[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 152 (Tuesday, November 2, 1999)]
[House]
[Pages H11364-H11369]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
{time} 2230
NORTHWEST TERRITORY OF THE GREAT LAKES, AMERICA'S FIRST FRONTIER
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Riley). Under the Speaker's announced
policy of January 6, 1999, the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Souder) is
recognized for 60 minutes.
Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I would like to reiterate what I just said a
minute ago as far as the gentleman from Florida's work for many years
as a Senate staffer and then as a leader here in the House and has been
down in the region for multiple times. You can hear the frustration in
his voice about the mismatch, particularly in the past, between the
rhetoric and the action. And while General McCaffrey, the drug czar,
and General Wilhelm in SouthCom and others are aggressively working to
try to interdict these drugs before they hit our country and working
with us in multiple areas, this has been a frustrating process because
a lot of times over at the White House, the rhetoric is not matching
the action. Those who are paying for that are our kids in the streets,
families that are being wrecked, our jail systems and prison systems
that are clogged with people who have abused illegal narcotics, partly
because we have let down our interdiction guard and this stuff has
flooded our Nation at a very cheap price and high purity.
I am here tonight to talk about a totally different issue. I serve on
the Subcommittee on National Parks of the Committee on Resources. One
of my goals has been to work with a number of the historic areas in
this country in trying to work with historic preservation. I plan this
week to introduce a bill along with many of my colleagues from the
Midwest called the Northwest Territory of the Great Lakes, America's
First Frontier National Heritage Area. I want to give a little bit of
background about this tonight and set up this piece of legislation
which I believe has been a long time in coming and is a very important
thing for the Midwest.
Many people are not even aware of what the Northwest Territory is,
and that is why we have to put the Northwest Territory of the Great
Lakes. They think it is someplace up in Canada or somewhere around
Washington and Oregon, in the northwestern part of the continental
United States, but in fact the Northwest Territory in the famous
Northwest Ordinance of 1787 was America's first western frontier. At
the end of the American Revolution in the treaty with Great Britain, we
all of a sudden received lands that heretofore had not been part of the
Continental Congress of the United States Government. So even while we
were under the Articles of Confederation, they were busy putting
together the first guidelines of how a democratic government would work
in new areas. In 1785 they passed laws on how to subdivide the land,
which we still largely use today, as new settlers were moving in and
what relations, good and bad, we would have with Native Americans, the
Indian tribes in those zones.
Basically the Northwest Territory, which did not have State divisions
at that point, and this map, I want to thank the Library of Congress
for this. They somewhat cut off the eastern side of Ohio but it is
Ohio, Indiana, Michigan and Illinois that were the original Northwest
Territory. This area of Wisconsin that includes part of Minnesota at
that time was part of Illinois, and so for the purposes of our act, up
until the point of the end of this pioneer period, Wisconsin would be
included but actually Wisconsin became a separate territory as did
Minnesota and historically, while geographically was part of that
Northwest Territory, was not considered as a territory or State. In
other words, once there were significant numbers of people there, they
were not really part of the Northwest Territory.
At the point of the original Northwest Territory and the Ordinance,
there were not very many people here. The bulk of the people were in
the eastern side of Ohio, just across from Pittsburgh, pretty heavily
around Cincinnati, and some in the southern part of Indiana, a few in
Vincennes, in the southern part of Illinois, some along the Ohio River.
The rest of this was Indian land, a few scattered French villages where
traders of questionable allegiance were still located and a number of
British forts. The British were in fact supposed to have left this
territory but did not. They were still in the Detroit area, up in the
Mackinac area, in the Fort Dearborn area, around Chicago, and did not
really leave until John Jay's treaty later, just before 1800, around
1793 to 1795. They started moving back across over to the Windsor,
Canada, area, but amazingly they still kept some Canadian troops down
as far as what is now Fort Wayne and other critical points, as well as
British agents stirring up the different tribes in hopes of coming
back. And then once again around the War of 1812 time, the British came
back in and it was not really until the War of 1812 that this really
became part of the United States rather than Canada, which is another
important part of this.
At the time that the British ceded this to the United States, the
Native Americans continued to claim all of Ohio down to the Ohio River,
most of Indiana, all of Illinois and basically all of Michigan. So
while the British gave us control of this, they gave us control without
treaty and without any justification as far as the Indians were
concerned. The British felt they could continue to control that area,
so they did not give it up.
So why should this be a heritage area and what are we looking at
here? First off, we are defining this fairly tightly. The period that
would be covered is from 1785 until 1830. Why 1830? By 1830, even
northwest Ohio was starting to get fairly well settled. We have not
finalized it, maybe 1835, 1830, but somewhere in that area. A book on
the Ohio frontier considers the end of their frontier period at 1830.
