Editing Fort Wayne, Indiana (section)

==== 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>