1453 - May 29; Constantinople falls to the Ottoman Turks. After 1100 years the Eastern Roman Empire has finally reached its end, shutting Europe's door to the East.
1485 - August 22; the Battle of Bosworth Field. Richard III is killed, ending the War of the Roses. Henry Tudor becomes King of England as Henry VII.
1492 - October 12; Christopher Columbus makes his first landfall in the Americas.
1498 - June 24; John Cabot, sailing on behalf of Henry VII of England, discovers North America.
c. 1500 - Breton, Basque and Cornish fishermen are fishing the Grand Banks off Newfoundland, and may actually have preceded Columbus and Cabot.
1509 - April 21; death of Henry VII. Henry VIII becomes King of England.
1535 - August 10; Jacques Cartier, on a voyage of discovery for Francois I of France, sails into the St. Lawrence.
October 2; first French contact with Wyandots in the vicinity of the great town of Hochelaga, site of the present Montreal. Wyandots and related tribes may number between 30,000 and 45,000, with two of the largest, the Attignousntan and the Attigneenongnahac, joined in a confederacy. Already at war with other Iroquoian tribes, the Wyandots begin to move west.
1539 - May 25; Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto lands with a large force at Tampa Bay in the Floridas.
1541 - May 8; Soto reaches the Mississippi River, having marched overland from the Floridas. The brutal behavior of the Spanish has a devastating effect on the tribes of the southeast; perhaps coincidently, Mississippian culture enters a rapid decline.
1542 - May 21; death of Soto. He is buried in the Mississippi at night to hide his death from the Indians.
1547 - January 16; Ivan the Terrible is crowned Czar of Russia.
January 28; death of Henry VIII. Nine-year-old Edward VI becomes King of England.
1553
1553 - July 6; death of Edward VI. His elder half-sister Mary I becomes Queen of England.
1558 - November 17; death of "Bloody" Mary. Her younger half-sister Elizabeth I becomes Queen of England.
1559 - January 15; Queen Elizabeth is crowned in Westminster Abbey.
c. 1560 - Iroquoian tribes south of the Great Lakes, at war with each other and surrounded by more numerous Algonquian enemies, are on the verge of extinction. The Iroquois Confederacy, the League of the Five Nations, is founded by Deganawidah and Hiawatha. Beginning of the "Great Peace."
The Arendahronon, the People of the Rock, join the Huron (Wyandot) Confederacy.
1564 - April 23; birth of William Shakespeare.
1570 - February 25; Pope Pius V excommunicates Queen Elizabeth.
c. 1570 - The Tohonaenrat, the People of the Deer, join the Huron (Wyandot) Confederacy.
1587 - February 8; Mary, Queen of Scots is beheaded for plotting to murder her cousin, Elizabeth I.
1588 - July 29; England defeats the Spanish Armada.
c. 1600 - The name "Hurons" is given to the Wyandots of the Huron Confederacy by the French. The four nations are at the height of their power in Ouendake (the French Huronia), with 16 towns between Lake Simcoe and Georgian Bay in central Ontario. Capital of the confederacy is the town of Ossossane on Nottawasaga Bay. Ottawa to Wyandot to Iroquois fur trade flourishes, supported by Wyandot agricultural surplus.
South of the Hurons is a second, smaller Wyandot confederacy, the Tionontate, called Petun by the French. A third Wyandot group, the Attiwandaronk, called the Neutrals because of their stance in Wyandot-Iroquois conflicts, occupies the country west of Niagara.
1603 - March 24; death of Elizabeth I. James VI of Scotland becomes King of England as James I.
1607 - April 26; the first permanent English settlement in the Americas is established in Virginia.
1608
1608 - July 3; Samuel de Champlain founds Quebec, the first permanent French settlement in the Americas, on the site of the Algonkian town of Stadacona.
1609 - July 30; Champlain accompanies a mixed war party of Hurons and Algonkins to the lake which now bears his name, where with his aid they inflict a major defeat on the Iroquois. The Iroquois discover firearms.
September 2; Henry Hudson and the Half Moon, sailing on behalf of the Dutch East India Company, enter the Hudson River while searching for the Northwest Passage.
In the winter, La Villa Real de la Santa Fe de San Francisco de Asis is founded by Pedro de Peralta as the capital of the province of New Mexico.
1611-1612 - Etienne Brule, protege of Champlain, spends an extended period among the Hurons.
1614 - A formal trading alliance between the French and the Huron Confederacy is ratified at Quebec.
Dutch begin trading guns to the Iroquois. They are soon much better armed than the Hurons.
1615 - Champlain sends Fransciscan missionaries into the St. Lawrence territory. With Recollet Father Joseph Le Caron he visits the Hurons and spends the winter among them.
1616 - April 23; deaths of William Shakespeare in Stratford-on-Avon, England, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra in Madrid, Spain.
1619 - A Dutch ship needing supplies lands the first cargo of 20 African slaves at Jamestown in Virginia.
1620 - December 26; the Pilgrims land at the site of Plymouth on Massachusetts Bay.
1621 - June 3; the Dutch West India Company receives a charter for New Netherlands.
1623 - Father Le Caron and two other Recollet missionaries attempt to establish a mission among the Hurons but fail.
1625
1625 - March 27; death of James I. Charles I becomes King of England.
In the spring, Nieuw Amsterdam (present New York City) is founded on Manhattan Island by the Dutch.
Arrival of Jesuit missionaries in Canada.
1629 - August 9; after a relief expedition sent by Richelieu from France is captured by privateers, Champlain is forced to surrender Quebec to the English. The town's French population still numbers just 65, with only 20 adult males.
1632 - March 29; Quebec is returned to France by the Treaty of St. Germaine-en-Laye. Champlain must begin to rebuild.
1634 - The Jesuits begin a mission to the Hurons at Ihonatiria, where Taretand' is chief.
Trois Rivieres is founded by La Biolette. It becomes the fur trading center of New France.
1634-1640 - War, a devastating smallpox or measles epidemic, and religious dissension among the Wyandots reduce their number to approximately 10,000.
1635 - December 25; death of Samuel de Champlain at the age of 68.
1637 - The Jesuits move their Huron mission headquarters to Ossossane. Many turn to the Church for protection from the epidemic.
1638 - March 29; Swedish and Finnish colonists begin to settle in the Delaware River valley. They have friendly relations with most groups of the Delaware Indians.
1639 - The mission-fort of Ste. Marie Among the Hurons is constructed by the Jesuits on the Wye River near Midland Bay, and becomes the center for Huron mission activities.
