Notes for Little Turtle Mihshahkatoohkwa

Chandonai Genealogy

Notes for Little Turtle Mihshahkatoohkwa

Note:
Source for the following: Handbook of North American Indians
Regarded as perhaps the greatest Algonquian war leader of his time, Little Turtle grew to adulthood during the American Revolution and led Native American armed resistance to the American invasion of the Old Northwest in the late eighteenth century. A great strategist and military tactician, he was noted for his exceptional intelligence—and for his ability to debate General Anthony Wayne as an equal at the Greenville Treaty council in 1795. Little Turtle became a staunch supporter of peace in the first decade of the nineteenth century, and as a consequence he lost the support of the Miami tribe and became identified as an American chief.

Little Turtle was born in about 1747. He received the Miami name of his father, Mishikinakwa, who had signed the Lancaster Treaty with colonial Pennsylvania authorities in 1748. It is believed his mother was a Mahican woman who had moved with remnants of her tribe into the Ohio country. Little Turtle achieved war-chief status when he destroyed a small military force led by an obscure Frenchman named Augustin Mottin de La Balme west of today's Fort Wayne, Indiana, on November 5, 1780. La Balme had destroyed the Miami villages at Kekionga, the major Miami settlement, near modern-day Fort Wayne, Indiana, while attempting to aid the American cause in the Revolutionary War.

After the Treaty of Paris in 1783, American officials dictated four treaties to the tribes of the Old Northwest, each based on the premise that Indian tribes had surrendered their rights to the land with the defeat of the British. Native American resistance to these pretensions quickly escalated into border warfare as Kentucky filled with settlers who led attacks deep into Indian country in the late 1780s. Little Turtle was responsible for the security of Kekionga, which had attracted several villages of Delaware and Shawnee Indians.

Although American officials wanted to avoid war with the Ohio tribes (mainly because of the expense involved), President Washington approved an attack on Kekionga in 1790. Little Turtle led the villagers away previous to an attack by General Josiah Harmar on October 20 that destroyed all of the villages. Little Turtle then led an ambush of Harmar's forces, killing 183 Americans. The following year, General Arthur St. Clair led another American army to Kekionga. Little Turtle led the forces of the Miami Confederacy, as the allied tribes were then called, in a devastating defeat of nearly the entire American army. Some 630 officers and men, as well as many civilian camp followers, were killed in the worst defeat of an American army ever by Indian defenders.

After nearly three years of organization and planning, General Anthony Wayne led a third army against the Miami Confederacy in 1794. Little Turtle, ever the great tactician, carefully probed Wayne's forces on their advance and concluded that they could not be defeated. He called for a negotiated peace and, unable to convince his allies, left overall leadership to Blue Jacket of the Shawnees. The well-prepared Wayne, himself a master tactician, defeated the allied tribes without much loss of life on either side at Fallen Timbers, near today's Toledo, Ohio, on August 20, 1794.

Little Turtle was the principal spokesman for the eleven tribes and approximately eleven hundred Indians who gathered at Greenville the following July to conclude peace with the Americans. Little Turtle's son-in-law, William Wells, a white captive, had been a scout for Wayne's invading army, and Little Turtle was fully aware of American intentions at Greenville. At the treaty grounds he eloquently defended Native American sovereignty in the Old Northwest. He also defined Miami ownership of all of present-day Indiana, the western third of Ohio, and part of Illinois and southern Michigan. Though the Miamis had long shared this land with other tribes, "Little Turtle's Claim" was helpful to the Miamis when they filed compensation claims against the federal government in the 1950s.

At the conclusion of the Greenville Treaty, Little Turtle pledged support of peace with American authorities. That promise was sorely tested within a few years when William Henry Harrison was appointed governor of Indiana Territory. After the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, President Thomas Jefferson encouraged Harrison to press for huge Indian land sales in the Old Northwest. Little Turtle signed four treaties—in 1803, 1804, 1805, and 1809—that were disadvantageous to the Miamis, and alienated himself from the tribal leadership. He also accepted personal annuities that were thinly disguised bribes, and allowed Winimac and Topinbee, two pro-American Potawatomi chiefs, to participate in negotiations over Miami land.

American pressure for Indian land brought a new wave of Native American resistance. Tecumseh and his brother the Shawnee Prophet (Tenskwatawa) encouraged tribespeople to resist the American hunger for land and to join together to eject Americans from Indian country. Little Turtle's authority among the Miamis derived from war leadership. As he bent to American desires, hereditary leaders such as Pacanne, the Owl, and Jean Baptiste Richardville (Peshewa) rejected Little Turtle's leadership and in 1809 forced Harrison to admit that they, not Little Turtle, were the real leaders of the Miami tribe.

