[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 19]
[House]
[Pages 28020-28025]
[From the U.S. 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 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

[[Page 28021]]

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.
       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.

[[Page 28022]]

       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.
  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

[[Page 28023]]

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

[[Page 28024]]

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.
  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.

[[Page 28025]]

  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 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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