Indian removal in Indiana finally occurred in its final stages in the
1840s. Michigan by 1840. The degree that they had settlers there, most
of them by that point were farmers which is a sign that it has been
pacified and the pioneer period is certainly down. In Illinois, it was
starting to get pretty heavily settled from central up and some around
the Fort Dearborn/Chicago area, and really after the Black Hawk so-
called war where the Indians were removed from Illinois, that time
period around 1830, 1835 was really the end of the frontier period.
So the sites that would be covered by this heritage area would fall
first in a date period of 1785 to the middle 1830s. What is the
dominant thing and why did I select tonight this particular map? One of
the things that becomes really apparent is there were not highways,
there were not canals, there were not railroads, there were not air
systems. The United States in that period was defined by its rivers and
rivers were our highways. In other words, to understand the Northwest
Territory, or
[[Page H11365]]
really any part of the United States and any part of any heritage area
that we should do should start with the topography, it should start
with the geography and with the landscape and nature itself, because
that is really what our heritage is and that is how we largely
developed. If it was not actually around a river or the Great Lakes,
which is really a defining region as well and also another major part
of communication, the other way it could get defined is, for example,
the capital of Ohio is Columbus. Why Columbus? Because it is right in
the center. The capital of Indiana is Indianapolis, right in the
center. The capital of Illinois is Springfield, right in the center.
The capital of Wisconsin is Madison, right in the center. The capital
of Michigan is Lansing which is just south center but certainly the
center between Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo and so on and Detroit. In other
words, if it was not a river that determined it, it was still
geographical that your capital was in the center of where the people
were. That was even true in the early days. The first capital in
Indiana, the territorial capital was in Vincennes because that was the
kind of population center, that is where William Henry Harrison was
based. The first state capital was in Corydon because most of the
people were in southern Indiana. The first capital in Ohio was
Chillicothe because that was kind of where the people were between
Cincinnati and the eastern side, and then it moved up to Columbus, in
between Cleveland, Toledo, Cincinnati and the different cities. So you
can understand first the heritage of an area by understanding its
geography.
Now, a couple of things jump out from this. First off, the importance
of the Ohio River. There would be no Lewis and Clark adventure if we
had not settled this area first. For one reason, if you could not
control the Ohio River, you could not get to the Missouri River and to
go to the West. Thomas Jefferson understood that and he knew that
unless he could get pacification and settlement in this area, he was
not going to make the Louisiana Purchase, that is why this is the first
frontier, and he was not going to send Lewis and Clark out. In fact,
Lieutenant William Clark was not worried about going to the Pacific
Ocean, he was up in the area at the Battle of Fallen Timbers and other
battles in this area because this was the first frontier.
My hometown of Fort Wayne, Indiana, was important for another reason.
If we had a larger U.S. map here, if you started and came in from
Quebec City, which at that time was the key French settlement and went
down through Montreal and then wanted to get to New Orleans, you would
go down through the St. Lawrence River, down through Lake Ontario, Lake
Erie to around what is present day Toledo, come down the Maumee River,
at the Maumee River there was a portage at an Indian village called
Kekionga. In Kekionga there was a small portage, you could either go to
Boy Creek, Little Wabash, and connect with the Wabash River which then
went down Indiana, all the way down to here, connected the Ohio River,
which then connected the Mississippi River, which was then, of course,
New Orleans.
Now Chief Little Turtle, the war chief of the Miami Indians of
Indiana, said and referred to the village of Kekionga as that
``glorious gate which the Miamis had the happiness to own and through
which all the good words of their chiefs had to pass north to the south
and from east to the west.'' What did he mean by that? Since that was
the only portage of navigable rivers for the French, it became a
critical area. In fact one French fort, two British forts and two
American forts eventually were at that location now called Fort Wayne,
because it was not only critical this way but there was as much traffic
if you wanted to go from this Great Lake to this Great Lake. You had
two choices. Either go up like this and all the way through the straits
of Mackinac and on down or you could come into Fort Wayne, portage and
come to Fort Dearborn this way. That is what Chief Little Turtle meant
when he said it was east-west and north-south. It became a critical
junction.
There were other critical junctions as well, some less important. For
example, to the Indians, this area of the Great Miami River which
Anthony Wayne later went up and the different battle things was never
really an important navigable river to the modern Native Americans
because there were always settlers pushing in along the Ohio River and
it was a battle zone and not somewhere where the Native Americans
really developed a stable community or was within their own land
structure. The French and the British tended to concentrate up in these
zones. The fur trade was better here, the timber trade was better and
they tended to be concentrated up this direction. The settlers coming
across into Kentucky and across from Pennsylvania were tending to come
further south.
So you have to understand the geography. Now, understand the
importance of this Northwest Territory. If this had been part of Canada
from here up, we would have lost the agriculture, the farm belt of the
United States, some of the best producing agriculture land, timber
land, iron and copper and many of the critical natural resources that
today are so important to our country.