600 of the Wenrohronon, a Neutral tribe from east of Niagara, seek refuge with the Huron Confederacy.
1642 - May 18; La Ville Marie de Montreal is founded by Paul de Chomeday, Sieur de Maisonneuve, on the site of Hochelaga.
The Iroquois attack Huron canoes on the Ottawa River in retaliation for loss of the fur trade to the French.
1643
1643 - February 15; New Sweden's first governor, Lieutenant-General Johan Printz, arrives at Christina Harbour (present Wilmington, Delaware).
There are more Iroquois attacks on French-Huron trading parties on the Ottawa River.
1644 - February 18; a Papal Brief recognizes Ste. Marie as a place of pilgrimage.
The Iroquois block the Ottawa River. Twenty French men-at-arms are sent to protect Huronia.
The Atontrataronnon, an Algonquian people, seek asylum with the Huron to escape destruction by the Iroquois.
1645 - A peace treaty between the French and the Iroquois leads the latter to expect a resumption of the Huron fur trade. Instead, the Huron take 60 canoe loads of furs to Montreal.
1646 - The Huron take 80 canoe loads of furs to Montreal - some 32,000 lbs. of beaver pelts.
1647 - May 11; Peter Stuyvesant arrives in Nieuw Amsterdam to become governor of New Netherlands.
No Huron trading canoes go to Montreal this year.
1648 - 250 Hurons in a flotilla of canoes make the journey to Quebec.
July 4; raiding deep into Ouendake, the Iroquois destroy the Huron mission village of St. Joseph, torturing the Jesuit missionary, Father Antoine Daniel, to death.
The Huron trading expedition returns from Quebec with 27 Frenchmen, including 12 men-at-arms.
1649 - January 30; King Charles I of England is beheaded.
March 16; 1,200 well-armed Iroquois launch coordinated attacks into Ouendake, wiping out the mission towns of St. Ignace and St. Louis. Hundreds of Hurons are put to death, along with Father Jean de Brebeuf and Father Gabriel Lalement.
Ossossane is abandoned as the Huron Confederacy disintegrates. Many flee to islands in Georgian Bay; some seek refuge with the Ottawa, Petun, or French, while others become adopted captives of the Iroquois. Ste. Marie is isolated.
1649
In May, Ste. Marie is abandoned, the refugees moving to the safety of Christian Island in Georgian Bay. By winter the island's population has swelled to 6,000.
In December, the Petun lose their principal town to the Iroquois. Father Charles Garnier and Father Noel Chabanel, missionaries to the Petun at St. Jean, are tortured to death by the Iroquois, bringing the number of Jesuit martyrs to five. Petun and Huron refugees leave Ontario, and spend the winter of 1649-50 on Mackinac Island.
c. 1650 - First French contact with the Shawnee in Tennessee, where they have drifted from Ohio. A Shawnee colony called the Savannah is in South Carolina, where they form a buffer between the Cherokee and the Catawba.
1650 - June 10; after a winter of famine, 300 surviving Huron refugees on Christian Island set out with 60 Frenchmen for Quebec, where their descendants the Hurons of Lorette still live.
1651 - Under continuing Iroquois pressure, Petun and Huron Wyandots move from Mackinac to an island in Green Bay, where they are joined by Ottawa refugees.
The Neutrals are attacked by the Iroquois. Some flee to their Wyandot kin at Green Bay, others go south to Ohio where Wyandot refugees are enslaved by the Erie.
1652-c.1665 - The Wyandots and Ottawa move inland from Green Bay to the Mississippi River, then drift north to Chequamegon on Lake Superior in Sioux country, where they resume fur trade with the French.
1653 - February 2; the city of Nieuw Amsterdam is incorporated.
1653-1656 - The Erie lose a protracted war with the Iroquois. Some flee, others are absorbed by the Seneca. They disappear as a tribe. The Five Nations temporarily control all the lands on either side of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario.
1654 - Huron refugees at Quebec are joined by others from Trois Rivieres. Their chief is Ignace Tsaouenhohouhi.
1655 - September 1; New Sweden falls to Peter Stuyvesant and the Dutch. In the years of skirmishing back and forth, the Delaware have generally sided with the Swedes.
1658 - September 3; death of Oliver Cromwell.
1660
1660 - May 29; the Restoration. Charles II becomes King of England.
1664 - September 8; Peter Stuyvesant is forced to surrender Nieuw Amsterdam to the English when the good burghers refuse to fight.
1665 - June 12; England installs a municipal government in Nieuw Amsterdam, renamed New York.
June 30; a new Lieutenant-General of New France, the Marquis de Tracy, arrives in Quebec with the first regular French troops. The Crown takes possession of the colony.
The Mission of La Pointe du St. Esprit is founded by Father Allouez at Chequamegon on Lake Superior, ministering to the Ottawa and Wyandots.
1666 - After over two decades of skirmishes, raids and ambushes, the French launch a full-scale military invasion of the Iroquois country.
September 20; Father Jacques Marquette arrives in Quebec from France.
1667 - July 7; the French and the Iroquois sign a peace treaty. This brings 20 years of peace to New France and largely ends the conflict between the Iroquois and the Wyandots.
1669 - Father Marquette joins the Mission of St. Esprit at Chequamegon. Kondiaronk is Sastaretsi, "Grand Sachem" or hereditary head chief of Wyandots in the west.
1670 - May 2; the Hudson Bay Company is chartered by Charles II to compete with the French in the Canadian fur trade.
1671 - In conflict with the Sioux and no longer menaced by the Iroquois, Wyandots move to Michilimackinac, where the Mission of St. Ignace is founded by Father Marquette.
1673 - In May, Father Marquette and Louis Joliet set out from St. Ignace to find the great river described by the Illinois Indians. They reach the Mississippi on June 17, and the mouth of the Arkansas a month later, where they turn back after learning there are Spanish in the area of the present New Orleans.
1675 - May 18; Father Marquette dies of a fever while on a mission to the Illinois Indians.
1677 - Father Marquette's remains are returned to St. Ignace.
1680
1680 - August 21; Pueblo Indians take possession of Santa Fe after driving out the Spanish. The successful revolt temporarily creates a power vacuum in western North America, which the French are quick to exploit.
1682 - April 9; Rene Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, having descended the full length of the Mississippi with an exploring party of 23 Frenchmen and 31 Indians, claims all of the lands drained by the river and its tribu-taries for France and names it Louisiana.
