Editing Fort Wayne, Indiana (section)

===Early history===
====The Native Americans and New France====
[[File:Map of Kekionga.jpg|thumb|An illustrated 1789 map of [[Kekionga]]]]

==== Original settlement and French control (1706-1760) ====
This area here on the river [[confluence]] was occupied by successive cultures of [[indigenous peoples]] for as long as 10,000 years.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Kekionga Historical Marker |url=https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=21501 |access-date=July 26, 2023 |website=www.hmdb.org |language=en}}</ref> The [[Miami tribe]] would eventually establish its settlement of [[Kekionga]] at this confluence of the [[Maumee River|Maumee]], [[St. Joseph River (Maumee River)|St. Joseph]], and [[St. Marys River (Indiana and Ohio)|St. Marys]] rivers in the late stages of the [[Beaver Wars]] in the 1690s.<ref name=":0"/><ref>{{Cite web |title=Miami Indians |url=https://project.geo.msu.edu/geogmich/Miamis.html |access-date=July 13, 2023 |website=project.geo.msu.edu}}</ref> It was the capital of the Miami nation and related [[Algonquian peoples|Algonquian]] tribes.{{efn|According to J. Dunn, Jr., this name was "usually said to mean "blackberry patch," or "blackberry bush," this plant being considered an emblem of antiquity because it sprang up on the sites of old villages. This theory rests on the testimony of Barron, a longtime French trader on the Wabash. It is more probable that Kekionga is a corruption or dialect form of Kiskakon, or Kikakon, which was the original name of the place." J. P. Dunn.<ref>INDIANA: A REDEMPTION FROM SLAVERY New York: Houghton Mifflin and Company, 1888, 48, Note 1.</ref> But, Michael McCafferty, an Algonquian and Uto-Aztecan linguist professor at Indiana University, exhaustively examined the etymology of 'Kekionga' and dismissed Dunn's explanation and several others. See the chapter "Trails to Kekionga" in the relevantly titled ''Native American Place Names of Indiana'' (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2008), esp. p. 76. In the 1680s, [[French people|French]] traders established a post near Kekionga due to its location on a [[portage]] between the [[Great Lakes]] and [[Mississippi River]].<ref>Goodrich, De Witt C. and Charles Richard Tuttle (1875) An Illustrated History of the State of Indiana. (NP:R. S. Peale & Co., ND).</ref>}}

In 1696, [[Comte de Frontenac]] appointed [[Jean Baptiste Bissot, Sieur de Vincennes]], who began visiting Kekionga in 1702, and would later build the original [[Fort Miami (Indiana)|Fort Miami]] here in the wilderness and [[pays d'en Haut]] of [[New France]] around 1706; Initially, a small trading outpost.<ref name=":0">Poinsatte, 18</ref> It was part of a group of forts and trading posts built between [[Quebec]] and [[St. Louis]]. The first census in 1744 recorded a population of approximately 40 Frenchmen and 1,000 Miamians.<ref name="IND">Peckham, Howard Henry (2003) "Indiana: A History". ''W.W. Norton'' {{ISBN|0-252-07146-8}}.</ref>

====From the British back to the Miami (1760-1776)====
Increasing tension between France and Great Britain developed over control of the territory. In 1760, France ceded the area to Britain after its forces in North America surrendered during the [[Seven Years' War]], known on the North American front as the [[French and Indian War]]. Managing to hold down the fort for only a mere couple of years, the British lost control of it in 1763 when various Native American nations rebelled against British rule and retook the fort as part of [[Pontiac's Rebellion]]. From this point forward in 1763, no active fort existed at Kekionga for the next three decades until American General [[Anthony Wayne]] established [[Fort Wayne (fort)|Fort Wayne]] in 1794, following the [[Battle of Fallen Timbers]]. The fort throughout this period was described as a, "Defiant mixture of Indian warriors and lawless renegades of the frontier, such as the Girties. It was also the home of a heterogeneous population of English and French traders and their families, French 'engages", and Miami, Delaware and Shawnee tribes."<ref>Poinsatte, 33</ref>