There were also critical battles here that were decisive in the
settlement of the United States. Among the important battles was where
Harmar and St. Clair were defeated, eventually Anthony Wayne came up,
this area along the Great Miami River, the Indians fled from Kekionga
and Fort Wayne to try to get up by the British at Fort Miami by Toledo
and at the Battle of Fallen Timbers was really the major breakthrough
for the United States settlement of the Midwest. After that period, the
next big battle was the Battle of Tippecanoe where William Henry
Harrison won right near Lafayette and what is now Purdue University.
There also was a battle just across from Detroit over in Ontario, the
Battle of Thames. The battle which is now celebrated at Put-in-Bay
where Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry defeated the British in control of
the Great Lakes and really settled the fact of whether this was going
to be part of Canada and the United States. So there were a number of
very critical battles.
There were also a lot of interesting people. Mad Anthony Wayne as he
was called is certainly an interesting individual, very important in
the American Revolution. At Stony Point, at Valley Forge, other
critical battles. In fact, we have a number of his items in Fort Wayne
at our Allen County Historical Museum. Next Monday we are having an
official dedication of a new letter for our public library in the
Indiana Collection. I include the following material for the Record at
this point.
Rare Gen. Wayne Letter Displayed at Library
(By Bob Caylor)
A magnificently preserved Revolutionary War letter written
by Gen. ``Mad'' Anthony Wayne will find a place of honor in
the city that grew from a fort he founded.
The letter was written by Wayne in 1782, just three days
before his troops met the British in a skirmish along the
Combahoe River in South Carolina. Theirs would be the last
American-British fighting of the war.
The letter was donated to the Allen County Public Library
earlier this year. The library will place it on display in
its rare-books room in a dedication ceremony Monday.
Gen. Wayne, a surveyor before the war began, was not a
prolific correspondent like many of the Founding Fathers, and
letters from his pen are uncommon.
``Apparently they are fairly rare,'' said Steven Fortriede,
the library's associate director. ``As far as we know,
there's nothing similar in Fort Wayne.''
Bringing the letter to Fort Wayne took the combined efforts
of a Fort Wayne history buff, a circle of generous donors and
a Noblesville man who trades in rare military artifacts.
It began early this year, when Duane Arnold, owner of the
Gentleman Soldier Gallery in Noblesville, learned a private
collector in Indiana was looking to sell the letter. It had
been in his collection for about 20 years, and he likely
would have sold it out of state, Arnold said.
``I thought if possible, we should try to keep it in
state,'' he said.
Arnold, who was born in Fort Wayne, has clients in this
area. Among them is Fort Wayne attorney Jack Lawson, who
collects Revolutionary and Civil War weapons.
``Jack is someone who's very interested in history and very
committed to Fort Wayne,'' Arnold said.
He showed Lawson, the letter, and Lawson hit on the idea of
finding donors to divide the $10,000 price and then donating
the letter for public display.
Hew had no trouble finding takers.
``Once it was explained to (potential donors) what the
letter was and what its historical significance was, we had
no difficulty,'' Lawson said.
[[Page H11366]]
Mostly, he appealed to donors' civic spirit.
``This belongs to Fort Wayne. It would be a monument for
the city,'' he told them.
Wayne's letter was written Aug. 24, 1782, from Drayton Hall
in South Carolina. In it, Wayne tells Gen. Nathaniel Green
what forces he believed he would need to handle the British.
Drayton Hall, incidentally, survived the devastation of the
Civil War, adding another dimension of historical appeal to
the letter.
``We can see the house. We can imagine the room in which
Anthony Wayne actually wrote the letter,'' Arnold said.
Gen. Wayne's military career converged with local history a
dozen years later, when he led an American army in a campaign
against Indians through what is now Ohio and Indiana. His
Fort Wayne at the confluence of our three rivers was
established in 1794.
Arnold said Wayne's military success against Chief Little
Turtle opened the path to settlement here much earlier.
``Without Anthony Wayne's actions, it's extremely unlikely
that Indiana would have been achieving statehood within about
20 years after that time,'' he said.
____
[From the Allen County Public Library]
Wayne's Letter to Gen. Green--Drayton Hall, 24 August, 1782
`Dear Sir: If a detachment from this army be deemed
expedient to prevent the enemy from effecting a forage at
Combahe I wish to take charge of it; two hundred infantry &
one hundred dragoons with two Howitz (ers; ed. note) will be
fully adequate to the business and to make the Britons suffer
for their temerity should they commit themselves on shore.--
The horse can be foraged, & the troops rationed without
difficulty, whilst on this duty.
Yours very sincerely,
Anthony Wayne.
N.B. Should this request then meet your approbation I would
wish to march this evening at--biding.