July 15; the Delaware sign a treaty with Penn's repre-sentative William Markham at the present site of Germantown, Pennsylvania; Voltaire claims this is the only treaty with the Indians that whites never broke.
October 29; William Penn arrives in Pennsylvania to oversee the Holy Experiment.
1685 - February 6; death of Charles II. His brother James II becomes King of England.
March 21; birth of Johann Sebastian Bach.
1687 - March 19; La Salle is murdered by mutineers in present-day Texas.
1688 - December 22; the Glorious Revolution. James II abdicates, and William of Orange and his wife Mary, elder daughter of James II, become joint rulers of Great Britain as William III and Mary II.
1689-1697 - King William's War between Britain and France.
1690 - July 12; the Battle of the Boyne. Protestant forces led by William of Orange defeat James II in Ireland, as he attempts to regain his throne.
1692 - The Spanish retake Santa Fe, meeting little resistence, in an otherwise brutal reconquest of New Mexico.
1694 - December 28; death of Mary II after six years of joint rule with her husband William III.
1700-1730 - The Shawnee begin drifting back north into Kentucky - the Dark and Bloody Ground - and western Pennsylvania. One group ends up in Maryland.
1700 - French fur traders are operating along the Missouri River as far as the mouth of the Kansas River and perhaps beyond.
1701
1701 - July 24; Fort Pontchartrain du Detroit is founded by the French. At the invitation of Sieur Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, Wyandots move south from Michilimackinac to settle in the vicinity of the new fort, but pro- and anti-French (anti-Catholic) divisions persist. Cadillac himself is hostile toward the Jesuits and their missionary efforts.
In August, death of Kondiaronk, Sastaretsi of the Wyandots for over 40 years, at Montreal.
1702 - March 8; death of William III. Anne, second daughter of James II, becomes Queen of Great Britain and America.
1702-1713 - Queen Anne's War between Britain and France. Marlborough and Prinz Eugene versus the Sun King.
1704 - The last Wyandot having left, the Jesuits burn their mission house at Michilimackinac and return to Quebec.
1706 - January 17; birth of Benjamin Franklin in Boston.
1709-1742 - The Delaware gradually move in small groups from the Delaware River valley to lands controlled by the Iroquois on the West Branch of the Susquehanna in central Pennsylvania. From this point, the Iroquois regard the Delaware as a subserviant people. The Munsee have already separated from the main Delaware group.
1713 - The Tuscarora, defeated by an alliance of Indians and British colonists in North Carolina, move north to join the Iroquois Confederacy; Six Nations thereafter.
July 10; the exploring party of Etienne Veniard, Sieur de Bourgmont, camps at the present site of Kansas City, Missouri. The next day he investigates the "crusts of Red Earth" he saw along the banks of the Kansas River.
1714 - August 1; death of Queen Anne. George I becomes King of Great Britain and America.
1717 - Upper Louisiana (the Illinois country) comes under the supervision of Lower Louisiana's government.
1718 - August 25; hundreds of French colonists arrive in Louisiana, some settling on the site of the future New Orleans.
1720
1720 - The French build Fort de Chartres in the Illinois country, 15 miles north of Kaskaskia, as the seat of government in Upper Louisiana.
August 15; a Spanish military expedition from Santa Fe and their Apache allies are defeated by the Pawnee and their French allies near the principal Pawnee village at the forks of the Platte in present Nebraska. Only a handful of men return to Santa Fe.
1721 - The fortified city of La Nouvelle Orleans is laid out by Le Blond de la Tour.
1726 - The French build Fort Niagara to keep watch on the British at Oswego.
1727 - June 11; death of George I. George II becomes King of Great Britain and America.
1728 - The Mission of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Among the Huron is established at Detroit by Father Armand de La Richardie.
c. 1730 - While retaining their settlements in the Detroit area, many Wyandots migrate southward and settle on the south shore of Lake Erie. They gradually assume sovereignty over all the Ohio country between the Great Lakes and the Miami River. Respected by surrounding Algonquian tribes, the Wyandots are now regarded by the Six Nations as their viceroys in Ohio. Their influence greatly exceeds their numbers.
1732 - February 22; birth of George Washington on his parents' plantation in Westmoreland County, Virginia.
December 19; Benjamin Franklin, under the name Richard Saunders, begins publishing "Poor Richard's Almanack."
1733 - May 17; the Molasses Act is passed by Parliament.
1734 - November 2; birth of Daniel Boone in Berks County, Pennsylvania, the sixth child of Quaker parents.
1738 - The Wyandot chief Orontony, called Nicholas, has become estranged from the Ottawa and the French. With his followers he leaves Detroit to establish a new village at Lower Sandusky (present Fremont, Ohio).
1741 - Birth of Simon Girty, the "Great Renegade," near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
1742
1742 - Birth of Tarhe, called the Crane, near Detroit.
The Jesuits' Wyandot mission is transferred from Detroit to the Isle of Bois Blanc at the mouth of the Detroit River.
1743 - Benjamin Franklin organizes the American Phil
THE EMIGRANT TRIBES: WYANDOT, DELAWARE & SHAWNE
A CHRONOLOGY
1453 - May 29; Constantinople falls to the Ottoman Turks. After 1100 years the Eastern Roman Empire has finally reached its end, shutting Europe's door to the East.
1485 - August 22; the Battle of Bosworth Field. Richard III is killed, ending the War of the Roses. Henry Tudor becomes King of England as Henry VII.
1492 - October 12; Christopher Columbus makes his first landfall in the Americas.
1498 - June 24; John Cabot, sailing on behalf of Henry VII of England, discovers North America.
c. 1500 - Breton, Basque and Cornish fishermen are fishing the Grand Banks off Newfoundland, and may actually have preceded Columbus and Cabot.
1509 - April 21; death of Henry VII. Henry VIII becomes King of England.
1535 - August 10; Jacques Cartier, on a voyage of discovery for Francois I of France, sails into the St. Lawrence.
October 2; first French contact with Wyandots in the vicinity of the great town of Hochelaga, site of the present Montreal. Wyandots and related tribes may number between 30,000 and 45,000, with two of the largest, the Attignousntan and the Attigneenongnahac, joined in a confederacy. Already at war with other Iroquoian tribes, the Wyandots begin to move west.
1539 - May 25; Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto lands with a large force at Tampa Bay in the Floridas.
1541 - May 8; Soto reaches the Mississippi River, having marched overland from the Floridas. The brutal behavior of the Spanish has a devastating effect on the tribes of the southeast; perhaps coincidently, Mississippian culture enters a rapid decline.
