Transforming Thanksgiving Conversations
Based on a letter written by English colonist Edward Winslow, what we have come to call the first Thanksgiving took place in 1621 in what is now Massachusetts. More than four centuries later, our grasp of what was happening during this time in history at Plymouth Colony is being rigorously reassessed.
Around Thanksgiving dining tables this year, people are honoring traditions as well as new understandings. To add to this conversation, we’re sharing our own local history and some of what we know about interactions among Native Americans and white settlers.
“The Miami and Wea peoples were in this area long before the 1600s. They left in the mid-1600s to go west and northwest during the Beaver Wars, and returned in the early 1700s. In the 1600s, tribes like the Potawatomi and Wea became dominant,” according to “Celebrating Hamilton County, Indiana: 200 Years of Change.” The following is also from this official Bicentennial history book.
Newcomers
Non-native fur traders may have begun appearing in the area by 1717. That was when the French trading post at Ouiatenon on the Wabash River (at the site of what is now the city of West Lafayette) was established and the Trace would have been a useful route to get there. Despite this, the area seems to have had little involvement in the disagreements between the French, Natives, and the British over control of the land north of the Ohio River. The area became part of the Northwest Territory according to the U.S. government when it was established in 1787 after the American Revolution. The Native Americans still claimed the land as Myaamionki, the land of the Miami and other tribes. (1)
The trails through Hamilton County were possibly used as a route during the series of battles known as the Northwest Indian War. The explorer William Clark, (later of Lewis and Clark), was part of a military expedition in 1791 that may have used the trails to get from the Wabash River to the Falls of the Ohio. (2) With the Treaty of Greenville in 1795 ending the war, the Lenape (Delaware) Indians and their allied tribe, the Nanticoke, arrived from the east and established towns along the river. Chief Anderson – whose Lenape name was Kikthawenund – eventually became leader. In 1800, the Indiana Territory was created with William Henry Harrison as governor in the still-not-yet-ceded Native Land.
The Lenape established several villages along the White River in the area that would become Hamilton County. The site where 96th Street crosses White River today was called the Lower Delaware Village or Owl’s village. It later had a trading post run by one of the Lenape families that stayed in the area after 1818 (see Chapter 3). There was a small unnamed village near where William Conner would establish his trading post. Another village was where 146th Street crosses White River, and was supposedly burned during the War of 1812. The ruins on the west bank of the river remained a landmark for many years. The Upper Delaware Village was at the horseshoe bend where Stoney Creek joins White River. This is where the first white settlers established themselves. (3) Farther upriver, there was a village called Sarahtown which may have been where River Bend Campground is today.
The main village in Hamilton County was Strawtown. Local lore claimed that it was named for a Lenape Chief named Straw or Strawbridge and a monument was created for him in 1928. However, no such name has been found in any contemporary documents. The earliest mention of the community name is from 1850, saying that it was named for a house with a roof made of straw. Just beyond the present border with Madison County was the village called Nancytown, which had been settled by members of the Nanticoke tribe. The next village was the main tribal community of Andersontown, which would eventually become the city of Anderson. (4)
The Fur Trade – Hamilton County’s First Industry
For close to a century, from around 1717 to around 1820, the fur trade powered the economy in the area that would become Hamilton County. We know little about the trading in the area until the establishment of Fort Ouiatenon in 1717 at the head of the northern end of the Lafayette Trace. Interestingly, the first known European traders in the Hamilton County area were probably from Vincennes. They were the Brouilettes, a French family that received a license in 1801 to trade with the Miami Indians. This apparently included the Lenape Indians who had obtained permission from the Miamis in the late 1700s to settle in the area after being pushed from their homes in the east.
The Brouilettes, (also spelled Bruett, Bullett, Bennett, etc)., established a trading post at the Lenape village on the site of present-day Strawtown. This was a prime spot, as this was the largest village in the area. The family also established a post at what was known as Lower Delaware Village, which was roughly where 96th Street crosses White River today. Members of the family stayed in the county until the 1820s and owned property in the area that would become Carmel (see Chapter 3).
In 1802, the man who is recognized as the first permanent settler of the area, William Conner (1777-1855), arrived to establish a trading post. However, since the Brouilette family had established a post at Strawtown, Conner created his further downriver at a ford later called Jordan’s Ford. Conner then took a Lenape woman as his wife. Her name was Mekinges and, as a daughter of Chief Anderson, she was well-connected. (Importantly, the Lenape tribe is matrilineal, which means that the mother determines the clan of the child. Still, her connections to the Chief would have been useful). (5)
The only other trader in the area was Pete Smith – an African-American who lived with Native Americans at the site on White River where it is joined by Stoney Creek. It’s not certain when he arrived, but it was sometime before 1819.
All of these people were involved in the exchanging of various manufactured items to the Native Americans for animal pelts. The traders would offer utensils, cloth, metal knives and other things. In the archaeological work at Strawtown Koteewi Park, a piece of trade silver was found. This was a silver pin that could be worn on the clothing as an ornament and could be traded again later. The Native Americans in return had pelts from nearly every kind of animal in the area – the most valuable being beaver. Generally, the skins prepared by the Native Americans were usually considered to be of superior quality to those prepared by Europeans.
We have some idea of prices from William Conner’s dealings with later trappers. All of the prices below are in 1800s values:
Beaver skins - $1.00 to $1.25 a pound
Entire deerskin - $1.00 for a male (a buck)
67 to 75 cents for a female (a doe)
Bearskin - from $1.25 to $5.00 (depending on quality)
Fox, mink, and wildcat - 50 to 67 cents.
Raccoons - 37 ½ to 40 cents, a good skin could bring $1.00.
Muskrats - 25 cents
Weasels, groundhogs, and opossums had no trade value. (6)
The fur trade in Hamilton County could be considered to have ended with the Treaty of St. Mary’s in 1818, in which the Native Americans agreed to move farther west and opened the area to white settlement. The Lenape were gone by 1822, removing one of the key sources of pelts. Mekinges went with them and William Conner married a white woman settler about three months after she left. The Brouilettes had already returned to Vincennes. Pete Smith was taken away by a man who claimed that Smith was his runaway slave and was never seen again (see Chapter 7). Pioneers moved into the area and began clearing the forest for farming. The animal population dropped rapidly, with most of the larger animals gone by the 1860s. There was still some interest in hides and pelts, as the first industry in Noblesville was Cogswell’s Tannery, which opened in 1825. However, a changing economic base signaled the end of the opening chapter in the county’s history.