Richardville House of Celebration

by Tom Castaldi

United States Senator, Battle of Tippecanoe hero and Indian Agent, General John Tipton once described Miami Indian Civil Chief Jean Baptiste Richardville as, “the ablest diplomat of whom I have any knowledge.  If he had been born in France he would have been the equal of Tallyrand.”  However, Richardville was born at Kekionga, site of present-day Fort Wayne, in 1761 to Antoine Joseph Drouet de Richardville, a fur trader who was descended from French nobility.  Richardville’s mother, Tacumwah, was the sister of Miami Civil Chief Pecanne.  

The Chief Richardville House became a National Historic Landmark in 2012.

Descendants of the Chief gathered for the ceremonies for the National Historic Landmark designation.

At an early age Richardville gained the respect of the Miami and Euro Americans for his courage, integrity and business acumen. Raised in the Miami culture of Kekionga, he was educated in the white world learning to read and write under Jesuit instruction in Detroit.  Here he learned something of the ways of politicians and business speculators. Richardville was not groomed for warfare as was the Miami custom, but rather his commerce-headed mother set him among businessmen and traders, while he spent his leisure time travelling the three rivers impressing the young women with his violin and flute.

Richardville’s mother Tacumwah served as a fine model since she managed the business of moving people and cargo across the land barrier portage that separates the Maumee and Wabash river systems offering the most direct route between the eastern seaboard and Gulf of Mexico.  She earned a fortune levying tolls on all the travel across the portage as well as leasing porters, carts and supplies to haul canoes, pirogues, pelts and cargo.  Richardville built upon this enterprise while accumulating a personal fortune and gaining the respect of all he encountered. With this influence, a benevolent Richardville helped the Miami people through their angst as other tribes throughout the region were removed from their ancestral homes to reservations prepared for them west of the Mississippi River.  He led a successful strategy of aiding many Miami to retain their lands.  Instead of offering his people property to be whittled away by constant land sales, individual families were given legal land grants as private property and were encouraged to farm the land and acculturate into American society.





In recognition of his role as principal chief of the Miami people, the U.S. government awarded Richardville $600 to build a house on his traditional home site along the St. Mary’s River. Today the house still stands at 5705 Bluffton Road. To reach the house, follow the drive leading from First Source Bank on the east side of Bluffton Road, slightly north of the stoplight at Old Trail Road.  Back in 1827, Richardville added to the $600 and built the house for $2,200.  Constructed of brick, it was a grand and spacious home with crystal chandeliers in two first-floor parlors. Each parlor and the two upstairs bedrooms featured fireplaces.  It may have had an inside kitchen in the basement, and outside a barn, a corral and pens for livestock. In later years additions were made to the house, but the central core has remained for generations that followed to enjoy.  It was probably the finest place in all of Northern Indiana, and anyone who was invited there for dinner by the Chief was the envy of all.

A portrait of the Chief later in life.

 

In 1828, the house was the site of Richardville’s daughter Catherine’s marriage to Francis LaFontaine. “The actual wedding ceremony was quiet enough,” one guest remembered, but “following the ceremony the wedding dance began. All the guests fell back to the corners of the room and a bunch of squaws came out into the center of the room to perform a dance…in cadence while an old Indian hammered on a big drum to furnish the dance time.” 
  
Today the History Center serves as the steward for the Richardville House. Celebrations at the old place continue and Richardville’s benevolent legacy continues.  One event is the annual Buffalo Tro fest that centers around a stack of hard wood that for five or six hours has been burning until nothing remains but white hot embers.   

This year's Buffalo Tro is September 26 at "The House".

Thick Buffalo steaks are tossed directly onto the embers, searing in delicious flavors. It’s very early American cooking at its very best.  The Buffalo Tro name comes from the idea of “throwing” the meat on the fire and has become an annual fund raising event for all to enjoy with revenue dedicated to making possible student visits to the History Center Museum and its facilities that interpret our heritage.  Support of the Buffalo Tro enables students to experience our region’s heritage that in turn creates a sense of place, something in which to take pride and that is what builds community.   