Little Turtle lived out the last three years of his life at his village west of Fort Wayne on the Eel River, near today's Columbia City, Indiana. He died peacefully at William Wells's house at Fort Wayne on July 14, 1812. Wells was killed a month later while leading the evacuation of Fort Dearborn, the site of modern-day Chicago. Little Turtle's pro-American stance and the neutrality of the Miami tribe did not protect his tribespeople from American attacks. Within three months of his death, Little Turtle's village and two other Miami villages were destroyed.

Little Turtle's fame rests on his brilliance as a war leader and on his defense of Indian sovereignty at the Greenville Treaty negotiations. American strategic needs and land hunger after the Louisiana Purchase eliminated the middle ground upon which Little Turtle's success depended. He ended the last decade of his life as a pliable American chief who had lost touch with the needs of his people. Among the Miamis today he is revered as a great chief despite the tragic ending of his career.

See also Miami; Richardville, Jean Baptiste (Peshewa); Shawnee Prophet (Tenskwatawa); Tecumseh.

Harvey Lewis Carter, The Life and Times of Little Turtle (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987); Calvin M. Young, Little Turtle (1917; reprint, Mt. Vernon, Ind.: Windmill Publications, 1990).
Stewart Rafert
University of Delaware

Source: The Canadian Dictionary of Biography Online
MICHIKINAKOUA (Michikiniqua, Me-She-Kin-No-Quah, Meshecunnaqua, Little Turtle), Miami war chief; b. mid 18th century, son of Aque-Noch-Quah, a Miami war chief; rumoured to have Mahican or even French blood; m. secondly Polly Ford* (see below), a white captive; d. 14 July 1812 at Fort Wayne (Ind.).

Little Turtle first came to white attention at the time of the American revolution. Like other Miami chiefs an ally of the British, in 1780 he led his warriors in the destruction at the Miamis Towns (Fort Wayne) of a force under Augustin Mottin de La Balme, who was attempting to re-establish French control in the Ohio valley. The tribes south of the Great Lakes received their supplies from the British, who after 1780 encouraged the formation of a confederacy to oppose American expansion [see Thayendanegea]. When in spite of official promises American settlers moved north of the Ohio, war parties from the confederacy attacked them. Little Turtle led many such raids and by 1790 had become the leader of the united war parties of the confederacy.

After 1789 the stronger central government created by a new constitution in the United States made possible plans to retaliate against the confederated tribes. Little Turtle led the Indians in two of the three major battles that ensued. In October of 1790 he decimated the forces under Josiah Harmar which had come to attack the Miami, Shawnee, and Delaware villages at the Miamis Towns. Although Harmar burned 300 houses and 20,000 bushels of corn just at the onset of winter, and although smaller American attacks followed, the Indians were not demoralized. In November 1791 near the Miamis Towns Little Turtle inflicted on Arthur St Clair’s expedition losses of 630 killed and 264 wounded, the most casualties ever suffered by Americans in a single offensive against Indians. He is reported to have gone to the Montreal area following this victory in an effort to recruit more Indians for the spring’s campaigning.

British and Indian hopes were now high that the Americans would agree to limit their expansion and allow the formation of an Indian state south of Lake Erie, but the Americans, more determined than ever, were preparing another expedition. Bolstered by inflammatory talk from Lord Dorchester [Guy Carleton] and John Graves Simcoe, which seemed to promise military aid if needed, the confederacy braced itself to meet the army under Anthony Wayne which began advancing in the autumn of 1793. Many residents of the Miamis Towns and vicinity had moved to the Glaize (Defiance, Ohio), farther from the American frontier; Little Turtle himself had left his customary village on the Eel River (Ind.) to live there. After unsatisfactorily harassing Wayne’s lines of supply and communication for months and sounding out the British at Detroit (Mich.) about the possibility of aid, Little Turtle advised the confederacy that more would be gained by negotiating than by fighting. His advice was rejected, and he turned over command to the Shawnee chief Blue Jacket [Weyapiersenwah], retaining only the leadership of his Miami warriors. A few days later, on 20 Aug. 1794, Blue Jacket was outgeneralled in the battle of Fallen Timbers (near Waterville, Ohio). Losses on both sides were about equal, but the Indians abandoned the field. The who refused them aid and shelter at nearby Fort Miamis (Maumee).

Wayne remarked on the agricultural nature of the Glaize settlements, writing: “The very extensive and highly cultivated fields and gardens show the work of many hands. The margin of those beautiful rivers [the Maumee and the Auglaize] appear like one continued village for a number of miles both above and below this place; nor have I ever beheld such immense fields of corn in any part of America from Canada to Florida.” This area was not placed within the boundaries exacted by the Americans at the Treaty of Greenville the following summer, but the Indians, their confederacy in shambles, surrendered most of present-day Ohio, a portion of Indiana, and other tracts. Little Turtle made an eloquent though unsuccessful attempt to secure better terms and signed the agreement reluctantlet he never broke the promises of peace it contained. In return the Americans built him a house in his old village on the Eel River, provided for the purchase of a black slave for him, and financed extensive travel to the east. At Philadelphia, Pa, in 1797 Gilbert Stuart painted his portrait. There also in 1798 he impressed the Comte de Volney, a French philosophe, with his wit and wisdom. During one of a series of interviews, Volney asked him what surprised him most about Philadelphia. “The extraordinary diversity of personal appearance among the whites and their great numbers,” he replied. “They spread like oil on a blanket; as for us, we melt like snow in the spring sunshine; if we do not alter course, the race of red men cannot possibly survive.” At Washington, D.C., in 1802 Little Turtle stirred officials with his pleas for prohibition of alcohol as well as training in farming and metal-craft for his people.