1542 - May 21; death of Soto. He is buried in the Mississippi at night to hide his death from the Indians.
1547 - January 16; Ivan the Terrible is crowned Czar of Russia.
January 28; death of Henry VIII. Nine-year-old Edward VI becomes King of England.
1553
1553 - July 6; death of Edward VI. His elder half-sister Mary I becomes Queen of England.
1558 - November 17; death of "Bloody" Mary. Her younger half-sister Elizabeth I becomes Queen of England.
1559 - January 15; Queen Elizabeth is crowned in Westminster Abbey.
c. 1560 - Iroquoian tribes south of the Great Lakes, at war with each other and surrounded by more numerous Algonquian enemies, are on the verge of extinction. The Iroquois Confederacy, the League of the Five Nations, is founded by Deganawidah and Hiawatha. Beginning of the "Great Peace."
The Arendahronon, the People of the Rock, join the Huron (Wyandot) Confederacy.
1564 - April 23; birth of William Shakespeare.
1570 - February 25; Pope Pius V excommunicates Queen Elizabeth.
c. 1570 - The Tohonaenrat, the People of the Deer, join the Huron (Wyandot) Confederacy.
1587 - February 8; Mary, Queen of Scots is beheaded for plotting to murder her cousin, Elizabeth I.
1588 - July 29; England defeats the Spanish Armada.
c. 1600 - The name "Hurons" is given to the Wyandots of the Huron Confederacy by the French. The four nations are at the height of their power in Ouendake (the French Huronia), with 16 towns between Lake Simcoe and Georgian Bay in central Ontario. Capital of the confederacy is the town of Ossossane on Nottawasaga Bay. Ottawa to Wyandot to Iroquois fur trade flourishes, supported by Wyandot agricultural surplus.
South of the Hurons is a second, smaller Wyandot confederacy, the Tionontate, called Petun by the French. A third Wyandot group, the Attiwandaronk, called the Neutrals because of their stance in Wyandot-Iroquois conflicts, occupies the country west of Niagara.
1603 - March 24; death of Elizabeth I. James VI of Scotland becomes King of England as James I.
1607 - April 26; the first permanent English settlement in the Americas is established in Virginia.
1608
1608 - July 3; Samuel de Champlain founds Quebec, the first permanent French settlement in the Americas, on the site of the Algonkian town of Stadacona.
1609 - July 30; Champlain accompanies a mixed war party of Hurons and Algonkins to the lake which now bears his name, where with his aid they inflict a major defeat on the Iroquois. The Iroquois discover firearms.
September 2; Henry Hudson and the Half Moon, sailing on behalf of the Dutch East India Company, enter the Hudson River while searching for the Northwest Passage.
In the winter, La Villa Real de la Santa Fe de San Francisco de Asis is founded by Pedro de Peralta as the capital of the province of New Mexico.
1611-1612 - Etienne Brule, protege of Champlain, spends an extended period among the Hurons.
1614 - A formal trading alliance between the French and the Huron Confederacy is ratified at Quebec.
Dutch begin trading guns to the Iroquois. They are soon much better armed than the Hurons.
1615 - Champlain sends Fransciscan missionaries into the St. Lawrence territory. With Recollet Father Joseph Le Caron he visits the Hurons and spends the winter among them.
1616 - April 23; deaths of William Shakespeare in Stratford-on-Avon, England, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra in Madrid, Spain.
1619 - A Dutch ship needing supplies lands the first cargo of 20 African slaves at Jamestown in Virginia.
1620 - December 26; the Pilgrims land at the site of Plymouth on Massachusetts Bay.
1621 - June 3; the Dutch West India Company receives a charter for New Netherlands.
1623 - Father Le Caron and two other Recollet missionaries attempt to establish a mission among the Hurons but fail.
1625
1625 - March 27; death of James I. Charles I becomes King of England.
In the spring, Nieuw Amsterdam (present New York City) is founded on Manhattan Island by the Dutch.
Arrival of Jesuit missionaries in Canada.
1629 - August 9; after a relief expedition sent by Richelieu from France is captured by privateers, Champlain is forced to surrender Quebec to the English. The town's French population still numbers just 65, with only 20 adult males.
1632 - March 29; Quebec is returned to France by the Treaty of St. Germaine-en-Laye. Champlain must begin to rebuild.
1634 - The Jesuits begin a mission to the Hurons at Ihonatiria, where Taretand' is chief.
Trois Rivieres is founded by La Biolette. It becomes the fur trading center of New France.
1634-1640 - War, a devastating smallpox or measles epidemic, and religious dissension among the Wyandots reduce their number to approximately 10,000.
1635 - December 25; death of Samuel de Champlain at the age of 68.
1637 - The Jesuits move their Huron mission headquarters to Ossossane. Many turn to the Church for protection from the epidemic.
1638 - March 29; Swedish and Finnish colonists begin to settle in the Delaware River valley. They have friendly relations with most groups of the Delaware Indians.
1639 - The mission-fort of Ste. Marie Among the Hurons is constructed by the Jesuits on the Wye River near Midland Bay, and becomes the center for Huron mission activities.
600 of the Wenrohronon, a Neutral tribe from east of Niagara, seek refuge with the Huron Confederacy.
1642 - May 18; La Ville Marie de Montreal is founded by Paul de Chomeday, Sieur de Maisonneuve, on the site of Hochelaga.
The Iroquois attack Huron canoes on the Ottawa River in retaliation for loss of the fur trade to the French.
1643
1643 - February 15; New Sweden's first governor, Lieutenant-General Johan Printz, arrives at Christina Harbour (present Wilmington, Delaware).
There are more Iroquois attacks on French-Huron trading parties on the Ottawa River.
1644 - February 18; a Papal Brief recognizes Ste. Marie as a place of pilgrimage.
The Iroquois block the Ottawa River. Twenty French men-at-arms are sent to protect Huronia.
The Atontrataronnon, an Algonquian people, seek asylum with the Huron to escape destruction by the Iroquois.
1645 - A peace treaty between the French and the Iroquois leads the latter to expect a resumption of the Huron fur trade. Instead, the Huron take 60 canoe loads of furs to Montreal.
1646 - The Huron take 80 canoe loads of furs to Montreal - some 32,000 lbs. of beaver pelts.
1647 - May 11; Peter Stuyvesant arrives in Nieuw Amsterdam to become governor of New Netherlands.
No Huron trading canoes go to Montreal this year.
1648 - 250 Hurons in a flotilla of canoes make the journey to Quebec.
