P
found the village of Prophet’s Town near the conflu-
ence of the Wabash River and Tippecanoe Creek in
Indiana Territory. Thousands of Indians from the
Ohio River valley and the Great Lakes region move
to Prophet’s Town. They are drawn by the prophet
Tenskwatawa’s teachings (see entry for SPRING 1805)
and by Tecumseh’s efforts to form a confederacy of
Indian tribes to stop the sale of Indian land and to
present a united resistance to American settlement
in their lands. The growing population of
Prophet’s Town frightens neighboring settlers and in-
creases tension between Indians and whites in the
area.
John Jacob Astor founds the American
Fur Company.
With the encouragement of President Thomas Jef-
ferson, entrepreneur John Jacob Astor forms the
American Fur Company. The firm plans on found-
ing trading posts all along the route Lewis and
Clark took to the Pacific Ocean (see entries for
MAY 14, 1804, and for SEPTEMBER 23, 1806). His
traders will become the first whites to encounter
many Indian groups in the West. The company will
also become the most successful fur-trading opera-
tion in the United States and will help make Astor
the richest man in the country by the time of his
death in 1848.
1809September 30
William Henry Harrison negotiates the
Treaty of Fort Wayne.
At Fort Wayne, Indiana, territorial governor Wil-
liam Henry Harrison assembles leaders of the Lenni
Lenape (Delaware), Potawatomi, Kickapoo, and
Miami. Plying the chiefs with whiskey, he persuades
them to sign the Treaty of Fort Wayne, in which
they cede approximately a million acres of land
along the Wabash River in what is now Indiana
and Illinois. The price paid for the territory is only
about two cents per acre.
The treaty outrages Shawnee leader Tecumseh
(see entry for 1808), whose homeland was ceded by a
Potawatomi with no power to speak for the Shawnee.
Tecumseh travels to the territorial capital, where he
confronts Harrison and tells him that his tribe will
not abide by the fraudulent treaty. The Shawnee is
quoted as saying, “Sell a country! Why not sell the air,
the great sea, as well as the earth? Did not the Great
Spirit make them all for the use of his children?”“The implicit obedience and
respect which the followers
of Tecumseh pay him are really
astonishing and more than any
other circumstance bespeak
him one of those uncommon
geniuses which spring up occa-
sionally to produce revolutions
and overturn the existing order
of things. If it were not for the
vicinity of the United States,
he would be the founder of an
empire that would rival in glory
Mexico or Peru.”
—William Henry Harrison,
governor of Indiana Territory,
on Shawnee rebel leader Tecumseh1810Fletcher v. Peck allows states to sell Indian
land without their permission.
In 1795 the Georgia legislature approved the sale
of 35 million acres of land in present-day Alabama
and Mississippi for only $500,000. The deal was
questioned by the next legislature, because some
of the buyers likely to profit from the sale included
legislature members who approved it. When the
new legislature canceled the deal, the buyers took