michigan. The reason for this request, as stated by Frontenac himself, was, that he wished the different bands of the Miami confederacy to unite, "so as to be able to execute with greater facility the commands which he might issue." At that time the Iroquois were at war with Canada, and the French were endeavoring to persuade the western tribes to take up the tomahawk in their behalf. The Miamis promised to observe the Governor's wishes and began to make preparations for the removal. "Late in August, 1696, they started to join their brethren settled on the St. Joseph. On their way they were attacked by the Sioux, who killed several. The Miamis of the St. Joseph, learning this hostility, resolved to avenge their slaughter. They pursued the Sioux to their own country, and found them entrenched in their fort with some Frenchmen of the class known as coureurs des bois (bushlopers). They nevertheless attacked them repeatedly with great resolution, but were repulsed, and at last compelled to retire, after losing several of their braves. On their way home, meeting other Frenchmen carrying arms and ammunition to the Sioux, they seized all they had! but did them no harm." The Miamis were very much enraged at the French for supplying their enemies, the Sioux, with guns and ammunition. It took all the address of Count Frontenac to prevent them from joining the Iroquois ; indeed, they seized upon the French agent and trader, Nicholas Perrot, who had been commissioned to lead the Maramek band to the St. Josephs, and would have burnt him alive had it not been for the Foxes, who interposed in his behalf. This was the commencement of the bitter feeling of hostility with which, from that time, a part of the Miamis always regarded the French. From this period the movements of the tribe were observed by the French with jealous suspicion. We have already shown that in 1699 the Miamis were at Fort Wayne, engaged in transferring across their portage emigrants from Canada to Louisiana, and that, within a few years after, the Weas are described as having their fort and several miles of cultivated fields on the Wea plains below La Fayette. From the extent and character of these improvements, it may be safely assumed that the 62 - HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST. Weas had been established here some years prior to 1718, the date of the Memoir. When the French first discovered the Wabash, the Piankeshaws were found in possession of the land on either side of that stream, from its mouth to the Vermilion River, and no claim had ever been made to it by any other tribe until 1804, the period of a cession of a part of it to the United States by the Delawares, who had obtained their title from the Piankeshaws themselves. We have already seen that at the time of the first account we have relating to the Maumee and the Wabash, the Miamis had villages and extensive improvements near Fort Wayne, on the Wea prairie below La Fayette, on the Vermilion of the Wabash, and at Vincennes. At a later day they established villages at other plaices, viz., near the forks of the Wabash at Huntington, on the Mississinewa, on Eel River near Logansport, while near the source of this river, and westward of Fort Wayne, was the village of the " Little Turtle." Near the mouth of the Tippecanoe was a sixth village. Passing below the Vermilion, the Miamis had other villages, one on Sugar Creek and another near Terre Haute. The country of the Miamis extended west to the watershed between the Illinois and Wabash rivers, which separated their possessions from those of their brethren, the Illinois. On the north were the Pottawatomies, who were slowly but steadily pushing their lines southward into the territory of the Miamis. The superior numbers of the Miamis and their great valor enabled them to extend the limit of their hunting grounds eastward into Ohio, and far within the territory claimed by the Iroquois. " They were the undoubted proprietors' of all that beautiful country watered by the Wabash and its tributaries, and there remains as little doubt that their claim extended as far east as the Scioto." Unlike the Illinois, the Miamis held their own until they were placed upon an equal footing with the tribes eastward by obtaining possession of firearms. With these implements of civilized warfare they were able to maintain their tribal integrity and the independence they cherished. They were not to be controlled by the French, nor did they suffer enemies from any quarter to impose upon them without prompt retaliation. They traded and fought with the French, English and Americans as their interests or passions inclined. They made peace or declared war against other nations of their own race as policy or caprice dictated. More than once they compelled even the arrogant Iroquois to beg from the governors of the American colonies A WARLIKE PEOPLE - 63 that protection which they themselves had failed to secure by their own prowess. Bold, independent and flushed with success, the Miamis afforded a poor field for missionary work, and the Jesuit relations and pastoral letters of the French priesthood have less to say of the Miamis confederacy than any of the other western tribes, the Kickapoos alone excepted. The country of the Miamis was accessible, by way of the lakes, to the fur trader of Canada, and from the eastward, to the adventurers engaged in the Indian trade from Pennsylvania, New York and Virginia, either by way of the Ohio River or a commerce carried on overland by means of pack-horses. The English and the French alike coveted their peltries and sought their powerful alliance; therefore the Miamis were harrassed with the jealousies and diplomacy of both, and if they or a part of their several tribes became inveigled into an alliance with the one, it involved the hostility