In 1772, the British regained influence over the village after [[Sir William Johnson, 1st Baronet|Sir William Johnson]] suggested to the government that the fort be reoccupied.<ref name=":0" /> The mixed population of the Kekionga area had moved past antipathy with the British by this point, and accepted their friendship. In 1776, Officer Jacques LaSalle moved into the village to conduct strict supervision on behalf of the British government, ensuring that the natives remained loyal to the British, and to check passports with travelers coming down from [[Fort Detroit]].<ref>Poinsatte, 34</ref>

====American Revolution to the Old Northwest====
The British continued to monitor Kekionga and [[Fort Miami (Indiana)|Fort Miami]] throughout the [[American Revolutionary War]]. In 1780, [[French Canadians|French Canadian]] soldiers coming to assist the U.S. with the revolution were slaughtered in several nearby locations in what is known as [[La Balme's Defeat]]. At the end of the Revolutionary War, in the [[Treaty of Paris (1783)|Treaty of Paris]] in 1783, Britain ceded this area to the new United States, though they continued to maintain an influence on trading activity and the forts of Miami, with the primary objective of slowing American expansion into the [[Great Lakes region]]. The young United States formally organized the region in the [[Land Ordinance of 1785]] and negotiated treaties allowing settlement, but the [[Western Confederacy]] of Native American nations were not party to these treaties and did not cede their ownership of those lands.

American land speculators and pioneers began flooding down the [[Ohio River]] into the area, leading to conflict with an alliance of native tribes known as the [[Western Confederacy]]. It was headquartered at Kekionga, where the Miami had permitted two refugee tribes dislodged by white homesteaders, the Delaware and the Shawnee, to resettle. The confederacy—which included other Great Lakes and [[Algonquin people|Algonquin tribes]] as well—began sending war parties to raid settlers, hoping to drive them back across the [[Appalachian Mountains]], and refused to meet for negotiations over a possible treaty to instead cede land for white settlement. The growing violence led to the [[Northwest Indian War]].

In 1790, President [[George Washington]] ordered the [[United States Army|U.S. Army]] to subdue and pacify the tribes. The first expedition, led by General [[Josiah Harmar]] reached Kekionga and exercised [[scorched earth]] tactics on the village and crops. Miami war chief [[Little Turtle]], who had been long tracking the whereabouts of Harmar though the aid of various agents such as [[Simon Girty]], would quickly drive Harmar and the US troops away. The confederacy warriors attacked the second invading force, led in 1791 by General [[Arthur St. Clair]], before it could get that far and wiped it out, in a massacre known as [[St. Clair's Defeat]] at modern-day [[Fort Recovery, Ohio]]. It's known as the greatest defeat of the [[United States Army|U.S. Army]] by Native Americans in history. This defeat left the US army crippled and borders open to attacks from the British and allied native tribes. General [[Anthony Wayne]] was recalled from civilian life to lead a third expedition, defeating the confederacy's warriors at the Battle of [[Fallen Timbers]], near modern-day [[Toledo, Ohio]] on August 20, 1794. Wayne's men then marched up the [[Maumee River]], systematically burning evacuated native towns, crops, and winter food stores, until they reached its headwaters, where Kekionga remained in ruins. Wayne then confronted the British at Fort Miami, where the British debated an attack. Later, Wayne selected the site for construction of [[Fort Wayne (Fort)|Fort Wayne]]. He ordered a fort that could withstand heavy British artillery, especially a 24-pound cannon, along with attacks from their army or native allies.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Hogeland |first1=William |title=Autumn of the Black Snake: the creation of the U.S. Army and the invasion that opened the West |date=2017 |publisher=Farrar, Straus and Giroux |location=New York |lccn=2016052193 |isbn=978-0-374-10734-5 |edition=First}}</ref>