This letter is a letter that Anthony Wayne wrote regarding his
preparations in putting together this battle, and this article details
how this letter came into possession, how often historic letters like
this are lost, and also gives some background on Anthony Wayne which I
am going to read briefly here. He was nicknamed ``Mad'' long before he
founded Fort Wayne. I am reading from Bob Caylor's article in the Fort
Wayne News-Sentinel this afternoon.
{time} 2245
Naturally it is not easy to separate romantic lore from fact when it
comes to Revolutionary War heroes, but an appealing tale purports to
explain the general's nickname. In 1779, General Washington summoned
young General Wayne, then only 34 years old but already distinguished
in battle, and asked him to storm Stony Point, a British fort on the
Hudson River. Stony Point was a forbidding target. It sat atop a high
rocky hill surrounded by water on three sides. The only land approach
was through a marsh that flooded daily. Anthony Wayne was not put off.
``General, if you will only plan it, I will storm hell,'' Wayne told
him. ``Perhaps, General Wayne, we had better try Stony Point first,''
Washington responded. Overhearing this exchange, a soldier exclaimed
Wayne surely was mad, and a nickname was born.
Now, after two devastating defeats of the American armies, the
largest defeats in American history, other than at Wounded Knee, and
arguably St. Clair's defeat was a lot more significant and larger than
Wounded Knee, one occurred right at Fort Wayne where Harmar's army was
set back and had to retreat in disgrace, and St. Clair lost something
on the order to wounded and injured 80 percent of his troops in that,
General Washington said unless we can control the junction at Kekionga,
the West will be lost. And he said I have to call Anthony Wayne out of
retirement.
Mad Anthony Wayne trained for a year, set up a string of forts
through Congressman Boehner's district all the way up to Fort Recovery
in a whole string, because he wanted to make sure, unlike St. Clair and
Harmar, that he had the supplies behind him as he moved into this
tricky territory.
Little Turtle, who was the war chief of the Miamis, kind of saw the
handwriting on the wall. In fact, this is a description from a book
about Anthony Wayne by Harry Emerson Wildes that is fascinating
commentary on Little Turtle, but also on Anthony Wayne.
Little Turtle, tall, sour disposition, crafty war chief of
the Miamis, was inclined to head Wayne's invitation to
negotiate piece. The 40 year old warrior, veteran of both the
Harmar and St. Clair campaigns, called his fellow chiefs into
conference. Standing straight before him, his foot long
silver earrings jingling as he tossed his head, his 3 huge
nose jewels glittering in the firelight, he told Stalwart
Buckongehelas, leader of the Delaware Indians, and Blue
Jacket, Shawnee war chief, that Indian luck had been too good
to last.
Now, this is part of the remaining what remains of Little Turtle's
speech.
We have beaten them twice under separate commanders. We
cannot expect the same good fortune always to attend us. The
Americans are now led by a chief who never sleeps. Night and
day are alike to him. Notwithstanding the watchfulness of our
young men, we have never been able to surprise him. Think
well of this. There is something that whispers to me it would
be prudent to listen to his offers of peace.
Now, in fact Little Turtle because of Blue Jacket and Buckongehelas
leading the Delawares and the Shawnees and many Miamis into battle,
they did have the battle with Anthony Wayne. Anthony Wayne then
defeated them at Fallen Timbers. The British would not allow them into
their fort. At that point the tribes scattered. Anthony Wayne marched
back down the Maumee River to control the junction at Fort Wayne that
was so critical and build a fort. Later there was a second fort built
there as well and on a little bit higher ground.
Now, that fort, Anthony Wayne left a strong garrison there, because
he knew they had to control that junction. Then he marched back down to
Greenville. Little Turtle and the other Indian chiefs wanted to have
the peace negotiations up in Fort Wayne. Anthony Wayne figured out that
if he went up to Kekionga, he would be too far and separated from the
Great Miami River where the supplies came. So he said you have to come
down to Greenville.
After much kicking around, after all, they had been defeated and most
of their crops had been destroyed, the Indians reluctantly came to
Greenville, and the Treaty of Greenville became really the first big
treaty in the settlement of the Northwest.
I will also mention Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry. William Henry
Harrison, I have a document that I want to show here too, this
beautiful piece of political and historic memorabilia that has been
loaned to my office by a friend of mine, Mike Tonger, who has a
business here in town, and he has let us display this in the front
office. This is a scarf, often one of the pieces of political
memorabilia that people would distribute or collect related to
different campaigns.
General William Harrison, Indiana has no native born presidents of
the United States, but we have two that spent significant, actually
three, that have spent significant time in Indiana. Two of them are
Harrisons, who are from Virginia, Benjamin Harrison, who was in Indiana
at the time he was elected president, and William Henry Harrison, who
headed the Indiana territory and fought many battles in Indiana, and
then our third is Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln was born in
Kentucky, finished his life in Illinois, but, as we say in Indiana,
Indiana made Lincoln, Lincoln made Illinois.