July 4; raiding deep into Ouendake, the Iroquois destroy the Huron mission village of St. Joseph, torturing the Jesuit missionary, Father Antoine Daniel, to death.
The Huron trading expedition returns from Quebec with 27 Frenchmen, including 12 men-at-arms.
1649 - January 30; King Charles I of England is beheaded.
March 16; 1,200 well-armed Iroquois launch coordinated attacks into Ouendake, wiping out the mission towns of St. Ignace and St. Louis. Hundreds of Hurons are put to death, along with Father Jean de Brebeuf and Father Gabriel Lalement.
Ossossane is abandoned as the Huron Confederacy disintegrates. Many flee to islands in Georgian Bay; some seek refuge with the Ottawa, Petun, or French, while others become adopted captives of the Iroquois. Ste. Marie is isolated.
1649
In May, Ste. Marie is abandoned, the refugees moving to the safety of Christian Island in Georgian Bay. By winter the island's population has swelled to 6,000.
In December, the Petun lose their principal town to the Iroquois. Father Charles Garnier and Father Noel Chabanel, missionaries to the Petun at St. Jean, are tortured to death by the Iroquois, bringing the number of Jesuit martyrs to five. Petun and Huron refugees leave Ontario, and spend the winter of 1649-50 on Mackinac Island.
c. 1650 - First French contact with the Shawnee in Tennessee, where they have drifted from Ohio. A Shawnee colony called the Savannah is in South Carolina, where they form a buffer between the Cherokee and the Catawba.
1650 - June 10; after a winter of famine, 300 surviving Huron refugees on Christian Island set out with 60 Frenchmen for Quebec, where their descendants the Hurons of Lorette still live.
1651 - Under continuing Iroquois pressure, Petun and Huron Wyandots move from Mackinac to an island in Green Bay, where they are joined by Ottawa refugees.
The Neutrals are attacked by the Iroquois. Some flee to their Wyandot kin at Green Bay, others go south to Ohio where Wyandot refugees are enslaved by the Erie.
1652-c.1665 - The Wyandots and Ottawa move inland from Green Bay to the Mississippi River, then drift north to Chequamegon on Lake Superior in Sioux country, where they resume fur trade with the French.
1653 - February 2; the city of Nieuw Amsterdam is incorporated.
1653-1656 - The Erie lose a protracted war with the Iroquois. Some flee, others are absorbed by the Seneca. They disappear as a tribe. The Five Nations temporarily control all the lands on either side of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario.
1654 - Huron refugees at Quebec are joined by others from Trois Rivieres. Their chief is Ignace Tsaouenhohouhi.
1655 - September 1; New Sweden falls to Peter Stuyvesant and the Dutch. In the years of skirmishing back and forth, the Delaware have generally sided with the Swedes.
1658 - September 3; death of Oliver Cromwell.
1660
1660 - May 29; the Restoration. Charles II becomes King of England.
1664 - September 8; Peter Stuyvesant is forced to surrender Nieuw Amsterdam to the English when the good burghers refuse to fight.
1665 - June 12; England installs a municipal government in Nieuw Amsterdam, renamed New York.
June 30; a new Lieutenant-General of New France, the Marquis de Tracy, arrives in Quebec with the first regular French troops. The Crown takes possession of the colony.
The Mission of La Pointe du St. Esprit is founded by Father Allouez at Chequamegon on Lake Superior, ministering to the Ottawa and Wyandots.
1666 - After over two decades of skirmishes, raids and ambushes, the French launch a full-scale military invasion of the Iroquois country.
September 20; Father Jacques Marquette arrives in Quebec from France.
1667 - July 7; the French and the Iroquois sign a peace treaty. This brings 20 years of peace to New France and largely ends the conflict between the Iroquois and the Wyandots.
1669 - Father Marquette joins the Mission of St. Esprit at Chequamegon. Kondiaronk is Sastaretsi, "Grand Sachem" or hereditary head chief of Wyandots in the west.
1670 - May 2; the Hudson Bay Company is chartered by Charles II to compete with the French in the Canadian fur trade.
1671 - In conflict with the Sioux and no longer menaced by the Iroquois, Wyandots move to Michilimackinac, where the Mission of St. Ignace is founded by Father Marquette.
1673 - In May, Father Marquette and Louis Joliet set out from St. Ignace to find the great river described by the Illinois Indians. They reach the Mississippi on June 17, and the mouth of the Arkansas a month later, where they turn back after learning there are Spanish in the area of the present New Orleans.
1675 - May 18; Father Marquette dies of a fever while on a mission to the Illinois Indians.
1677 - Father Marquette's remains are returned to St. Ignace.
1680
1680 - August 21; Pueblo Indians take possession of Santa Fe after driving out the Spanish. The successful revolt temporarily creates a power vacuum in western North America, which the French are quick to exploit.
1682 - April 9; Rene Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, having descended the full length of the Mississippi with an exploring party of 23 Frenchmen and 31 Indians, claims all of the lands drained by the river and its tribu-taries for France and names it Louisiana.
July 15; the Delaware sign a treaty with Penn's repre-sentative William Markham at the present site of Germantown, Pennsylvania; Voltaire claims this is the only treaty with the Indians that whites never broke.
October 29; William Penn arrives in Pennsylvania to oversee the Holy Experiment.
1685 - February 6; death of Charles II. His brother James II becomes King of England.
March 21; birth of Johann Sebastian Bach.
1687 - March 19; La Salle is murdered by mutineers in present-day Texas.
1688 - December 22; the Glorious Revolution. James II abdicates, and William of Orange and his wife Mary, elder daughter of James II, become joint rulers of Great Britain as William III and Mary II.
1689-1697 - King William's War between Britain and France.
1690 - July 12; the Battle of the Boyne. Protestant forces led by William of Orange defeat James II in Ireland, as he attempts to regain his throne.
1692 - The Spanish retake Santa Fe, meeting little resistence, in an otherwise brutal reconquest of New Mexico.
1694 - December 28; death of Mary II after six years of joint rule with her husband William III.
1700-1730 - The Shawnee begin drifting back north into Kentucky - the Dark and Bloody Ground - and western Pennsylvania. One group ends up in Maryland.
1700 - French fur traders are operating along the Missouri River as far as the mouth of the Kansas River and perhaps beyond.
1701
1701 - July 24; Fort Pontchartrain du Detroit is founded by the French. At the invitation of Sieur Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, Wyandots move south from Michilimackinac to settle in the vicinity of the new fort, but pro- and anti-French (anti-Catholic) divisions persist. Cadillac himself is hostile toward the Jesuits and their missionary efforts.
