The Treaty that Started a War: the Treaty of Fort Wayne, 1809

Treaties with Native peoples were problematic on many levels.  They often involved several tribes and invariably one or more tribes were overlooked and felt the treaty terms did not apply to them, creating conflict.  Or, civil strife in tribes who felt that their leaders lacked the authority to sign over land created friction that often caught frontier settlers in the fighting.  If the government were unlucky, some treaties started full-blown wars.  Such was the case with the Treaty of Fort Wayne of 1809. 

During the opening decades of the Republic, U.S. Indian policy had been to induce Native leaders to sign treaties ceding land for money, trade goods, and alternative ranges out west.  Many negotiators were none too scrupulous about how they went about this.  Maps were redrawn, fraudulent older documents were produced, men were allowed to sign for tribes wo lacked traditional or legal authority to do so, often they did not understand exactly how much land was being ceded or what the actual ramifications of signing were.  Tales of Natives being plied with liquor in order to get them to sign are too numerous to believe it didn't happen a few times.  Nevertheless, territorial governments, Indian agents, private land speculators, military commanders and others set about procuring treaties with the Natives and rushing them off the land.  The most zealous in this regard was future President William Henry Harrison, who was Governor of Indiana Territory from 1801-1812 and negotiated over 13 treaties with Native leaders at various times.  The Treaty of Fort Wayne in 1809 would be his masterpiece.

The Treaty of Greenville in 1795 had opened several thousands of acres of Native land to settlement by Whites, but by 1809 more families were coming into the territory.  Harrison wanted expansion of the treaty boundaries, but some tribes, including the Miami, Wea and Kickapoo were unwilling to part with their lands around the Wabash River.  President James Madison, who was aware of the consequences of Native treaties with so many tribes involved, wanted Harrison to hold back on acquiring any more land.  Harrison, never a man to listen to anyone, decided to go ahead.  He opened negotiations with Potawatomi, Eel River (a Miami off-split) and Miami, offering them large subsidy payments if they would cede the land he was requesting.  The Miami were suspicious that Wea leaders had not been invited to the council and wanted land paid for by the acre, not by the tract.  Harrison agreed to get the Wea's approval on the new treaty, but refused to agree to payment by the acre.

The Potawatomi leaders eventually agreed to sign and won over the Miami.  With the help of Miami leader Pacanne, Harrison convinced the Wea to sign on as well.  Meanwhile, the Kickapoo were living at Prophetstown and closely allied with the Shawnee, so Harrison knew they would be hard to convince.  Not wanting to deal with Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa or the Shawnee in general, he convinced Wea leaders to approach the Kickapoo, who also agreed to the treaty.  By 1810, Harrison felt he had all the signatures he needed to acquire three million acres of land. 

But nobody had reckoned with the Shawnee.  Following the Treaty of Greenville in 1795, Little Turtle of the Miami had asked the Shawnee to leave Indiana and most of them were content to go elsewhere, but not Tecumseh, Tenskwatawa and their followers.  They had built a village at Prophetstown, near modern-day Battle Ground, Indiana and were acquiring more converts to their pan-Indian movement every day.  Tecumseh came to see Harrison at Harrison's mansion of Grouseland, the first of two tense meetings held there.  Although the Shawnee did not live on lands involved in the treaty, Tecumseh was furious.  He believed that, despite their tribal differences, Natives were one nation, with no one group being able to cede land that others also used.  He threatened to kill the leaders who had signed the Fort Wayne Treaty and to seek an alliance with the British.  Harrison rejected his idea that all Natives owned the land in common.  The land was under control of the Miami and Wea, who had ceded over their lands and had the right to do so.  He didn't flinch at Tecumseh's threat to kill the chiefs or involve the British.  If Tecumseh wanted a fight, it was on.  A further meeting at Grouseland in 1811 almost involved personal combat between Harrison, Tecumseh and their armed followers had it not been for a Potawatomi leader who stepped in the way and talked both sides down.

As Tecumseh left to seek further allies for his pan-Indian movement, Harrison began mobilizing for war.  Having pinpointed the Shawnee as the agitators and troublemakers, Harrison mobilized his forces and moved on Prophetstown in November, 1811.  Tecumseh had ordered Tenskwatawa to evacuate the town if Harrison moved to attack it.  Instead, Tenskwatawa mobilized his warriors and met Harrison on the banks of the Tippecanoe River where it joins with the Wabash.  On November 7, 1811, Harrison delivered a crushing defeat and the surviving Natives fled, leaving the town behind to be burned by the Americans.  Indian Removal was less than twenty years away, but following Tippecanoe many Natives began moving to Kansas, Missouri or Oklahoma, or fleeing to Canada to get ahead of the coming storm.  Harrison's treaty was already land and money in the bank.