But William Henry Harrison spent much of his life in Indiana. Because
after the period of time from when Anthony Wayne won his battle and the
Treaty of Greenville we had a period of peace, but it was a very
restless peace. And William Henry Harrison, then in charge of the
Northwest Territory, based down in Vincennes, Indiana, William Henry
Harrison was constantly pushing the Indian tribes for additional land
concessions, because people wanted to move up from the Ohio river and
farther up into different states.
He had two treaties, the First Treaty of Fort Wayne, the Second
Treaty of Fort Wayne, there were a couple of other treaties, but that
was causing a backlash among the Indian tribes in the Midwest. Probably
one of the most dynamic Indian leaders, much written about, very
colorful, dramatic, what, charismatic leader, it was Tecumseh. Tecumseh
decided what was needed was the Indian tribes to separate their kind of
competitiveness and develop into a confederation. This confederation
was his dream. He even went to the southern parts of the United States
to recruit different Indian tribes, saying look, these Americans are
coming across, they are taking our lands. No matter what they tell us,
all they want is more lands. They cheat us, they give us beads and a
few dollars and take thousands of acres. We need to unite as a
confederation.
[[Page H11367]]
He won some allies in the south and brought them north. But while he
was away his brother the Prophet, so-called, there is a lot of debate
why the Prophet got his name, he clearly had one eye, was very
colorful, was a medicine man of some sorts, he basically was trying to
stir his people to earlier action, got a little restless.
William Henry Harrison sitting down there in Vincennes, said now is a
good time to teach these guys a lesson. He marched up from Vincennes to
what was called Prophet's Town. Prophet, because he was giving these
mystical trances and dances and celebrations, was gathering a lot of
Indians around, including many Miami from the Kekionga area, who, while
their chiefs were not too enamored of this, a lot of their young braves
felt the older Indians were giving up too soon, and so many of them
joined the Prophet.
William Henry Harrison marched up, they had some exchanges, a lot of
debate about what exactly happened here, but basically common
historical assumption would be that one night when the Indians were
celebrating and drunk, William Henry Harrison walked in and wiped them
out. That, of course, became the famous battle of Tippecanoe, which was
the slogan that led him to be President of the United States,
Tippecanoe and Tyler too. Tyler, of course, was the Virginian who
became president, because Harrison got pneumonia when he was giving his
address here at his inaugural address, got pneumonia and Tyler became
another one of the accidental presidents. But it was the battle of
Tippecanoe that led to the slogan.
Now, the Whig party never really did elect a president based on any
Whig principles, which were kind of whatever the other party wasn't.
But they had great slogans and they often ran generals, like Zachary
Taylor and William Henry Harrison.
You can tell from this famous historical piece of political
memorabilia here that what is notably from this it is not a party
platform. It is not like when William Henry Harrison is elected, this
is what he is going to do. What it says is here is the hero of
Tippecanoe, William Henry Harrison, hero of Tippecanoe. These barrels
say hard cider, which is basically alcohol, and so he was known as the
log cabin and hard cider man.
The slogan here talks about the log cabin, how he was born in a log
cabin. It talks about him being a hero of Tippecanoe. The glorious
field of Tippecanoe to the log cabin of North Bend.
Now, that is the pitch that William Henry Harrison had, not that he
was going to lower taxes, keep government small, build more rivers. It
is that you are going to get a lot of hard cider, he was from a log
cabin, and he won this battle of Tippecanoe by blind-siding the Indians
when they were drunk.
Now, beyond that William Henry Harrison was actually a pretty good
territorial governor. He won the battle of Thames over by East of
Windsor that was very important and seemed to be good at balancing the
politics of the era, and part of his political skill was that he did
not put out a party platform. He ran on hard liquor and log cabin and
the battle of Tippecanoe.
I mentioned earlier Lieutenant William Clark of Lewis and Clark fame
was here. I mentioned Tecumseh, the Prophet. Blue jacket is a half
breed, as they would say, part anglo, part Native American, who became
the leader of the Shawnee. In Ohio they have one of the state parks, a
famous play about him that you can go see at night during the summers.
There are a number of books about him. He was a fascinating character.
A number of other interesting characters in the Northwest Territory
were Arthur St. Clair, who, even though he had the most humiliating
defeat in American history, became a Governor of Ohio. He did not
understand why people wanted to join Jefferson's party and kind of went
down as a sour old man with that. But was a very significant person,
has St. Clair's, Ohio, and other places named after him.