In August, death of Kondiaronk, Sastaretsi of the Wyandots for over 40 years, at Montreal.
1702 - March 8; death of William III. Anne, second daughter of James II, becomes Queen of Great Britain and America.
1702-1713 - Queen Anne's War between Britain and France. Marlborough and Prinz Eugene versus the Sun King.
1704 - The last Wyandot having left, the Jesuits burn their mission house at Michilimackinac and return to Quebec.
1706 - January 17; birth of Benjamin Franklin in Boston.
1709-1742 - The Delaware gradually move in small groups from the Delaware River valley to lands controlled by the Iroquois on the West Branch of the Susquehanna in central Pennsylvania. From this point, the Iroquois regard the Delaware as a subserviant people. The Munsee have already separated from the main Delaware group.
1713 - The Tuscarora, defeated by an alliance of Indians and British colonists in North Carolina, move north to join the Iroquois Confederacy; Six Nations thereafter.
July 10; the exploring party of Etienne Veniard, Sieur de Bourgmont, camps at the present site of Kansas City, Missouri. The next day he investigates the "crusts of Red Earth" he saw along the banks of the Kansas River.
1714 - August 1; death of Queen Anne. George I becomes King of Great Britain and America.
1717 - Upper Louisiana (the Illinois country) comes under the supervision of Lower Louisiana's government.
1718 - August 25; hundreds of French colonists arrive in Louisiana, some settling on the site of the future New Orleans.
1720
1720 - The French build Fort de Chartres in the Illinois country, 15 miles north of Kaskaskia, as the seat of government in Upper Louisiana.
August 15; a Spanish military expedition from Santa Fe and their Apache allies are defeated by the Pawnee and their French allies near the principal Pawnee village at the forks of the Platte in present Nebraska. Only a handful of men return to Santa Fe.
1721 - The fortified city of La Nouvelle Orleans is laid out by Le Blond de la Tour.
1726 - The French build Fort Niagara to keep watch on the British at Oswego.
1727 - June 11; death of George I. George II becomes King of Great Britain and America.
1728 - The Mission of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Among the Huron is established at Detroit by Father Armand de La Richardie.
c. 1730 - While retaining their settlements in the Detroit area, many Wyandots migrate southward and settle on the south shore of Lake Erie. They gradually assume sovereignty over all the Ohio country between the Great Lakes and the Miami River. Respected by surrounding Algonquian tribes, the Wyandots are now regarded by the Six Nations as their viceroys in Ohio. Their influence greatly exceeds their numbers.
1732 - February 22; birth of George Washington on his parents' plantation in Westmoreland County, Virginia.
December 19; Benjamin Franklin, under the name Richard Saunders, begins publishing "Poor Richard's Almanack."
1733 - May 17; the Molasses Act is passed by Parliament.
1734 - November 2; birth of Daniel Boone in Berks County, Pennsylvania, the sixth child of Quaker parents.
1738 - The Wyandot chief Orontony, called Nicholas, has become estranged from the Ottawa and the French. With his followers he leaves Detroit to establish a new village at Lower Sandusky (present Fremont, Ohio).
1741 - Birth of Simon Girty, the "Great Renegade," near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
1742
1742 - Birth of Tarhe, called the Crane, near Detroit.
The Jesuits' Wyandot mission is transferred from Detroit to the Isle of Bois Blanc at the mouth of the Detroit River.
1743 - Benjamin Franklin organizes the American Philosophical Society.
April 2; birth of Thomas Jefferson in Goochland County, Virginia.
1744 - August 8; Fort de la Trinite, popularly called Fort de Cavagnial, is established by the French on the west bank of the Missouri River near the principal Kansa village, just north of the present Fort Leavenworth. Westernmost outpost of the Illinois district in Upper Louisiana, it is intended to keep a watchful eye on both the Spanish in Santa Fe and French fur traders in the area.
Father Pierre Potier arrives at the Wyandot mission.
1744-1748 - King George's War between Britain and France.
1745 - English traders from Pennsylvania build a blockhouse near Nicholas' village at Lower Sandusky. This is the furthest British penetration into lands claimed by the French.
1747 - In August, Nicholas is encouraged by the British to lead a multi-tribal attack on the French at Detroit. He fails but burns the mission church. Most Wyandots remain loyal to the French.
October 7; birth of Ebenezer Zane, eldest son of William and Nancy Ann Nolan Zane, in Virginia.
1748 - In April, dissident Wyandots led by Nicholas burn their village and the fort at Lower Sandusky and flee to Indiana, where Nicholas dies in the autumn.
The Assumption Mission is reestablished on Ottawa lands on the Canadian side of the Detroit River, and a number of Wyandots settle around it (present Windsor, Ontario).
1749 - September 7; birth of Rene Auguste Chouteau, son of Rene Auguste and Marie Therese Bourgeois Chouteau, in New Orleans.
c. 1750 - After much wandering and division, the 5 semiautonomous bands of the Shawnee are permitted by the Wyandots to settle along the Scioto River in central Ohio.
1750
1750 - Dr. Thomas Walker enters Kentucky through the Cumberland Gap, following the Warriors' Path used by the Shawnee and Cherokee, while on a two-year exploration for the Loyal Land Company.
July 28; death of Johann Sebastian Bach in Leipzig.
The Ottawa chief Pondiac, or Pontiac, organizes a loose confederation of the Ottawa, Ojibwa (his mother's people), and Pottawatomi, tribes closely related in language and heritage.
Christopher Gist, exploring for the Ohio Company, reaches the Falls of the Ohio (present Louisville, Kentucky).
1752 - November 19; birth of George Rogers Clark, son of John and Ann Rogers Clark, near Charlottesville, Virginia.
1753 - Birth of Isaac Zane, younger brother of Ebenezer, in Berkley County, Virginia.
1754-1763 - The French and Indian Wars.
Under continuing pressure from British colonists, many Delaware drift west once more, crossing the Alleghenies into western Pennsylvania. The majority of the Munsee move north from Pennsylvania to settle in Canada. A few rejoin the main group of Delaware.
1754 - Delaware in western Pennsylvania join the Shawnee in raiding the settlements, more out of hatred of the English than love of the French. The Delaware still on the Susquehanna stay neutral at first.
Fort Duquesne (the present Pittsburgh) is built by the French where the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers join to form the Ohio. The young George Washington is sent to destroy it but is forced to surrender to superior forces. His rash actions help to trigger a wider war.
