Outpost in the Wilderness: Fort Wayne, 1706-1828

by Charles R. Poinsatte

In the spring of 1748, Dubuisson returned to Detroit leaving Captain Charles DeRaymond in charge of the post, which Father de Bonnecamps, arriving the next year, described as being “in a very bad condition”.[41] DeRaymond was probably the most colorful figure to command Fort Miami during the French period. He had been one of the chief proponents of the policy of destroying the English influence in the Ohio, as he saw the danger of tolerating the English traders in the Miami region. In a memoir he presented in 1745 he gives one of the best analyses of the whole Ohio question from the French point of view.[42] Writing from Fort Miami in 1747 to the crown, he pointed out that had the growth of English influence been checked immediately, the uprising under Nicolas could never have occurred.[43] Now in command of a partially ruined fort, DeRaymond had good reason to fear further trouble. Although the Miamis had given assurances of loyalty after the arrival of Dubuisson, most of them under the leadership of a Miami chief, “La Demoiselle” (so termed because of his fondness for dress and ornaments) had moved to Pickawillany, an English trading post on Loramie’s Creek at the start of the portage to the St. Mary’s river, northwest of the present town of Piqua, Ohio.

The French, determined to make a strong impression on the savages of the Ohio country, and to find out the true conditions existing there, sent the veteran officer, Pierre Joseph Celoron Celoron, Sieur de Bienville, with a force of 230 men down to the Great Miami river. Journeying up the later river to its headwaters, Celoron stopped at the village of “La Demoiselle” and urged the Miamis to return to Kiskakon. Celoron was disappointed bitterly when the wily “La Demoiselle” would merely promise to return to Kiskakon sometime in the future. Crossing the portage to the St. Mary’s, Celoron’s expedition continued up that river to Fort Miami. Here they stopped only long enough to buy provisions and canoes to continue to Detroit.[44] Celoron and Father de Bonnecamps, the chaplain and hydrographer of the expedition, found the energetic DeRaymond dissatisfied with his “decaying” fort. Moreover, he “did not approve the situation of the fort and maintained that it should be placed on the bank of the St. Joseph, a scant league from the present site.”[45] DeRaymond wished to show them the spot that he had selected for the new fort and obtain their opinion of it, but Celoron was in haste to depart. DeRaymond received some consolation from the fact that Father de Bonnecamps, an expert, could trace a plan for the proposed fort.[46]

Early in the year 1750, DeRaymond completed the new fort on the left bank of the St. Joseph. It stood on rather high ground (at the present St. Joe Boulevard and Delaware Avenue), less than a mile from the junction of the St. Joseph and St. Mary’s.[47] Chief Cold Foot, a staunch friend of the French, occupied the discarded buildings of the old fort, which became the center of an Indian settlement known as Cold Foot Village. Half a mile to the south of the new fort, where the Maumee turns in its course toward the east, lay the village of Kiskakon. Most of its inhabitants had joined the English at Pickawillany. Writing to Governor LaJonquiere in September, 1749, DeRaymond reported that the attitude of all the nations was very bad and apparently was becoming worse.[48] Again in 1751, he reported:

My people [the French traders] are leaving me for Detroit. Nobody wants to stay here and have his throat cut. All of the tribes who go to the English at Pickawillany come back loaded with gifts. I am too weak to meet the danger. Instead of twenty men, I need five hundred.... The tribes here are leaguing together to kill all the French.... This I am told by Cold Foot, a great Miami chief, whom I think an honest man.... If the English stay in this country, we are lost. We must attack and drive them out.[49]

To add to the distress of the French, a smallpox epidemic in the winter of 1751, carried away many of the inhabitants of Cold Foot’s Village, including their good friend, Cold Foot, and his son.[50]

That not all of the French traders at Fort Miami were scurrying to Detroit is evident from the fact that in the year 1750 one of the most noted traders of the area, Joseph Drouet de Richerville, came to Kiskakon.[51] Richerville was a scion of French nobility who either was seeking a life of adventure or was engaged in the fur trade for the mere sake of a livelihood, as the family wealth had dwindled. Shortly after his arrival, Richerville married Tahcumwah, the daughter of the reigning Miami chief, Aquenochqua, and sister of the future chief, Little Turtle. Tahcumwah was later known as Marie Louisa,[52] apparently the name she received in baptism. All who came in contact with her at a later date speak of her as a clever and intelligent woman, and it was largely through her efforts that her son, Jean Baptiste de Richerville, arose to such high prominence as the last civil chief of the Miamis.[53]

The arrival of Joseph Drouet de Richerville at Fort Miami was an isolated case, however, and what DeRaymond had said of the traders leaving for Detroit remained true. In all likelihood, DeRaymond, despite his zeal, was glad to be relieved in 1751 by a new commandant, Neyon De Villiers. De Villiers had hardly assumed command when an English trader, John Pathin, was captured within the fort itself. As France and England were then at peace, Governor George Clinton of New York demanded an explanation of the incident. The French governor, the Marquis de la Jonquiere, replied sharply:

The English, far from confining themselves within the limits of the King of Great Britain’s possessions, not satisfied with multiplying themselves more and more on Rock River ... have more than that proceeded within sight of Detroit, even unto the fort of the Miamis.... John Pathin, an inhabitant of Willensten, has been arrested in the French fort of the Miamis by M. de Villiers, commandant of that post ... he entered the fort of the Miamis to persuade the Indians who remained there, to unite with those who have fled to the beautiful river [the Ohio.] He has been taken in the French fort. Nothing more is necessary.[54]

A short time later, two men of de Villiers’ garrison were scalped by “La Demoiselle’s savages.” Indeed the English seem to have laid claim to the very fort itself, for on Mitchell’s “Map of North America”, drawn in 1755, Fort Miami is referred to as “the Fort usurped by the French”.[55]

In June, 1752, a French and Indian force, coming by way of the Maumee and St. Mary’s rivers, fell on Pickawillany, completely destroying the English post, so annoying to the French at Fort Miami. Four years later, during the French and Indian War, Lieutenant Bellestre, the commandant of Fort Miami, led a party of 25 French and 205 Indians from his post to the head of the James River, where they captured a blockhouse and some ten Virginia “Rangers”. After his release, one of the captives, Major Smith, proposed to lead a force of 1,000 woodsmen and a sufficient number of Indians across the Ohio and over the Shawnee trail from old Pickawillany to Fort Miami and then on to Detroit.[56] Although nothing came of Major Smith’s plans, the site of the future Fort Wayne was to figure prominently in all the military campaigns north of the Ohio river for the next half century, that is throughout the dramatic events marked by Pontiac’s conspiracy, the American Revolution, the Indian wars, and the War of 1812.