Wabash Natives

American Indians entered the region south of the Great Lakes nearly 10,000 years ago. Some early sites along the Wabash have been extensively preserved and investigated by archaeological teams over the last 75 years. The people we are most familiar with were cultures that established permanent locations along the Wabash and its tributaries. Researchers who want to learn about these cultures can form opinions based on a variety of evidence based on archeology and later, the historical record.

The timeline for cultures in the Wabash region begins with the Paleo period, dating back from perhaps 27,000 BP (before present) to 8,000 BC. – these were the first human inhabitants of North America until the end of the last ice age. Archaic is the next classification of the period that extends from approximately 8000 to 1000 BC. During this period, agriculture began and these people domesticated a large number of crops and lived in semi-permanent villages that lived by both farming and hunting. The following period has been classified as the Woodland period from about 1000 BC. C. until 1600 d. C. This is a period of significant change when pottery making was established. These people, in general, led more settled lives and dependency on agriculture grew tremendously. They began to build small mounds for funerary purposes. A culture known as the Mississippian developed in the Southeast and Wabash region. Mississippian mound builders spread their culture to the Wabash/Ohio Valley from about 900 AD. C. until 1400 AD. C. These people existed in large and complex communities, including Angel Mounds, just east of present-day Evansville.

It is generally believed that a form of chiefdom operated during the Mississippian period. These chiefdoms, operating from temple mound complexes, apparently controlled specific territories generally associated with a defined floodplain environment. The chiefs were responsible for the redistribution of food between the peripheral communities and the community of origin. Whether these chiefs were able to control the exchange of goods within their territory and with other chiefdoms, employ full-time artisans and specialists, or function as both religious and political heads are questions that require further investigation. The Caborn-Welborn phase in Wabash history was a culture primarily in the area near Lake Hovey west of Evansville. These people arose from the decline of the Angel Mounds site and traded or interacted with late prehistoric populations to the north and northwest that scientists call the Oneota and to the south and southeast in the central Mississippi Valley and eastern Tennessee. The natives who lived in this region located their communities, villages, and towns along a 40-mile stretch of the Ohio, just east of the junction with the Wabash. The Vincennes Phase was another Mississippi cultural site nearly 100 acres in size and had about 12 platform mounds in Illinois. The Merom site in Sullivan County, Indiana, located on a 5-acre bluff above Wabash, may be connected to this culture dating to around 1200 AD It was surrounded on two sides by stone and earth walls and on the west by deep natural ravines that led to the Wabash River.

Due to a shift of complex villages and chiefdoms for reasons that remain unclear and the general abandonment of the Wabash region in the mid-17th century, there is a major fracture in our practical knowledge of the southern Great Lakes and Ohio Valley. . A series of wars and skirmishes during this time between factions of the Iroquois League who invaded this region for the extirpation of beavers and fur-bearing creatures from their homelands with the people of the lower Great Lakes causes gaps in the record. archeology that are not easy to solve. bridged It’s worth noting that a century later, leaders of historic tribes like Miami’s make speeches that go on record and reflect their belief that they were the ancient occupants of this region before the Iroquois Wars. This was said with little or no objection from dozens of other tribal leaders and elders present. It is known that by the late 17th century, the French were making contact with the Miami, Piankeshaw, Wea, Illini, and other Algonquian people who were apparently located in an overpopulated region north of the Wabash in Wisconsin. They were starving and living in far less than ideal conditions. Many of these groups, including those in Miami and Illinis, were not native to Wisconsin due to observations by early French explorers that these groups lacked winter gear such as snowshoes and other cold winter devices.

By 1679, a large Miami group was already living on the south bend of Lake Michigan’s St. Joseph River. Another part of Miami or perhaps a political division of them moved to Starved Rock, Illinois on the Illinois River in 1682. Wea moved to the lower Wabash as early as 1691, some 20 miles below the mouth of the Tippecanoe River. The Crane or Atchatchakangouen Division moved from the Kankakee region of the St. Joseph River of Lakes Michigan to the head of the Maumee at Fort Wayne in about 1687. This was not far from the head of the Wabash and was at the northern end of a Portage between Detroit and the lower Wabash region. As French forts were built in the Wabash Valley, the native populations grew dependent on these sources of goods, and thus places like Fort Wayne, Lafayette, Vincennes, and Terre Haute became home to major French divisions. Miami and related groups like Piankeshaw. .

Names that are integral to Wabash history include Tecumseh of Shawnee, who later moved his followers to a site near Battleground, Indiana, along with his brother Tenskwatawa the Prophet; Little Turtle of the Miami, who became the greatest war captain and diplomat ever recorded in the history of the people of Miami; and Winnemac of the Potawatomi, a portion of whose tribe moved in the early 19th century to the northern Wabash. Chief John Richardville and his son-in-law Topeah or Francis Lafontaine controlled the Fort Wayne-Wabash region for more than 50 years. Pacan was a major player and leader of the Crane gang until his death in 1815. Shawnee of Blue Jacket, who had been driven from their Ohio homelands, established a connection in the upper Wabash in the late 18th century. . Frances Slocum became a white captive first of the Lenape and then married in Miami, thus establishing her place in her history on the Mississinewa, a tributary of the Wabash. Kakima Burnett and his descendants came to Wabash after establishing a prosperous trading business in the St. Joseph region in the latter half of the 18th century. Kakima contributed to the survival and even successful early 19th century Potawatomi fur trade in the northern Wabash region.

Wabash’s own name comes from “Wabashiki”, a Miami word meaning White Water. Salamonie River takes its name from the Miami word for bloodroot. Lagro and Wabash are small towns on the banks of the Wabash. Lagro is named after a Miami chief who had a town there in the late 18th century. Miami County obviously takes its name from the tribe that found its home nearby. Paoli, Patoka, and Peoria are all place names that have their linguistic roots in the Miami dialect of Algonquin.

It is not just place names that modern society recognizes as having an origin in native culture. Some of the most profound changes in Euro-American culture occurred due to native agricultural practices, including but not limited to the cultivation of corn, beans, squash, potatoes, tomatoes, tobacco, and popcorn. The shelves of our modern grocery stores would be significantly altered were it not for the contributions of the natives. The natives established trails and paths over the animal paths and those same paths are used today as modern highways. Many modern cities have their origins as native peoples in the Wabash. Fort Wayne to Evansville and almost every town in between has grown where a native village once stood. Would the French have established posts in the Wabash Valley if there was no one to trade with? The largest Mississippi mound village in the United States is located just 130 miles west of Wabash and through trade routes, political ties, and cultural traditions, this site is directly related to Angel Mounds with a population of 20,000. and 30,000 which at its height around 1000 AD was three to four times the size of any European city of the time.

The Wabash natives have established and used complex plant fiber harvesting, processing, and braiding techniques, probably since the glacial ice retreated, but it undoubtedly peaked in the Mississippian period. This use can be seen in the inlaid designs on ceramic vessels. An abundance or surplus of this textile material was available for use in ceramic design and probably served to establish the direction of trade and commerce in the Wabash Valley over 500 years ago. Samples of intact fiber bags have been found in the Blanco River dating back to 300 B.C. These were not the products of primitive savages. These were skilled and forward-thinking people who settled on inland waterways to make use of the abundance of plants and food, and other resources found in and around the Wabash region.