1755 - April 3; birth of Simon Kenton in Fauquier County, Virginia.
July 9; defeat of General Braddock's expedition near Fort Duquesne by a mixed force of French and Indians, including Delaware, Ojibwa, Ottawa, Pottawatomi, Shawnee and Wyandots. The Indians are led by Anastase, a Huron war chief from Lorette. Twenty-three-year-old George Washington and 21-year-old Daniel Boone are among the survivors.
1755
Kansa and Missouri warriors from Upper Louisiana arrive too late to take part in Braddock's defeat, and their return journey takes 6 hardship-filled months.
The Delaware still on the Susquehanna defy the Iroquois and join their western kinsmen, raiding as far as New Jersey and southern New York.
1756-1763 - The Seven Years' War. The fighting in North America expands into the first global conflict, with Britain and Prussia fighting France, Austria and their allies in Europe, the Americas, and India.
1756 - January 27; birth of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
April 14; Governor Robert Morris of Pennsylvania declares war on the Delaware, and offers cash bounties for prisoners and scalps.
June 14; the governor of New Jersey declares war on the Delaware.
Simon, James and George Girty are taken captive in an Indian raid in Pennsylvania, and are eventually traded to the Seneca.
September 8; colonial troops attack and burn the principal Delaware town of Kittanning on the Allegheny River, but most Delaware escape with over 100 white captives. End of Delaware presence in central Pennsylvania.
The Wyandots allow the main group of Delaware to settle along the Tuscarawas River in eastern Ohio. No longer under the thumb of the Iroquois, the Delaware reassert their manhood.
In November, William Pitt becomes Secretary of State for Great Britain, responsible for the conduct of the war and foreign affairs.
1757 - August 9; the French and Indians under the Marquis de Montcalm take Fort William Henry on Lake George. The fort is burned and prisoners massacred.
1757-1762 - Franklin is in London as agent for Pennsylvania.
1758
1758 - July 26; the British take the great fortress at Louisbourg, giving them naval control of the St. Lawrence.
October 10; birth of Jean Pierre Chouteau, half-brother of Auguste and illegitimate son of Pierre de Laclede Liguest, in New Orleans.
November 25; Colonial troops under Col. George Washington capture Fort Duquesne, site of Washington's surrender four years before. Rebuilt over the next two years as Fort Pitt, largest land fortification in North America, this establishes British control over the entire Ohio River valley.
1759 - Eighteen-year-old Simon Girty is released after three years as an adopted captive of the Seneca. He eventually becomes an interpreter at Fort Pitt.
July 25; the British under Sir William Johnson capture Fort Niagara.
September 13; General James Wolfe takes Quebec. Deaths of both Wolfe and the Marquis de Montcalm. This marks the effective end of French power in North America.
1760 - September 8; Sir William Johnson captures Montreal.
Pontiac meets in central Ohio with Maj. Robert Rogers, who is leading a British occupation force from Fort Pitt to Detroit. The meeting ends amicably.
October 25; death of George II. His grandson George III becomes King of Great Britain and America.
November 29; Rogers occupies Detroit.
1761 - James Otis speaks against writs of assistance. George III makes colonial judges serve at his pleasure.
July 3; the Northwest Confederacy is organized at a Wyandot town near Detroit, includes Delware, Miami, Ojibwa, Ottawa, Pottawatomi, Shawnee, Wyandots, and others. Wyandots are made Keepers of the Council Fire.
October 5; William Pitt, architect of Britain's victory over France, is forced to resign by George III.
1762
1762 - James Otis challenges the royal governor in A Vindication of the Conduct of the House of Repre- sentatives of...Massachusetts.
Pontiac's War begins. In the wake of French defeat, Pontiac sends messengers to all the tribes between the Alleghenies and the Mississippi, seeking their united support against the British.
November 3; the Treaty of Fontainebleau. France secretly cedes the greater part of Louisiana to Spain (hoping to eventually regain it), in return for Spanish agreement to an end of the war with Great Britain.
1763 - February 10; the Treaty of Paris is signed ending the Seven Years' War between France and Great Britain. Britain acquires Canada and Louisiana east of the Mississippi from France, and East and West Florida from Spain.
Britain prohibits American settlement west of the Alleghenies and otherwise tries to tighten colonial controls. The colonies enter a severe economic depression lasting until 1770, with scarce money and declining trade.
February 15; the Treaty of Hubertusberg is signed by Prussia and Austria, restoring the status quo in Europe.
April 27; Pontiac convenes a multi-tribal council near Detroit, speaking eloquently of the wrongs done to the Indians by the British. Coordinated attacks on a dozen different forts and outposts are planned.
May 7; Pontiac's plan to sieze the fort at Detroit is betrayed by a young girl of mixed parentage, and a lengthy siege begins. The adjacent town's French habitants give at least passive support to the Indians.
July 31; the Battle of Bloody Ridge. A large British force sallying from Detroit is destroyed, but the fort's defenders continue to hold out.
August 6; at Bushy Run near Fort Pitt, Col. Henry Bouquet with a force of Royal Americans and Highlanders defeats a large war party of Shawnee and Delaware.
In October, the siege at Detroit sputters to an end. Wyandots led by Baby, who have taken part reluctantly, are the first to sue for peace.
1763
October 31; Pontiac signs a preliminary peace agreement with Detroit's commander, Maj. Henry Gladwin. The Ottawa withdraw to a winter village on the Maumee River.
In November, the site of La Ville St. Louis des Illinois is picked by Pierre de Laclede Liguest to become the new entrepot of the Missouri River fur trade.
1764 - In February, 14-year-old Auguste Chouteau and 30 men are sent by Laclede from Fort de Chartres in the Illinois to clear the site of St. Louis and begin construction of the new post. By mid-summer some 40 settlers arrive from Cahokia and St. Philippe.
April 5; the Sugar Act is passed by Parliament; the colonies protest.
July 10; most of the French troops in the Illinois district, including those from Fort de Cavagnial, are evacuated from Fort de Chartres to New Orleans. Capt. Louis St. Ange de Bellerieve is left in command.
August 12; the Treaty of Presque Isle. Wyandots make their peace with the British.
1765 - Delaware and Shawnee make peace with the British.
Many French habitants from the Illinois cross the Mississippi to resettle in St. Louis, which soon has a population of nearly 300.
March 22; the Stamp Act is passed by Parliament. The Sons of Liberty are organized to resist it, and the colonies boycott British imports.
March 24; the Quartering Act is passed by Parliament, requiring colonists to house British soldiers.