The following year, Wayne negotiated a peace accord, the [[Treaty of Greenville]] with tribal leaders, in which they agreed to stop fighting, end support of the British, and ceded most of what is now Ohio along with certain tracts further west, including the area around Fort Wayne encompassing Kekionga and the land portage. Wayne promised the remainder would remain Indian lands, which is why the territory west of [[Ohio]] was named Indiana. Wayne would die one year later and a Spanish spy [[James Wilkinson]] would assume his role as General. In subsequent years, the government used Fort Wayne to hand out annual payments under the treaty. But in a recurring cycle, the tribes ran up debts to white traders who came there to sell them alcohol and manufactured goods, and the government pushed tribal leaders—including through bribes—to sell more reservation land to pay off those debts and, when the land was gone, then to agree to have the tribe removed to the Far West.<ref>{{cite magazine |last=Savage |first=Charlie |date=July 31, 2020 |title=When the Culture Wars Hit Fort Wayne |url=https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/07/31/culture-wars-fort-wayne-373011 |magazine=Politico Magazine |access-date=September 4, 2020}}</ref>

In 1802, a [[United States Government Fur Trade Factory System|United States fur trade factory]] was established in Fort Wayne. It was burned by the local Indians at the beginning of the [[War of 1812]].<ref>Wesley, Edgar Bruce (1935). Guarding the frontier. The University of Minnesota Press, p. 38.</ref>

====Settlement permitted by Treaty of St. Mary's====
[[File:Fort Wayne in 1812.gif|thumb|Illustration depicting the 1812 military garrison]]

The first settlement started in 1815.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Pioneer Settlement in Indiana (1790-1849) |url=https://www.historymuseumsb.org/pioneer-settlement-in-indiana-1790-1849/ |access-date=July 29, 2023 |language=en}}</ref> In 1819, the military [[garrison]] abandoned the fort and moved to Detroit. In 1822, a federal land office opened to sell land ceded by local Native Americans by the [[Treaty of St. Mary's]] in 1818.<ref>{{cite book |last=Poinsatte |first=Charles R. |title=Fort Wayne During the Canal Era 1828–1855 |url=https://archive.org/details/fortwayneduringc0000poin |url-access=registration |year=1969 |publisher=Indiana Historic Bureau |location=Indianapolis, Indiana |pages=[https://archive.org/details/fortwayneduringc0000poin/page/2 2–4]}}</ref> [[Platted]] in 1823 at the [[Alexander Ewing (soldier)|Ewing Tavern]], the village became an important frontier outpost and was incorporated as the Town of Fort Wayne in 1829, with a population of 300.<ref>{{cite web |title=The Landing |url=https://archfw.org/heritagetrail/centraldowntown/the-landing/ |website=Architecture & Community Heritage · Fort Wayne, Indiana |date=October 28, 2014 |access-date=July 4, 2017}}</ref>{{Sfn|Beatty|2006|p = 28}} The [[Wabash and Erie Canal]]'s opening improved travel conditions to the [[Great Lakes]] and [[Mississippi River]], exposing Fort Wayne to expanded economic opportunities. The population topped 2,000 when the town was incorporated as the City of Fort Wayne on February 22, 1840.<ref>[http://www.answers.com/topic/fort-wayne-history?cat=travel Fort Wayne: History: County Seat Becomes Industrial Center]. Retrieved on May 4, 2008.</ref>

Pioneer newspaperman [[George W. Wood]] was elected the city's first mayor. Fort Wayne's "Summit City" nickname dates from this period, referring to the city's position at the highest elevation along the canal's route.<ref name="FWhistory"/> As influential as the canal was to the city's earliest development, it quickly became obsolete after briefly competing with the city's first railroad, the [[Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago Railway]], completed in 1854.<ref>{{cite book |last=Stover |first=John F. |title=Transportation and the Early Nation |year=1982 |publisher=Indianapolis Historic Society |location=Indianapolis, Indiana |pages=141–142}}</ref>