PHOTO CREDIT: Approximate locations of the Lenape villages in what is now east central Indiana. Image in the public domain.
After the Beaver Wars ended around 1700 CE, Myaamia (Miami) Native Americans returned to their ancestral lands along the Mississinewa and Wabash river valleys. Following the American Revolution, the Myaamia formed the Northwestern Confederacy (officially, United Indian Nations, at their Confederate Council) to stop white theft of Indigenous land in the newly formed Northwest Territory. The Northwestern Confederacy won several major battles but was defeated at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1795. After the war, the Myaamia invited several bands of allied Lenape (Delaware) Native Americans to settle along the West Fork of the White River.
The Lenape had been pushed from their ancestral homelands along the mid-Atlantic coast by colonists. The Lenape established 14 villages along the river, including three in Delaware County. Most of the Indiana Lenape spoke the Unami language, but a few spoke Munsee, including the residents at Munseytown, a village on the bluff overlooking the bend in the White River. The Lenape were forced out of east-central Indiana with the treaty at St. Mary’s, Ohio in 1818. Today, the descendants of Indiana’s Myaamia and Lenape live across the United States. The Delaware Tribe of Indians and the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma are headquartered today in Oklahoma, while the Stockbridge-Munsee Community lives in Wisconsin.
1822 Map of Indiana during the height of colonization.
Image courtesy of Ball State University's Bracken Archive and Special Collections.