Kekionga Trail 

KEKIONGA TRAIL oo

10 MILES LONG

Read the following to your unit before hiking the trail. 

A SHORT HISTORY OF FORT WAYNE 

Through the ages four great glaciers have passed over this area, and when the last of these - the Wisconsin Ice Sheet - began to recede, Lake Maumee was formed east of the area now known as Fort Wayne. This body of water was the forerunner of Lake Erie and the beginning of the Great Lake System. Its outlet flowed west across Indiana and south to the present Ohio River. The Wabash River, small by comparison, now occupies the bed of this ancient outlet.                                        

The passage of time saw this outlet abandoned and the St. Joseph and St. Mary’s rivers joined to form the Maumee River. For more than a century before the American Revolution, the Miami Indian Nation had its headquarters in the village known as Kekionga, or Miami Town, located at the confluence of the rivers.

The headquarters of the Little Wabash River were only ten miles southwest of Kekionga. The intervening portage (or carrying place) made the shortest route between the Great Lakes and the present Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. The Miami realized early that to control this area was to first control portage.

In 1679, LaSalle explored the area and claimed it for France. Later, northern Indiana as we know it was in Canada and the southern part in Louisiana. The objective of the French was the fur trade, and to guard traders and travelers, a chain of forts were built from Mackinac and Detroit to New Orleans. The first French fort in Indiana, Post Miami, was built at the head of the Maumee River in the late eighteenth century and became a prosperous trading post surpassed only by Detroit and Vincennes. In 1747 the Indians, led by Chief Nicholas and abetted by the British, burned the fort.

A second fort, also called Fort Miami, was erected on a new site near the St. Joseph River. At the close of the French and Indian Wars, Detroit surrendered to the British and within three weeks a detachment of British soldiers under Lieutenant Butler ended seventy years of French rule by seizing Fort Miami. Three years later, the entire garrison including Ensign Holmes, who had been left in command, was massacred by Chief Pontiac who held control until his death in 1769. Intermittent strife and bloodshed continued for the next 30 years, and even after victory by the colonies in the Revolutionary War, the area remained in the hands of the red men under Chief Little Turtle.

Born in 1751 in what is now Whitley county, Little Turtle first gained prominence when he defeated French General LaBalme on the Eel River in 1780. Following the Revolution, President Washington sent three armies westward to drive the Indians from the area and to establish a post for the Union at the headwaters of the Maumee. General Harmar and his men were promptly defeated by Little Turtle’s forces in 1790 and in the following year General Arthur St.Clair’s army was massacred at Fort Recovery, Ohio.

General Anthony Wayne, however, spent two years recruiting and training his army. Marching northward in 1794, he established Fort Defiance,proceeded northeastward down the Maumee, and defeated the Indians in a one-hour battle at Fallen Timbers near the city now known as Maumee, Ohio.

Turning back toward the headwaters of the Maumee Wayne established, at Kekionga, the garrison which was christened “Fort Wayne” on October 2, 1794, now considered the birthday of Fort Wayne. Leaving Col. John F. Hamtramck in charge, Wayne went to Greenville to effect a peaceful settlement with the Indians.

Chief Little Turtle and his adopted son, William Wells, had participated in the discussions prior to the signing of the treaty which was completed on August 3, 1795 to open the way to settlement of the Old Northwest Territory. Wells had been captured by the Miami during a raid in Kentucky and from the age of twelve lived as an Indian. He later served as Indian Agent in Fort Wayne from 1799 to 1809. Chief Little Turtle, whose colorful career he shared, died at Wells’ home in 1812. A month later Wells himself was killed at the massacre at Fort Dearborn, now called Chicago.

In 1800 Colonel Thomas Hunt erected a new stockade three-hundred feet north of Wayne’s deteriorating structure. In the next nine years, two treaties with the Indians ceded vast areas of Indian land to the United States.Hostilities with the British flared up again, and the Fort was relieved by an army of five thousand men under Brigadier General William Henry Harrison who later became President of the United States. Other heroes fared less well: Colonel John Allen, after whom our county is named, was killed at the Battle of River Raisin at Monroe, Michigan; and the last of this area’s frontier skirmishes occurred in 1813 when Major Joseph Jenkinson’s men were massacred on the St. Mary’s River on the west side of town. 

The last Fort was built in 1815 and 1816 by Major John Whistler, grandfather of the famous painter, James McNeil Whistler. By 1819 it was abandoned as a military post and peace was established at the confluence of the three rivers. The buildings of the Fort were used by Indian agents and as a land office. Under civil authority, the shelter of the Fort gave comfort to families and individuals. The last building was razed in 1852. The community which had grown up around the Fort was incorporated as a town in 1829 and a city in 1840. Land, offered by the government went on sale at Washington Hall or Ewing’s Tavern in 1823. At this time, JohnT. Barr and John McCorkle purchased a tract of 110 lots at $1.25 an acre and prepared the original plot of the city. The first courthouse did not appear until 1831, so the business of the Allen County Commissioners and the Allen Circuit Court was conducted in Washington Hall.

The vision and business acumen of many contributed to the early growth of Fort Wayne: Joseph Holman, Allen Hamilton, Colonel Alexander Ewing, and Judge Samuel Hanna. Hanna has been called “the builder of the city’, having served as the city’s first Postmaster. He was prominent in the building of the Wabash and Erie Canal and was president of the Ohio and Indiana Railroad which entered Fort Wayne in 1852.

While the Wabash and Erie Canal was short-lived, its completion in 1843 was probably the most significant factor in the development of the small village. General Lewis Cass, Governor of the Michigan Territory and a candidate for the Presidency, spoke at the great celebration on July 4, 1843 when the Canal was completed.

Columbia Street, which once paralleled the Canal, still reminds the observer of the decades during which it marked significant progress in Fort Wayne. Here the first Post Office was located in 1820, followed by hotels, a newspaper, a bank, a railway station, a theater and opera house, and many other businesses.

The population in 1850 was 4300. The 1850’s and 1860’s saw the coming of the railroads and the end of the Canal which surrendered its right-of-way to the Nickel Plate Railroad. The little city grew steadily and industrial, commercial, cultural and recreational facilities expanded. In the early part of this century, Fort Wayne became the second electric railway center, and the development of the present varied industrial complex had its beginnings in the 1920’s.

Today, Fort Wayne is Indiana’s second largest city with a population of 200,000 constituting an average annual increase of more than 1,000 people during its life of more than 200 years. Unique among American cities in its claim to four forts within the corporate city limits, Fort Wayne continues to be a stronghold of history, both written and yet to be decided.