of the other. The French government sought to use them to chock the westward advance of the British colonial influence, while the latter desired their assistance to curb the French, whose ambitious schemes involved nothing less than the exclusive subjugation of the entire countries westward of the Alleghanies. In these wars between the French and the English the Miamis were constantly reduced in numbers, and whatever might have been the result to either of the former, it only ended in disaster to themselves. Sometimes they divided , again they were entirely devoted to the interest of the English and Iroquois. Then they joined the French against the British and Iroquois, and when the British ultimately obtained the mastery and secured the valley of the Mississippi—the long sought for prize—the Miamis entered the confederacy of Pontiac to drive them out of the country. They fought with the British—except the Piankeshaw band—against the colonies during the revolutionary war. After its close their young men were largely occupied in the predatory warfare waged by the several Maumee and Wabash tribes upon the frontier settlements of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Kentucky. They likewise entered the confederacy of Tecumseh, and, either openly or in secret sympathy, they were the allies of the British in the war of 1812. Their history occupies a conspicuous place in the military annals of the west, extending over a period of a century, during which time they maintained a manly struggle to retain possession of their homes in the valleys of the Wabash and Maumee. The disadvantage under which the Miamis labored, in encounters with their enemies, before they obtained firearms, was often overcome 64 - HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST. by the exercise of their cunning and bravery. "In the year 1680 the Miamis and Illinois were hunting on the St. Joseph River. A party of four hundred Iroquois surprised them and killed thirty or forty of their hunters and captured three hundred of their women and children. After the victors had rested awhile they prepared to return to their homes by easy journeys, as they had reason to believe that they could reach their own villages before the defeated enemy would have time to rally and give notice of their disaster to those of their nation who were hunting in remoter places. But they were deceived; for the Illinois and Miamis rallied to the number of two hundred, and resolved to die fighting rather than suffer their women and children to be carried away. In the meantime, because they were not equal to their enemies in equipment of arms or numbers, they contrived a notable stratagem. After the Miamis had duly considered in what way they would attack the Iroquois, they decided to follow them, keeping a small distance in the rear, until it should rain. The heavens seemed to favor their plan, for, after awhile it began to rain, and rained continually the whole day from morning until night. When the rain began to fall the Miamis quickened their march and passed by the Iroquois, and took a position two leagues in advance, where they lay in an ambuscade, hidden by the tall grass, in the middle of a prairie, which the Iroquois had to cross in order to reach the woods beyond, where they designed to kindle fires and encamp for the night. The Illinois and Miamis, lying at full length in the grass on either side of the trail, waited until the Iroquois were in their midst, when they shot off their arrows, and then attacked vigorously with their clubs. The Iroquois endeavored to use their firearms, but finding them of no service because the rain had dampened and spoiled the priming, threw them upon the ground and undertook to defend themselves with their clubs. In the use of the latter weapon the Iroquois were no match for their more dexterous and nimble enemies. They were forced to yield the contest, and retreated, fighting until night came on. They lost one hundred and eighty of their warriors. The fight lasted about an hour, and would have continued through the night, were it not that the Miamis and Illinois feared that their women and children (left in the rear and bound) would be exposed to some surprise in the dark. The victors rejoined their women and children, and possessed themselves of the fire-arms of their enemies. The Miamis and Illinois then returned to their own country, without taking one Iroquois for fear of weakening themselves. DEFEAT OF THE IROQUOIS - 65 Failing in their first efforts to withdraw the Miamis from the French, and secure their fur trade to the merchants at Albany and New York, the English sent their allies, the Iroquois, against them. A series of encounters between the two tribes was the result, in which the blood of both was profusely shed, to further the purposes of a purely commercial transaction. In these engagements the Senecas—a tribe of the Iroquois, or Five Nations, residing to the west of the other tribes of the confederacy, and, in consequence, being nearest to the Miamis, and more directly exposed to their fury—were nearly destroyed at the outset. The Miamis followed up their success and drove the Senecas behind the palisades that inclosed their villages. For three years the war was carried on with a bitterness only known to exasperated savages. When at last the Iroquois saw that they could no longer defend them-selves against the Miamis, they appeared in council before the Governor of New York, and, pityingly, claimed protection from him, who, to say the least, had remained silent and permitted his own people to precipitate this calamity upon them. " You say you will support us against all your kings and our enemies; we will then forbear keeping any more correspondence with the French of Canada if the great King of England will defend our