ending September 30, 1907, amounted to $1,096,459, leaving a cash
balance on September 30, 1908, of $609,085. The total state debt on
September 30, 1908, was $1,389,615.
History.—Of the prehistoric inhabitants of Indiana little is known, but extensive remains in the form of mounds and fortifications abound in every part of the state, being particularly numerous in Knox and Sullivan counties. Along the Ohio river are remnants of several interesting stone forts. Upon the earliest arrival of Europeans the state was inhabited chiefly by the various tribes of the Miami Confederacy, a league of Algonquian Indians formed to oppose the advance of the Iroquois. The first Europeans to visit the state were probably French coureurs des bois or Jesuit missionaries. La Salle, the explorer, it is contended, must have passed through parts of Indiana during his journeys of 1669 and the succeeding years. Apparently a French trading post was in existence on the St Joseph river of Michigan about 1672, but it was in no sense a permanent settlement and seems soon to have been abandoned. It seems probable that the Wabash-Maumee portage was known to Father Claude Jean Allouez as early as 1680. When, a few years later, this portage came to be generally used by traders, the necessity of establishing a base on the upper Wabash as a defence against the Carolina and Pennsylvania traders, who had already reached the lower Wabash and incited the Indians to hostility against the French, became evident; but it was not, apparently, until the second decade of the 18th century that any permanent settlement was made. About 1720 a French post was probably established at Ouiatenon (about 5 m. S.W. of the present city of Lafayette), the headquarters of the Wea branch of the Miami, on the upper Wabash. The military post at Vincennes was founded about 1731 by François Margane, Sieur de Vincennes (or Vincent), but it was not until about 1735 that eight French families were settled there. Vincennes, which thus became the first actual white settlement in Indiana, remained the only one until after the War of Independence, although military posts were maintained at Ouiatenon and at the head of the Maumee, the site of the present Fort Wayne, where there was a French trading post (1680) and later Fort Miami. After the fall of Quebec the British took possession of the other forts, but not at once of Vincennes, which remained for several years under the jurisdiction of New Orleans, both under French and Spanish rule. The British garrisons at Ouiatenon and Fort Miami (near the site of the later Fort Wayne) on the Maumee were captured by the Indians as a result of the Pontiac conspiracy. All Indiana was united with Canada by the Quebec Act (1774), but it was not until three years later that the forts and Vincennes were occupied by the British, who then realized the necessity of ensuring possession of the Mississippi Valley to prevent its falling into the hands of the rebellious colonies. Nevertheless, in 1778 Vincennes fell an easy prey to agents sent to occupy it by George Rogers Clark, and although again occupied a few months later by General Henry Hamilton, the lieutenant-governor at Detroit, it passed finally into American control in February 1779 as a result of Clark’s remarkable march from Kaskaskia. Fort Miami remained in British hands until the close of the war.
The first American settlement was made at Clarksville, between the present cities of Jeffersonville and New Albany, at the Falls of the Ohio (opposite Louisville), in 1784. The decade following the close of the war was one of ceaseless Indian warfare. The disastrous defeats of General Josiah Harmar (1753–1813) in October 1790 on the Miami river in Ohio, and of Governor Arthur St Clair on the 4th of November 1791 near Fort Recovery, Ohio, were followed in 1792 by the appointment of General Anthony Wayne to the command of the frontier. By him the Indians were signally defeated in the Battle of Fallen Timbers (or Maumee Rapids) on the 20th of August 1794, and Fort Wayne, Indiana, was erected on the Maumee river. On the 3rd of August 1795, at Greenville, Ohio, a treaty was concluded between Wayne and twelve Indian tribes, and a narrow slice of the east-south-eastern part of the present state (the disputed lands in the valley of the Maumee) and various other small but not unimportant tracts were ceded to the United States. Then came several years’ respite from Indian war, and settlers began at once to pour into the region. The claims of Virginia (1784) and the other eastern states having been extinguished, a clear field existed for the establishment of Federal jurisdiction in the “Territory North-West of the Ohio,” but it was not until 1787 that by the celebrated Ordinance of that year such jurisdiction became an actuality. The North-West Territory was governed by its first governor, Arthur St Clair, until 1799, when it was accorded a representative government. In 1800 it was divided, and from its western part (including the present states of Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin, the north-east part of Minnesota, and a large part—from 1803 to 1805 all—of the present state of Michigan) Indiana Territory was erected, with General William Henry Harrison—who had been secretary of the North-West Territory since 1798—as its first governor, and with Vincennes as the seat of government. Harrison made many treaties with the Indians, the most important being that signed at Fort Wayne on the 7th of June 1803, defining the Vincennes tract transferred to the United States by the Treaty of Greenville; those signed at Vincennes on the 18th and the 27th of August 1804, transferring to the United States a strip north of the Ohio river and south of the Vincennes tract; that concluded at Grouseland on the 21st of August 1805, procuring from the Delawares and others a tract along the Ohio river between the parcels of 1795 and 1804; and the treaties of Fort Wayne, signed on the 30th of September 1809, and securing one tract immediately west of that of 1795 and another north of the Vincennes tract defined in 1803. In January 1805 Michigan Territory was erected from the northern part of Indiana Territory, and in July following the first General Assembly of Indiana Territory met at Vincennes. In March 1809 the Territory was again divided, Illinois Territory being established from its western portion; Indiana was then reduced to its present limits. In 1810 began the last great Indian war in Indiana, in which the confederated Indians were led by Tecumseh, the celebrated Shawnee chief; it terminated with their defeat at Tippecanoe (the present Battle Ground) by Governor Harrison on the 7th of November 1811. After the close of the second war with Great Britain, immigration began again to flow rapidly into the Territory, and, having attained a sufficient population, Indiana was admitted to the Union as a state by joint resolution of Congress on the 11th of December 1816. The seat of government was established at Corydon, whither it had been removed from Vincennes in 1813. In 1820 the site of the present Indianapolis was selected for a new capital, but the seat of government was not removed thither until 1825.
The first great political problem presenting itself was that of slavery, and for a decade or more the only party divisions were on pro-slavery and anti-slavery lines. Although the Ordinance of 1787 actually prohibited slavery, it did not abolish that already in existence. Slavery had been introduced by the French, and was readily accepted and perpetuated by the early American settlers, almost all of whom were natives of Virginia, Kentucky, Georgia or the Carolinas. According to the census of 1800 there were 175 slaves in the Territory. The population of settlers from slave states was considerably larger than in Illinois, the proportion being 20% as late as 1850. It was but natural, therefore, that efforts should at once have been made to establish the institution of slavery on Indiana soil, and as early as 1802 a convention called to consider the expediency of slavery asked Congress to suspend the prohibitory clause of the Ordinance for ten years, but a committee of which John Randolph of Virginia was chairman reported against such action. Within the Territory there were several attempts to escape, by means of legislation, the effects of the Ordinance. These efforts consisted in (1) a law regulating the status of “servants,” by which it was sought to establish a legal relation between master and slave; (2) a law by which it was sought to establish practical slavery by a system of indenture. By 1808 the opponents of slavery, found chiefly among the Quaker settlers in the south-eastern counties, began to awake to the danger that confronted them, and in 1809 elected their candidate,
