t
Wapauckanata, on the Auglaize. These settlements were made immediately
after the treaty of Greenville, and with the consent of the Miamis,
whom I consider the real owners of these lands. The chiefs of this band
of Shawanoes, Blackhoof, Wolf and Lewis, are attached to us from
principle as well as interest--they are all honest men.

"The Miamis have their principal settlement at the forks of the Wabash,
thirty miles from fort Wayne; and at Mississinaway, thirty miles lower
down. A band of them under the name of Weas, have resided on the
Wabash, sixty miles above Vincennes; and another under the Turtle on
Eel river, a branch of the Wabash, twenty miles north-west of fort
Wayne. By an artifice of Little Turtle, these three bands were passed
on general Wayne as distinct tribes, and an annuity granted to each.
The Eel river and Weas, however, to this day call themselves Miamis,
and are recognized as such by the Mississinaway band. The Miamis,
Maumees or Tewicktowes, are the undoubted proprietors of all that
beautiful country which is watered by the Wabash and its branches; and
there is as little doubt that their claim extended at least as far east
as the Scioto. They have no tradition of removing from any other
quarter of the country; whereas all the neighboring tribes, the
Piankishaws excepted, who are a branch of the Miamis, are either
intruders upon them, or have been permitted to settle in their country.
The Wyandots emigrated first from lake Ontario, and subsequently from
lake Huron--the Delawares from Pennsylvania and Maryland--the Shawanoes
from Georgia--the Kickapoos and Potawatamies from the country between
lake Michigan and the Mississippi--and the Ottawas and Chippewas from
the peninsula formed by lakes Michigan, Huron and St Clair, and the
strait connecting the latter with Erie. The claims of the Miamis were
bounded on the north and west by those of the Illinois confederacy,
consisting originally of five tribes, called Kaskaskias, Cahokias,
Peorians, Michiganians, and Temorais, speaking the Miami language, and
no doubt branches of that nation.

"When I was first appointed governor of Indiana territory, these once
powerful tribes were reduced to about thirty warriors, of whom
twenty-five were Kaskaskias, four Peorians, and a single Michiganian.
There was an individual lately alive at St. Louis, who saw the
enumeration made of them by the Jesuits in the year 1745, making the
number of their warriors four thousan