people from the Twichtwicks and other nations over whom the French have an influence and have encouraged to destroy an abundance of our people, even since the peace between the two crowns," etc. The governor declined sending troops to protect the Iroquois against their enemies, but informed them : "You must be sensible that the Dowaganhaes, Twichtwicks, etc., and other remote Indians, are vastly more numerous than you Five Nations, and that, by their continued warring upon you, they will, in a few years, totally destroy you. I should, therefore, think it prudence and good policy in you to try all possible means to fix a trade and correspondence with all those nations, by which means you would reconcile them to yourselves, and with my assistance, I am in hopes that, in a short time, they might be united with us in the covenant chain, and then you might at all times, without hazard, go hunting into their country, which, I understand, is much the best for beaver. I wish you would try to bring some of them to speak to me, and perhaps I might prevail upon them to come and live amongst you. I should think myself obliged to reward you for such a piece of service as I tender your good advantage, and will always use my best endeavor to preserve you from all your enemies. 66 - HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST. The conference continued several days, during which the Iroquois stated their grievances in numerous speeches, to which the governor graciously replied, using vague terms and making no promises, after the manner of the extract from his speech above quoted, but placed great stress on the value of the fur trade to the English, and enjoining his brothers, the Iroquois, to bring all their peltries to Albany; to maintain their old alliance with the English, offensive and defensive, and have no intercourse whatever, of a friendly nature, with the rascally French of Canada. The Iroquois declined to follow the advice of the governor, deeming it of little credit to their courage to sue for peace. In the meantime the governor sent emissaries out among the Miamis, with an invitation to open a trade with the English. The messengers were captured by the commandant at Detroit, and sent, as prisoners, to Canada. However, the Miamis, in July, 1702, sent, through the sachems of the Five Nations, a message to the governor at Albany, advising him that many of the Miamis, with another nation, had removed to, and were then living at, Tjughsaghrondie, near by the fort which the French had built the previous summer ; that they had been informed that one of their chiefs, who had visited Albany two years before, had been kindly treated, and that they had now come forward to inquire into the trade of Albany, and see if goods could not be purchased there cheaper than elsewhere, and that they had intended to go to Canada with their beaver and peltries, but that they ventured to Albany to inquire if goods could not be secured on better terms. The governor replied that he was extremely pleased to speak with the Miamis about the establishment of a lasting friendship and trade, and in token of his sincere intentions presented his guests with guns, powder, hats, strouds, tobacco and pipes, and sent to their brethren at Detroit, wampum, pipes, shells, nose and ear jewels, looking-glasses, fans, children's toys, and such other light articles as his guests could conveniently carry ; and, finally, assured them that the Miamis might come freely to Albany, where they would be treated kindly, and receive; in exchange for their peltries, everything as cheap as any other Indians in covenant of friendship with the English. During the same year (1702) the Miamis and Senecas settled their quarrels, exchanged prisoners, and established a peace between themselves. The French were not disposed to allow a portion of the fur trade to be diverted to Albany. Peaceable means were first used to dis- URGED TO UNITE AT ONE PLACE - 67 suade the Miamis from trading with the English ; failing in this, forcible means were resorted to. Captain Antoine De La Mothe Cadillac marched against the Miamis and reduced them to terms. The Miamis were not unanimous in the choice of their friends. Some adhered to the French, while others were strongly inclined to trade with the English, of whom .they could obtain a better quality of goods at cheaper rates, while at the same time they were allowed a greater price for their furs. Cadillac had hardly effected a coercive peace with the Miamis before the Iatter were again at Albany. " I have," writes Lord Cournbury to the Board of Trade, in a letter dated August 20, 1708, " been there five years endeavoring to get these nations (referring to the Miamis and another nation) to trade with our people, but the French have' always dissuaded them from coming until this year,. when, goods being very scarce, they came to Albany, where our people have supplied them with goods much cheaper than ever the French did, and they promise to return in the spring with a much greater number of their nations, which would be a very great advantage to this province. I did, in a letter of the 25th day of June last, inform your Lordships that three French soldiers, having deserted from the French at a place they call Le Destroit, came to Albany. Another deserter came from the same place, whom I examined myself, and I inclose a copy of his examination, by which your Lordships will perceive how easily the French, may be beaten out of Canada. The better I am acquainted with this country, and the more I inquire into matters, so much the more I am confirmed in my opinion of the facility of effecting that conquest, and by the method I then proposed." Turning to French documents, we find that Sieur de Callier desired the Miamis to withdraw from their several widely separated villages