For you, a visit to the old Chief’s house is an opportunity to visit a unique landmark while celebrating our region's rich history.

 

Miami Indian Heritage Days features a variety of programs on Miami culture. Medicine Woman drum kicked off the summer season this year.

Originally published in Fort Wayne Monthly “Along the Heritage Trail with Tom Castaldi” 

Sept. 2008 No. 46

Allen County Historian Tom Castaldi is author of the Wabash & Erie Canal Notebook series; hosts “On the Heritage Trail,” which is broadcast at 6:35 a.m., 8:35 a.m. and 6:30 p.m. Mondays on WBOI, 89.1 FM; and “Historia Nostra” heard on WLYV-1450 AM and WRRO 89.9 FM. Enjoy his previously published columns on the History Center’s blog, “Our Stories,” at history centerfw.blogspot.com.

In Celebration of Women's History Month: Tacumwah and the Old Apple Tree

by Tom Castaldi

Kekionga in today’s Lakeside neighborhood where the Three Rivers meet was once the site of an American Indian settlement established long before Europeans wandered through the area.  Kekionga was actually a collection of villages that now make up present-day Lakeside neighborhood and was a center of the Miami nation in historic times.  Miami people were first discovered in 1654 living in the Green Bay, Wisconsin area by the Europeans exploring North America, far from their native lands of the lower Great Lakes.  The Miami and many other tribes of the region had been pushed out of their homelands by their enemies from the east. These were the Iroquois who had been heavily armed by the Dutch and English and were encouraged to attack the western Indians likely to be friendly with their French rivals.

You can learn more about the Miami at the Chief Richardville House, a national historic landmark. Check our website for information on programs coming up May-November at "the house".

 

It was a natural place for people to come together.  To the west is the short land bridge, or portage, between the Three Rivers system that eventually flows to the Atlantic.  In the opposite direction the Wabash system flows into the Ohio, the Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico as well as to points west that were explored by Lewis and Clark.  Serving as the portage, also known as the carrying place, travelers could transport their cargos from one river passage to the next.

Stories about activities at Kekionga have been preserved such as the especially interesting one about a remarkable woman.  Her Miami name Tacumwah, meaning “the water-bird”, was sometimes substituted with her baptismal name which was Marie Louise.    Tacumwah was perhaps the most important woman among the Miami people, during the time of the wars between the American Indians and the United States.  The conflict fought was for control of the Three Rivers region during the years 1778 to 1813.  One source refers to Tacumwah as a “Chiefess.”  By her lineage were descended the future chiefs of the Miami nation.  Her husband was Antoine Joseph Drouet de Richardville, a French officer and fur trader from the Troi Riveres settlement in Canada.

A very successful businesswoman, Tacumwah owned a trading post west of Kekionga near the beginning of the portage where she conducted a lucrative business providing porters, carts, packhorses, and supplies to those crossing between the Saint Mary’s and the Wabash rivers.  She passed her prestige, wealth and business on to her son, Pechewa – the man we have come to know as Jean Baptiste de Richardville – chief of the Miami from 1813 until his death in 1841.

Tacumwah gave birth to Pechewa near an old apple tree somewhere west of the Saint Joseph River, in the village of Kekionga.  This tree, with its trunk alleged to have measured twelve feet in circumference, became a lively part of local tradition.  It was an early example in the area of a European tree foreign to North America and it played an interesting role during the siege of 1812.

According to a story recounted in the mid-nineteenth century, an Indian warrior climbed the ancient apple tree every day for several days to harass the soldiers in the fort, but, finally, a marksman in the garrison felled the taunting brave with an amazing musket shot measuring many hundreds of yards.  So popular were the local legends about the tree that George Winter, an important itinerant painter of the 1830s and 1840s, was enticed to made a sketch of it that survives to this day.  Author and historian Wallace Brice saw fit to include a drawing of the old apple tree, as one of a very few illustrations, in his 1868 History of Fort Wayne book.  It’s a pretty good drawing too and worth a visit to the library to check it out.