After the disintegration of the confederacy in 1795 Little Turtle, like many of his contemporaries, surrendered hope for a pan-Indian movement and concentrated on the interests of his tribe alone. His opposition after 1806 to the new confederacy being created by the Prophet [Tenskwatawa*] and Tecumseh was based on several considerations. By its insistence that Indian land was owned by all tribes in common, the confederacy threatened Miami land claims, and by advocating the removal of those chiefs who had already sold land to the Americans, it endangered his leadership. Moreover he was convinced that the Americans could not be successfully opposed by any combination of tribes. He was more effective than most chiefs in preventing his warriors from joining the confederacy; yet the Americans never completely trusted him. His prestige among the tribes in general was revived somewhat when Governor William Henry Harrison of Ohio devastated the headquarters of the confederacy at Tippecanoe (near Lafayette, Ind.) in 1811.

Little Turtle died at Fort Wayne on 14 July 1812 following treatment by an army doctor for gout. As was customary with Miamis, he was buried wearing his silver jewellery, which included several pieces with the mark of Robert Cruickshank of Montreal. Lesser chiefs could not restrain the young Miami warriors from joining the new confederacy in increasing numbers after his death. In September the Americans burned his village on the Eel River but they spared his property as a mark of respect. He was, in his prime, a strong defender of native rights and was remembered as a hero among the Miamis.

Herbert C. W. Goltz

C.-F. Chassebœuf, comte de Volney, (Œuvres complètes de Volney (Paris, 1837), 715–17. Corr. of Lieut. Governor Simcoe (Cruikshank). Fort Wayne, gateway of the west, 1802–1813: garrison orderly books, Indian agency account book, ed. and intro. B. J. Griswold (Indianapolis, Ind., 1927; repr. New York, 1973). Letter book of the Indian agency at Fort Wayne, 1809–1815, ed. Gayle Thornbrough (Indianapolis, 1961). Messages and letters of William Henry Harrison, ed. Logan Esarey (2v., Indianapolis, 1922). U.S., Congress, American state papers (Lowrie et al.), class ii, vols.[1–2]. S. G. Drake, Biography and history of the Indians of North America, from its discovery to the present time . . . (5th ed., Boston, 1836). Handbook of North American Indians (Sturtevant et al.), 15: 681. Bert Anson, The Miami Indians (Norman, Okla., 1970). C. M. Young, Little Turtle (Me-she-kin-no-quah), the great chief of the Miami Indian nation; being a sketch of his life, together with that of William Wells and some noted descendants ([Greenville, Ohio?], 1917). H. H. Tanner, “The Glaize in 1792: a composite Indian community,” Ethnohistory (Tucson, Ariz.), 25 (1978): 15–39.

Notes re Polly Ford. Kilsoquah stated that Little Turtle was married twice, first to the sister of Makwah, and 2. to Makwah's daughter. Source: History of Whitley County, Indiana, p. 80

Polly Ford was captured in 1786 at the age of 8 from the Wildnerness Road in Kentucky. She was surrendered by the Shawnees in 1795. Source: The Dark & Bloody River, by Allan Eckert, p.747.
Although she was 17 when she was returned and therefore would have been old enough to have married Little Turtle, the fact that she was returned by the Shawnees argues against her being Little Turtle's wife.
Sources:

Title: Descendants of P'Koum-Kwa & Aquenackqua
Author: Sammye Leonard Darling
Publication: e-mails & http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com/users/d/a/r/Sammye-Darling/index.html?Welcome=1081006928 - see FamilyTreemaker site for Sammye's sources
Repository:
Call Number:
Media: Electronic
Title: Ohio History
Author: Ohio Historical Society
Repository:
Call Number:
Media: Magazine
Page: The Birthplace of Little Turtle, by Calvin Young, vol. 23
Text: 130
Title: History of Miami County Indiana
Publication: Brant & Fuller, Chicago, 1887
Repository:
Note: Burton Collection, Detroit Public Library
Call Number:
Media: Book
Page: 254
Title: History of Whitley County, Indiana
Author: S.P. Kaler & R.H. Maring
Publication: BF Bowen & Company, 1907
Repository:
Call Number:
Media: Book
Page: 80

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