and settle in a body upon the St. Joseph. At a great council of the westward tribes, held in Montreal in 1694, the French Intendant, in a speech to the Miamis, declares that " he will not believe that the Miamis wish to obey him until they make altogether one and the same fire, either at the River St. Joseph or at some other place adjoining it. He tells them that he has got near the Iroquois, and has soldiers at Katarakoui, in the fort that had been abandoned ; that the Miamis must get near the enemy, in order to imitate him (the Intendant), and be able to strike the Iroquois the more readily. My children," continued the Intendant, "tell me that the Miamis are numerous, and able of themselves to destroy the Iroquois. Like them, all are afraid. What ! do you wish to abandon your country 68 - HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST. to your enemy ? . . Have you forgotten that I waged war against him principally on your account, alone ? Your dead are no longer visible in his country ; their bodies are covered by those of the French who have perished to avenge them. I furnished you the means to avenge them likewise. It depends only on me to receive the Iroquois as a friend, which I will not do on account of you, who would be destroyed were I to make peace without including you in its terms." "I have heard," writes Governor Vaudreuil, in a letter dated the 28th of October, 1719, to the Council of Marine at Paris, " that the Miamis had resolved to remain where they were, and not go to the St. Joseph River, and that this resolution of theirs was dangerous, on account of the facility they would have of communicating with the English, who were incessantly distributing belts secretly among the nations, to attract them to themselves, and that Sieur Dubinson had been designed to command the post of Ouaytanons, where he should use his influence among the Miamis to induce them to go to the River St. Joseph, and in case they were not willing, that he should remain with them, to counteract the effect of those belts, which had already caused eight or ten Miami canoes to go that year to trade at Albany, and which might finally induce all of the Miami nation to follow the example." Finally, some twenty-five years later, as we learn from the letter of M. de Beauharnois, that this French officer, having learned that the English had established trading magazines on the Ohio, issued his orders to the commandants among the Weas and Miamis, to drive the British off by force of arms and plunder their stores. Other extracts might be drawn from the voluminous reports of the military and civil officers of the French and British colonial governments respectively, to the same purport as those already quoted ; but enough has been given to illustrate the unfortunate position of the Miamis. For a period of half a century they were placed between the cutting edges of English and French purposes, during which there was no time when they were not threatened with danger of, or engaged in, actual war either with the French or the English, or with some of their several Indian allies. By this continual abrasion, the peace and happiness which should have been theirs was wholly lost, and their numbers constactly reduced. They had no relief from the strife, in which only injury could result to themselves, let the issue have been what it might between the English and the French, until the power of the latter was finally destroyed in 1763 ; and even then, after the French had given up the country, the Miamis were compelled to de- DECLINE OF THE MIAMIS - 69 fend their own title to it against the arrogant claims of the English. In the effort of the combined westward tribes to wrest their country from the English, subsequent to the close of the colonial war, the Miamis took a conspicuous part: This will be noticed in a subsequent chapter. After the conclusion of the revolutionary war, the several Miami villages from the Vermilion River to Fort Wayne suffered severely from the attacks of the federal government under General Harmer, and the military expeditions recruited in Kentucky, and commanded by Colonels Scott and Wilkinson. Besides these disasters, whole villages were nearly depopulated by the ravages of small-pox. The uncontrollable thirst for whisky, acquired through a long course of years, by contact with unscrupulous traders, reduced their numbers still more, while it degraded them to the last degree. This was their condition in 1814, when General Harrison said of them : " The Miamis will not be in our way. They are a poor, miserable, drunken set, diminishing every year. Becoming too lazy to hunt, they feel the advantage of their annuities. The fear of the other Indians has alone prevented them from selling their whole claim to the United States; and as soon as there is peace, or when the British can no longer intrigue, they will sell." The same authority, in his historical address at Cincinnati in 1838, on the aborigines of the Valley of the Ohio, says : "At any time before the treaty of Greenville in 1795 the Miamis alone could have furnished more than three thousand warriors. Constant war with our frontier had deprived them of many of their braves, but the, ravages of small-pox was the principal cause of the great de-crease in their numbers. They composed, however, a body of the finest light troops in the world. And had they been under an efficient system of discipline, or possessed enterprise equal to their valor, the settlement of the country would have been attended with much greater difficulty than was encountered in accomplishing it, and their final subjugation would have been delayed for some years." , Yet their decline, from causes assigned, was so rapid, that when the Baptist missionary, Isaac McCoy, was among them from 1817 until 1822, and drawing