Originally published in Fort Wayne Magazine “Along the Heritage Trail with Tom Castaldi” 

 March 2008 No. 41

 

Allen County Historian Tom Castaldi is author of the Wabash & Erie Canal Notebook series; hosts “On the Heritage Trail,” which is broadcast at 6:35 a.m., 8:35 a.m. and 6:30 p.m. Mondays on WBOI, 89.1 FM; and “Historia Nostra” heard on WLYV-1450 AM and WRRO 89.9 FM. Enjoy his previously published columns on the History Center’s blog, “Our Stories,” at history centerfw.blogspot.com.

Tacumwah: Chief Richardville’s mother

A second article about Tacumwah by Carmen Doyle

Wallace Brice, in his 1868 History of Fort Wayne gives a detailed account of how Jean-Baptiste Richardville became chief of the Miami Indians:

“A white man had been captured and brought in by the warriors. A council had been convened, in which the question of his fate arose in debate and was soon settled. He was to be burned at the stake, and the braves and the villagers generally were soon gathered about the scene of torture, making the very air to resound with their vociferations and triumphant shouts of pleasure and gratification of the prospect of soon enjoying another hour of fiendish merriment at the expense of a poor, miserable victim of torture. Already the man was lashed to the stake, and the torch that was to ignite the combustible material placed about the same and the victim of torture, was in the hands of the brave appointed to create the flame that was soon to consume the victim of their cruelty. But the spirit of rescue was at hand. The man was destined to be saved from the terrible fate that surrounded him!

Young Richardville had for some time been singled out as the future chief of the tribe, and his heroic mother (Tacumwah) saw in this a propitious and glorious moment for the assertion of his chieftainship, by an act of great daring and bravery, in the rescue of the prisoner at the stake. All eyes were now fixed upon the captive. Young Richardville and his mother were some distance from the general scene, but sufficiently near to see the movements of the actors in the tragedy about to be enacted, and could plainly hear the coarse ejaculations and mingled shouts of triumph of the crowd. At that moment, just as the torch was about to be applied to the bark, as if touched by some angelic impulse of love and pity for the poor captive, the mother of young Richardville placed a knife in her son’s hand, and bade him assert his chieftainship by the rescue of the prisoner. The magnetic force of the mother seemed to have convulsed and inspired the young warrior, and he quickly bounded away to the scene, broke through the wild crowd, cut the cords that bound the man, and bid him be free! All was astonishment and surprise; and though by no means pleased at the loss of their prize, yet the young man, their favorite, for his heroic and daring conduct, was at once esteemed a god by the crowd, and then and thereafter became a chief of the first distinction and honor in the tribe!”

While the dramatic account,which seems designed to be told around a campfire, appears to be about Richardville, the real power is with his mother Tacumwah. She is the one who puts the knife in Richardville’s hand and she is the one who tells him to cut the prisoner free. Tacumwah is also the one who takes care of the former prisoner. She gets the rescued man into a boat and sent to some friendly Indians.

Tacumwah was the major influence on her son. She controlled the portage, a miles long strip of land connecting the Maumee and Wabash rivers. The portage was a profitable one, making her, and later Richardville, wealthy. She retained control of the portage despite a disagreement with Chief Richardville’s father. The Bicentennial Heritage Trail tells how Tacumwah was “the most important woman among the Miami people during the time of the wars between the United States and the Native Americans of the region. Tacumwah was an outstanding businesswoman.”

She was also intelligent. Henry Hay, in his journal from 1790, conveys that Richardville was “very bashful” and never spoke in council- “his mother who is very clever is obliged to do it for him.” Hay also mentions she ran a trading post, and he later purchases a horse from her.

Although Tacumwah is usually only mentioned because of her son being Chief, it is obvious from what Hay and Brice said that she was an important person in her own right, not just as the mother of a powerful man.

Sources:

Wallace A. Brice, History of Fort Wayne, 1868

Fort Wayne Bicentennial Heritage Trail Guide Map  (Site 51)

Henry Hay, Journal from Detroit to the Miami River, 1790