In Indiana, we had Jonathan Jennings, our first Member of Congress
from Indiana, key settler in the Corydon area. William Wells, who
married Little Turtle's daughter. William Wells, nobody trusted William
Wells. He married Little Turtle's daughter. When Anthony Wayne is
marching up to try to defeat the Indians, William Wells is working as
his scout. Meanwhile, Henry Harrison never trusted him because even
though he was on the side of the Americans, he never knew whether he
was working for Little Turtle or the Americans, or, as is more likely
the case, himself, whichever served best.
But in the end William Wells died serving the American government,
because he was sent over to Fort Dearborn in Chicago during this period
between wars, between the settlement of the Treaty of Greenville and
the War of 1812, William Wells was told to evacuate the people at
Dearborn in spite of the fact there were warnings of an ambush, and he
was ambushed and massacred along with all the other people from Fort
Dearborn, with the exception of just a couple who escaped.
In Fort Wayne we have a number of things named after William Wells,
Wells Street. We have one of the major streets along near the Kekionga
Village area and where the forts were is called Spy Run, because he was
a spy. Just south of Fort Wayne, the first county to the south-
southwest is Wells County. So many of these names are still historic.
I wanted to touch on one other interesting person from this time
period related to my home area, and that is Johnny Appleseed.
Johnny Appleseed, like many other settlers, came in after this period
of the War of 1812 and the frontier opened, all of a sudden settlers
came in. Johnny Appleseed was born in Ohio in 1774. The first reference
to his name, and he is buried in Fort Wayne today. The first reference
to his nickname Appleseed is found in a letter from William Slaughter
to Reverend Haley of Avignon, Virginia. ``That was Mr. John Chapman
whom you must have heard me speak of. They call him John Appleseed out
there in Ohio.''
The first discovered order for apple trees was in 1818. He was just a
really interesting gentleman. We have a Johnny Appleseed stamp that was
issued by the post office. This is his grave site. This is actually
something that was done in probably third grade by my son, because
Johnny Appleseed is a big folk hero in Indiana. It says, ``Johnny
Appleseed, bright red and shiny; some are big, others tiny; one bite
and you will see, just how delicious an apple can be.''
Now, how did this, you know, start and what kind of guy was Johnny
Appleseed? Well, he was an interesting character. In fact, let me just
read this description about him. That he was known for having, what
this is is a pan on his head, because he would walk around, he would
have this pan on his head, move around, talk to different people, and
it said he had such a remarkable passion for rearing and the
cultivation of apple trees from the seed and pursued it with so much
zeal and perseverance as to cause him to be regarded by the few
settlers just then beginning to make their appearance in the country
with a degree of almost superstitious admiration.
He also believed, and in the reason he planted apples, and he
systematically did this. For example it said that he would clear a few
rods of land in some open part of the forest, girdle the tree standing
around it, surround it with a brush fence and plant his apple seeds.
This done, he would go off some 20 miles or so, select another
favorable spot, and again go through the same operation. In this way,
without family and without connection, he rambled from place to place
and employed his time, I may say, his life, planting apple trees.
{time} 2300
His goal was to live for others. His dad was a preacher. He was an
itinerant pastor as well, and frequently preached. His goal was to
serve others.
One other interesting reference to this period, anybody living in the
frontier period had to be aware of the battles and the conflict between
the Native Americans and the American settlers.
So Johnny Appleseed himself, according to a man named Amariah Watson
of Washington Township, said that during the war of 1812, Chapman, like
Paul Revere, he was called the Paul Revere of the Midwest, sped through
northern Ohio to warn settlers of expected Indian attacks on frontier
outposts. This is at the start of the War of 1812. The British were
arming the Indian tribes.
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What this man who was a contemporary of Johnny Appleseed reported was
Johnny Appleseed traveled through like Paul Revere, running from
village to village shouting, ``Flee for your lives, flee for your
lives, the British and Indians are coming upon you and destruction
followeth upon their footsteps.''
There was a more colorful version that supposedly Johnny Appleseed
said, but the other is more likely, because this is a bit long to go
running from house to house. It fits, kind of, the preacher. ``The
spirit of the Lord is upon me and he hath anointed me to blow the
trumpet in the wilderness, and sound an alarm in the forest; for,
behold, the tribes of the heathen are round about your doors, and a
devouring flame followeth after them.''
So even Johnny Appleseed played a role in this period of the
Northwest Territory, in the settlement. So we had a lot of interesting
people that were involved, and it is part of American history that is
often overlooked.
We also had a number of historic sites, such as the Battle of Fallen
Timbers. This Thursday in the Subcommittee on National Parks we are
having a hearing on a bill from Senator DeWine of Ohio and the
gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) regarding expanding this as a
national historic site and developing this.
I am a strong supporter of this legislation because I believe the
Battle of Fallen Timbers has been too long ignored. The Battle of
Tippecanoe, which is now being developed at Prophetstown, Indiana, our
newest State park in Indiana where we will have our first museum. It is
not called Angloana or Germanana, even though a large percentage of the
population is Germans. It is called Indiana. Other than the Eiteljorg
Museum of American Indian art, we have no museum in Indiana paying
tribute to our Native Americans. In Prophetstown, this will be
corrected.