conclusions from personal contact, declared that the Miamis were not a warlike people. There is, perhaps, in the history of the North American Indians, no instance parallel to the utter demoralization of the Miamis, nor an example of a tribe which stood so high and had fallen so low through the practice of all the vices which degrade human beings. Mr. McCoy, within the period named, traveled up and down the Wabash, from Terre Haute to Fort Wayne; and at the villages near Montezuma, on Eel River, at the Missis- 70 - HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST. sinewa and Fort Wayne, there were continuous rounds of drunken debauchery whenever whisky could be obtained, of which men, women and children all partook, and life was often sacrificed in personal broils or by exposure of the debauchees to the inclemency of the weather. By treaties, entered into at various times, from 1795 to 1845, inclusive, the Miamis ceded their lands in Illinois, Indiana and Ohio, and removed west of the Mississippi, going in villages or by detachments, from time to time. At a single cession in 1838 they sold the government 177,000 acres of land in Indiana, which was only a fragment of their former possessions, still retaining a large tract. Thus they alienated their heritage, and gradually disappeared from the valleys of the Maumee and Wabash. A few remained on their reservations and adapted themselves to the ways of the white people, and their descendants may be occasionally met with about Peru, Wabash and Fort Wayne. The money received from sales of their lands proved to them a calamity, rather than a blessing, as it introduced the most demoralizing habits. It is estimated that within a period of eighteen years subsequent to the close of the war of 1812 more than five hundred of them perished in drunken broils and fights. The last of the Miamis to go westward were the Mississinewa band. This remnant comprising in all three hundred and fifty persons, under charge of Christmas Dagney, left their old home in the fall of 1846, and reached Cincinnati on canal boats in October of that year. Here they were placed upon a steamboat and taken down the Ohio, up the Mississippi and Missouri, and landed late in the season at Westport, near Kansas City. Ragged men and nearly naked women and children, forming a motley group, were huddled upon the shore, alone, with no friends to relieve their wants, and exposed to the bitter December winds that blew from the chilly plains of Kansas. In 1670 the Jesuit Father Dablon introduces the Miamis to our notice at the village of Maskoutench, where we see the chief surrounded by his officers of state in all tile routine of barbaric display, and the natives of other tribes paying his subjects the greatest deference. The Miamis, advancing eastward, in the rear of the line of their valorous warriors, pushed their villages into Michigan, Indiana, and as far as the river still bearing their name in Ohio. Coming in collision with the French, English and Americans, reduced by constant wars, and decimated, more than all, with vices contracted by intercourse with the whites, whose virtues they failed to emulate, they make a westward turn, and having, in the progress of time, described the round of a REMOVAL WESTWARD - 71 most singular journey, we at last behold the miserable and friendless remnant on the same side of the Mississippi from whence their war-like progenitors had come nearly two centuries before. From Westport the Mississinewas were conducted to a place near the present village of Lowisburg, Kansas, in the county named (Miami) after the tribe. Here they suffered greatly. Nearly one third of their number died the first year. They were homesick and disconsolate to the last degree. "Strong men would actually weep, as their thoughts recurred to their dear old homes in Indiana, whither many of them would make journeys, barefooted, begging their way, and submitting to the imprecations hurled from the door of the white man upon them as they asked for a crust of bread. They wanted to die to forget their miseries." " I have seen," says Mrs. Mary Baptiste to the author, " mothers and fathers give their little children away to others of the tribe for adoption, and after singing their funeral songs, and joining in the solemn dance of death, go calmly away from the assemblage, to be seen no more alive. The Miamis could not be reconciled to the prairie winds of Kansas ; they longed for the woods and groves that gave a partial shade to the flashing waters of the Wa-pesha. The Wea and Piankeshaw bands preceded the Mississinewas to the westward. They had become reduced to a wretched community of about two hundred and fifty souls, and they suffered severely during the civil war, in Kansas. The Miamis, Weas, Piankeshaws, and the remaining fragments of the Kaskaskias, containing under that name what yet remained of the several subdivisions of the old Illini confederacy were gathered together by Baptiste Peoria, and consolidated under the title of The Confederated Tribes. This little confederation disposed of their reservation in Miami county, Kansas, and adjacent vicinity, and retired to a tract of reduced dimensions within the Indian Territory. Since their last change of location in 1867 they have made but little progress in their efforts toward a higher civilization. The numbers of what remains of the. once numerous Illinois and Miami confederacies are reduced to less than two hundred persons. The Miamis, like the unfortunate man who has carried his dissipations beyond the limit from which there can be no healthy reaction, seem not to have recovered from the vices contracted before leaving the states, and with some notable exceptions, they are a listless, idle people, little worthy of the spirit that inspired the breasts of their ancestors.