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under French supervision and subject to manipulation in the interest of the French fur trade. However two remarks, made in 1790 and 1792 by Kickapoo and Wea speakers, respectively, indicate that perhaps the Weas may have nominally "controlled" even though they did not use and occupy, the north bank of the Wabash and the lands to the westward at Ouiatanon, and also that the Weas may have dominated the Kickapoos of Ouiatanon.
The first remark we have reference to was the reply given to Antoine Gamelin in 1790 by Kickapoo speakers at Ouiatanon, when Gamelin delivered Gov. Arthur St. Clair's proposal to them that the Kickapoos declare peace with the United States. The Kickapoos informed Gamelin that they could not do this "without consulting the Ouiatanons [Weas], being the owners of their lands." This remark may have been meant literally, or it may have been offered only as a plausible excuse for not accepting at once Gov. St. Clair's proposal.
The second remark which has a bearing on the subject was made by Weas and Eel River Indians after signing a peace agreement with Maj. John Francis Hamtramck in March, 1792. The Kickapoos of Ouiatanon were at the time ''on the Illinois River," and hence were not present at the signing. However the Weas and Eel River Indians promised Hamtramck that if the Kickapoos did return to the Wabash they (the Weas and Eel Rivers) would force the Kickapoos to accede to the peace agreement or else "drive them out of the country." Again, this remark may also have been meant literally, or it may have
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been a half boastful, half placating promise, made by Wea and Eel River chiefs whose towns had been destroyed twice by American troops during the previous year.
Beside both remarks being subject to two interpretations, it is also significant that both were made late (1790 and 1792) when the Kickapoo population at Ouiatanon had shrunk from almost 1,000 souls (1778) to 400 souls (1788), and that neither remark is supported in accounts of the Weas written by eighteenth-century observers such as Bougainville (1757), Thomas Hutchins (1762), Henry Hamilton (1778), Arent De Peyster (1780-1783). Hamilton councilled separately with the Weas and Kickapoos at Ouiatanon in 1778 and it is plain from his Journal that the members of these two groups made their political decisions independently. There are likewise no indications in Hamilton's Journal that the Kickapoos were at Ouiatanon in 1778 on sufferance from the Weas. After careful consideration of the various factors involved we conclude that the Weas did not "own" or "control" Kickapoo villages, fields, or hunting grounds at or west of Ouiatanon during the eighteenth century. By 1792 the Weas may have honestly believed that they and the Eel River" could, if they had to, impose their will on their former Kickapoo neighbors, should the latter return to Ouiatanon (which they did not do). But we see no justification for projecting a reference to possible Wea domination of the Kickapoo at Ouiatanon backward from 1792, and assuming that it also applied during a period when Kickapoo population at Ouiatanon had equalled or even slightly exeeded Wea population there.
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The second of the two points needing special consideration concerns native use, occupancy, and control of the lands on the middle Wabash from ca. 1790 onward. Around that date a second group of non-Wea Indians, namely some Potawatomis, also lived on or near the middle Wabash.
In March, 1790, it will be recalled, when Gamelin took St. Clair's message to the "Wabash Indians" there were no Potawatomis on or near the middle Wabash- at least Gamelin seems not to have visited any, and it would have been his business to have done so had any been there. But in July of 1790 some Weas and also some Potawatomis from a Potawatomi village of 400 souls located "near the Weeya," went to Vincennes and offered to make peace with the Americans. This is our earliest reference to any Potawatomis located on or near the middle course of the Wabash.
On June 3, 1791 Gen. Scott destroyed "the important town of Kethtipecanunk [Tippecanoe]" at the mouth of Tippecanoe River. It was at this town, referred to as "Quitepiconnae," that the Weas had assembled 15 months previously, in March, 1790, to hear and consider St. Clair's message as delivered by Gamelin. Scott did not report what Indians were occupying Kethtipicanunk when he destroyed it on June 3, 1791, nor did Wilkinson identify the Indians there when he re-destroyed the town two months later in August, 1791; it may or may not have been, in 1791, an all-Wea town as it had been when Gamelin visited it in March, 1790.
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In 1792 a Potawatomi chief, La Jasse, evidently pro-American in sympathy, signed the unratified Putnam treaty. La Jasse died in 1793, but in 1795 his brother, Keesas or the Sun, was we know chief of a pro-American village of Potawatomis located "a day's walk below the Wea towns [at Ouiatanon?] on the Wabash." La Jasse may have been chief of those pro-American Potawatomis "near the Weeya" who had tried to make peace with Hamtramck at Vincennes in 1790. If so, there had probably been a pro-American Potawatomi town, under La Jasse, in existence some 15 miles or so below Ouiatanon from as early as July, 1790, which was still in existence in 1795 under La Jasse's pro-American brother Keesas.
There was we know by 1795, a sizable group of pro-British Potawatomis, plus some Weas, at Kethtipecanunk at the mouth of the Tippecanoe River, under the chiefs La Masse and La Blau or Bennac, as well as more (pro-British?) Potawatomis on the middle Wabash above the mouth of Tippecanoe River. There was also, in 1795, the village of pro-American Potawatomis on the middle Wabash below Ouiatanon, under Keesas or the Sun, brother of the late La Jasse. The pro-American Potawatomis were represented by Keesas at the Treaty of Greenville of 1795 and were referred to by Wayne as part of the "the Indians, of the Wabash." This was the first time this collective term, "Indians of the Wabash," was used to include any Potawatomis. As Wayne used it, it did not include the pro-British Potawatomis at and above the mouth of the Tippecanoe River; these latter were not represented (being pro-
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British) at Greenville.
From this brief resume of the advent of the Potawatomis on the Wabash we conclude that as the number of Weas and Kickapoos occupying and using the middle Wabash lessened, several pro-British and some pro-American Potawatomis lost no time in moving into that fertile region. Their use and occupancy of the middle Wabash began very late, however- no earlier, at the outside, than the spring or summer of 1790. Up to 1790 the Weas, and some of the Kickapoos and Mascoutens had used, occupied, and controlled the lands bordering on the middle Wabash. But within five short years after these latter groups began to leave the middle Wabash, pro-British Potawatomis and pro-American Potawatomis were established at the mouth of the Tippecanoe and "a day's walk" below Ouiatanon. By 1795, these two groups of Potawatomis were representing themselves to American officials newly arrived on the scene, as among the "native" occupants who controlled the middle Wabash region.
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