In Fort Wayne, we have the Chief Richardville House. Little Turtle
was the war chief of the Miamis. Chief John Baptiste Richardville was
the Miami civil chief from 1816 until his death in 1841. His house, now
we are sorting this through, may be the only remaining Native American
building east of the Mississippi. It certainly appears to be the oldest
Native American building still standing east of the Mississippi.
Richardville was known, at least by legend, as the richest Indian in
this country. This trade center, it is one of only a few of these
buildings that were known to exist. It is the oldest known Native
American structure east of the Mississippi still located on its
original site. Some have been moved to different complexes, but this is
actually at the site where it was, a Native American structure.
Indiana is finally taking the means to start the project. Senator
Thomas Wyss of Fort Wayne and David Long helped secure $150,000 of
Indiana funds for the Richardville house. This needs to be matched
and developed. It needs to become a State historic site. On top of
that, this Saturday it is going to be recognized as part of the
national Save America's Treasures project coming out of this
administration and through the National Trust for Historic
Preservation. It is a very important site that we need to preserve in
Fort Wayne because Richardville was the leader of the Miami Nation,
their civil chief, for many years.
In fact, down in Huntington, Indiana, we have the La Fontaine house
roughly shortly after that time period. La Fontaine is interesting, as
well. He was the son-in-law of John Baptiste Richardville, and was the
last Miami chief before the Miami Nation was removed from the State of
Indiana. The forks of the Wabash down at Huntington is a critical area,
as is Mississinewa.
I would be remiss if I did not point out a couple of the other
historic sites that will be named specifically in our bill.
I mentioned the capitals, like Corydon and Chillicothe, but in
addition, the Straits of Mackinaw were a critical trade route to the
fur trade and others, and were battled over by the French and British.
Until the war of 1812, it really was not established that that was
going to be under American control at Mackinac as well as at Mackinaw.
I also mentioned the Treaty of Greenville. One of the more important
settlement roads was Zane's Trace in Ohio.
What this heritage area is going to try to do is pull together the
time periods, 1785 to 1830. It is going to try to pull together these
geographic boundaries of Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, and Illinois,
including Wisconsin, highlight the sites of significance to that time
era only, market and connect them together thematically, promote the
preservation, education, and utilization of such sites, which could
include additional land, interpretive centers, and other appropriate
development.
Once again I want to go through these critical periods. Attempted
American settlement and the resulting wars, the Indian counterattack,
the Americans' final victories during the War of 1812, then the
American settlement accelerates and demands land. Then, as part of
that, in spite of the promises made over and over to the different
Indian tribes, those treaties were broken, and eventually the Indians
for the most part were removed from the Midwest to Oklahoma, to Iowa,
to Kansas, and to the west, and laid on top of the other Indian tribes,
which caused some of the later conflict.
In addition to the rivers, we have our Great Lakes, our farmland, our
resources. We have Indian Nations: the Miami, the Shawnee, the
Delaware, Potawatomie, the Chippewa, the Sac, the Ottawa. We have the
different battles, the traders, the settlers. Then the one thing I want
to spend a little bit more time on are a number of the Indian chiefs.
We hear so much about the Indians of the Southwest and the West, and
so little about those in the Midwest. Yet, think about a couple of
points here. One is, California, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, do
not together equal the population of the four Midwestern States, Ohio,
Michigan, Illinois, and Indiana. Their number of Native Americans did
not equal the number of Indian nations. They certainly did not achieve
the success in war against the American armies that the Indiana nations
of the Midwest achieved.
While they have creative pottery, there are remnants of creativity
from the Midwest too. It is just that, quite frankly and bluntly, we
did not do as good a job of preserving that in the Midwest because we
removed them. It does not mean that the history is not there and that
we should not look to preserve that history.
We have bits and pieces of this in Indiana. Chief Leopold Pokagon,
whose village, Pokagon Village, was just across the Michigan line, just
north of Notre Dame and St. Mary's on U.S. 31 and then just west, but
Leopold Pokagon and his son Simon Pokagon have a State park named after
them in my district, Pokagon State Park, and the Potawatomie Inn there.
We finally started to pay tribute to the Potawatomies in Indiana, who
have been ignored, much like the Miami were.
Right near my hometown where I grew up in Graybill, the town of
Cedarville, now Leo-Cedarville, at that critical junction of the Cedar
Creek and St. Joe River, there is Metea Village. Now we have a small
county park there, Metea Park. We are starting to pay some recognition
to him.
