Fort Ouiatenon
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Fort Ouiatenon was the first fortified European settlement in what is now called Indiana.[citation needed] It was a French trading post at the joining of the Tippecanoe River and the Wabash River located approximately three miles southwest of modern-day West Lafayette.[1] The name 'Ouiatenon' is a French rendering of the name in the Wea language, waayaahtanonki, meaning 'place of the whirlpool'.
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[edit] French period
Fort Ouiatenon was originally constructed by the French government as a military outpost to protect against Great Britain’s western expansion. Its location among the unsettled woodlands of the Wabash River valley also made it a key center of trade for fur trappers. French merchants and trappers from Quebec would arrive at Fort Ouiatenon in search of beaver pelts and to take advantage of trade relations with the native Wea Indian tribes.
In 1717, Ensign François Picote de Beletre (related to another Picoté de Bélestre, see Adam Dollard des Ormeaux) arrived at the mouth of the Tippecanoe and Wabash with four soldiers, three men a blacksmith and supplies to trade with the nearby Wea people, an Algonquian-speaking nation closely related to the Miami people. They built a stockade on the Wabash, eighteen miles below the mouth of the Tippecanoe. François-Marie Bissot, the Sieur de Vincennes assumed command of the fort sometime in the 1720s. The French settled on the north bank, with Wea villages on the south bank.[2]
In order to convince the Wea to trade exclusively with the French, the Governor-General of New France, Philippe de Rigaud Vaudreuil, issued permits for trade at Ouiatanon. Traders immediately began to bring a steady flow of goods to the new town.[3] Soon the officials in Louisiana sent more men to help Vincennes to hold the Wabash River.[4] At its peak level of activity during the mid-18th century Fort Ouiatenon was home to over 2,000 residents.[citation needed]
[edit] British period
After the surrender of New France to the British in September of 1760, Robert Rogers dispatched troops to occupy Ouiatanon. a contingent of British soldiers led by Lieutenant Edward Jenkins arrived in 1761, capturing and occuping the fort.[5]
On June 1, 1763, during Pontiac's War, the Wea, Kickapoo and Mascouten peoples captured Ouiatenon.[6] They surprised Lieutenant Jenkins and his men and captured Fort Ouiatenon without firing a shot. Seven similar posts were also captured in the widespread Indian uprising against the British presence.
The British made little use of Fort Ouiatenon after the French and Indian War; it was never garrisoned. During the 1780s local Indian tribes used it as a base of operations to stage raids against American settlers pushing westward. Consequently President George Washington ordered the fort to be destroyed in 1791.
[edit] Twentieth century
In 1930 a "replica" of Fort Ouiatenon was built near its original site by a local physician named Richard Wetherill. Dr. Wetherill's blockhouse was actually patterned after a British Fort (using horizontal logs) and does not match the style or type of construction of the original Fort Ouiatenon (with vertical logs). The "replica" blockhouse has become historic in its own right, even though it does not represent the original fort building. In 1970 the site was placed on the National Register of Historic Places by the U.S. Department of the Interior. Today Fort Ouiatenon is open to tourists and is the location of the annual Feast of the Hunters’ Moon. Many rare artifacts from the original Fort Ouiatenon are displayed by the Tippecanoe County Historical Association during Feast of the Hunters’ Moon.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Encyclopedia Britannica Online s. v. "West Lafayette," http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9076617?query=Wabash&ct= (Accessed May 17, 2006).
- ^ Andrew R. L. Cayton, Frontier Indiana (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1996), 5, 7.
- ^ Cayton, 5.
- ^ Cayton, 18
- ^ Cayton, 27.
- ^ Cayton, 28.