We have other Miami chiefs who have been ignored: Pecan (Pecanne),
who is up near the Elkhart area, and LeGris, and Hibou, the owl. They
were other important Miami chiefs. One of my favorites is Bad Bird, the
chief of the Chippewas. We had many different interesting Native
American leaders.
One kind of unusual story is Francis Slocum, Maconaquah, who was
captured at age 5 in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, was transported to the
Mississinewa River. Her husband died. She raised her two girls. She was
discovered by a Mr. Ewing at Mississinewa when she was very old.
She had so acclimated herself and become such an Indian herself that
when they approached her about leaving, she said, to go back in the
Anglo civilization would make me like a fish out of water. She said, I
am now an Indian, a Native American.
There are many stories like Francis Slocum that exist in our heritage
that we need to do a better job of preserving. So I am pleased that
most of the Members of Congress, Republican and Democrat, from our
Northwest
[[Page H11369]]
Territory area are going to cosponsor this. We are looking forward to
hearings here in Washington and in the field, and working with the
Governors of each State in developing this. I think it can be a big
asset.
In the Midwest, unlike in the West, where they have many national
parks, and the East tends to have historic sites and fewer parks, the
West tends to have national parks, in the Midwest we have very little.
We have very little that helps us develop for tourism, we have very
little that helps us develop different assets in our community.
{time} 2310
I think this is one step toward some equalization in developing the
history of the Midwest, and I am excited and looking forward to doing
this. As we develop a management entity with this, this can be one of
the most exciting things that has happened in the Midwest for many
years.
I also want to take a few minutes tonight because today was an
important day. One of the things in the northwest ordinance and in
American history that we value most is the ability to participate in
electing our own leaders. Today was a very important day in Indiana,
because we elected mayors and city council members across the State and
in my district.
For those who first say that their vote does not matter, we have had
an extraordinary number of extremely close elections tonight. Some of
these are still pending. Fort Wayne, the biggest city in my district,
around 230,000 people, it appears, but it is far too early to say, even
though 99 percent of the vote is in, that in a very close vote, both
candidates are friends of mine, both of them ran tremendous campaigns,
but the Democratic candidate for mayor appears to be pulling an upset,
but right now is ahead by 174 votes out of way over 40,000.
Whoever of these candidates ultimately is our mayor we can be proud
in Fort Wayne in working with them because they ran a terrific
campaign. But once again, this shows the importance of every person
participating in finding good quality candidates and then people
participating.
In our city council races in what were expected to be not very close
races, Tom Freistroffer, a Democratic candidate, right now is 129 votes
ahead of the third place person on the Republican ticket, my friend,
Rebecca Ravine.
All three Republican candidates were outstanding candidates, as were
the Democratic candidates. This is an unusual race in the sense that we
did not have anybody who was really a weak candidate. Tom Freistroffer,
even though he is a Democrat, was a Notre Dame grad, so I appreciate
him very much for at least that. But I am still hoping the Republicans
pull out this election tonight.
It was extraordinary. We had an upset in another city council race in
one of the councilmanic districts. We have another one that was decided
by barely over 100 votes. In New Haven, Indiana, the election there was
decided by only 145 votes. In Kendallville, Indiana, the vote was won
by the incumbent mayor over Suzanne Handshoe who ran an excellent
campaign, but the Democratic mayor hung on in that race by about 180
votes.
In Auburn, a close friend and supporter of mine, won the mayor's race
there by about 400 votes. The Republican in Columbia City, Ronald
Glassley, pulled a big upset and won that by 48 votes.
In Huntington, the incumbent mayor was defeated by an overwhelming
margin by a person, Terry Abbett, who had won a number of races and who
always runs really well, but nobody expected he got nearly 70 percent.
That was not one that was a cliff hanger.
But it is important to understand that the recruitment first of
quality candidates by both sides is always important in the electoral
process. The second is, once again in Indiana tonight, in a big upset
in the Indianapolis mayor's election, potentially in Fort Wayne, other
parts of Indiana, very close vote margins.
When you hear the debates we have here on the House floor and you
hear the kind of combat that is occurring and you wonder how come
people cannot just sit down and work these things out, our country
right now is very closely divided between the two parties. Election
after election is showing this. That means we rub hard at the edges.
Because what we do on this floor, what we do in mayors' offices and
governors' officers are very important to the future of this country.
The project that I spent most of my time talking about tonight, the
Northwest Territory, anchored the first American attempt to spread the
American philosophy of democracy beyond the original 13 States and into
the northwest. It talked about the promotion of religion, the promotion
of education, the promotion of good citizenship, how we would set up
property values, how we would set up the respect for law.
That is what we should be concentrating on in this country,
regardless of whether one is a Republican or Democrat, is how to uphold
the traditions, the history and kind of all that went before us, all
that is going on now, and we want to pass that on to the next
generation. Part of that is understanding how we got where we are, and
it is critical to understanding where we will go next.
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