October 7-25; The Stamp Act Congress assembles and adopts "A Declaration of Rights and Grievances of the Colonists of America."
October 10; Commandant Louis St. Ange de Bellerieve surrenders Fort de Chartres and French jurisdiction in the Illinois to the British under Capt. Thomas Stirling, and transfers his headquarters to St. Louis.
October 17; Pontiac negotiates a peace treaty at Detroit.
November 1; a day of national mourning over the Stamp Act.
1766
1766 - March 5; Don Antonio de Ulloa arrives in New Orleans, as Spain takes possession of Louisiana from France.
March 18; the Stamp Act is repealed by Parliament, but the Declaratory Act is passed affirming the sovereignty of Parliament over the colonies, "...in all cases whatsoever."
The Quaker mercantile firm of Baynton, Wharton & Morgan, Philadelphia, dispatches 600 pack horses and many wagons with goods worth 50,000 pounds to Fort Pitt for the Illinois fur trade. The goods are shipped down the Ohio in new batteaux manned by 300 boatmen.
July 24; the terms of the Detroit peace treaty are confirmed by Pontiac and Sir William Johnson, meeting at Oswego, New York.
October 7; birth of Pierre Menard, son of Jean Baptiste and Marie Francoise Ciree Menard, in St. Antoine, Quebec.
December 19; the New York Assembly is suspended for refusing to obey the Quartering Act.
1767 - April 20; while staying with St. Ange in St. Louis, Pontiac visits Cahokia and is assassinated by a Peoria Indian, possibly in the pay of a British trader. He is buried with honors on the hill above St. Louis.
June 29; the Townshend Revenue Acts are passed by Parliament, levying import duties on necessities like glass, lead, paint, paper and tea, further depressing the colonial economy. The Acts are resisted in Boston.
1768 - February 11; Massachusetts submits a list of grievances to Parliament. In retaliation, Governor Bernard dissolves the Massachusetts House of Representatives.
In March, the birth of Tecumseh near the Shawnee town of Old Chillicothe in Ohio. His father, Puckeshinwa, is a Kiscopocoke Shawnee war chief; his mother, Methoataske, is a Creek.
In November, the Treaty of Fort Stanwix is signed. The Iroquois sell the Shawnee and Delaware's traditional hunting grounds in Kentucky and western Pennsylvania to the British, and set the Ohio River as the boundary between Indian lands and white settlement.
1769
1769 - The Act of Henry VIII is revived by Parliament. The Virginia Resolves are passed, protesting British policies. The Virginia House of Burgesses is dissolved by the royal governor.
May 1; Daniel Boone, his brother-in-law John Stuart, John Finley, and three others set out on a two-year hunting expedition that will lead them through the Cumberland Gap into Kentucky.
1770 - Population of the thirteen colonies is estimated at 2,205,000.
March 5; the Boston Massacre.
April 12; the Townshend Acts are repealed, except for the tax on tea.
Ebenezer Zane, with his brothers Silas and Jonathan, begins a settlement at the mouth of Wheeling Creek on the Ohio River which becomes Fort Henry, Virginia (present Wheeling, West Virginia). Their brother Isaac is an adopted captive of the Wyandots, married to Tarhe's daughter Myeerah. Allowed to visit his family, he always returns to the Wyandots.
May 20; A Spanish garrison is finally sent to St. Louis, 7 years after the Treaty of Paris.
June 11; Captain James Cook, commanding HMS Endeavour, discovers the Great Barrier Reef off Australia.
June 18; St. Ange surrenders his authority in Upper Louisiana to a Spanish lieutenant governor, Pedro Jose de Piernas, but for the most part, Louisiana remains French in all but name.
August 1; birth of William Clark, younger brother of George Rogers Clark, in Caroline County, Virginia.
Birth of William Walker Sr., in or near Greenbrier, Virginia.
December 16; birth of Ludwig van Beethoven.
1771 - In March, Daniel Boone returns home from Kentucky.
Birth of Ebenezer Zane, Wyandot, eldest child of Isaac Zane and Myeerah. His parents are 18 and 14 respec-
tively; Romeo and Juliet on the Northwest frontier.
1771
June 4; birth of Catherine Rankin (Walker), daughter of James and Catherine Montour Rankin. Her maternal great-grandmother is Madame Montour, her aunt the Mohawks' Queen Esther of Revolutionary War fame.
Believing he has killed a man, 16-year-old Simon Kenton flees west. Assuming the name Simon Butler, for over two years he hunts along the Ohio and the Great and Little Kanawha Rivers, often in danger from the Shawnee.
1772 - May 3; a United Brethren (Moravian) mission is estab-lished among the Delaware in Ohio at Schonbrunn on the Tuscarawas River. Moravian missionary David Zeisberger discovers Indian burial mounds at the site, and writes the first account of the Ohio works.
June 10; the British revenue cutter HMS Gaspee is burned off Rhode Island by angry Providence merchants.
In August, a second Moravian mission is founded by John Heckewelder at Gnadenhutten, a short distance from Schonbrunn.
November 2; the first Committee of Correspondence is organized in Massachusetts. They quickly spread.
1773 - February 9; birth of William Henry Harrison in Charles City County, Virginia.
The Regulating Act is passed by Parliament.
The Boones and a handful of others set out to settle Kentucky, but turn back after 16-year-old James Boone and Henry Russell are captured and tortured to death by Indians (probably Cherokees).
Captain Pipe succeeds his uncle Custaloga as chief of the Wolf Band of the Delaware at Kuskuskies (present New Castle, Pennsylvania).
White Eyes, war chief of the Turtle Band of the Delaware, succeeds the elderly Natawatwees as Head Chief of the Delaware Nation.
December 16; the Boston Tea Party.
1774 - In January, frontiersmen attack a party of friendly Shawnee near Fort Pitt.
March 25; the Boston Port Act is passed by Parliament. The Massachusetts Government Act nullifies the colony's charter.
1774
Franklin publishes On the Rise and Progress of the Differences between Great Britain and Her American Colonies. Thomas Jefferson publishes Summary View of the Rights of British America.
April 30; frontiersmen slaughter a peaceful encampment of Mingos near Fort Henry, Virginia, including the Shawnee wife of Chief Logan. Several days later, Logan's brother and pregnant sister are murdered.
June 1; Boston Harbour is closed to shipping. The other colonies ship goods overland to keep the city alive.
June 2; the Quartering Act is revived by Parliament.
June 10; Lord Dunmore's War begins. The skirmishing provoked by colonials with the Shawnee and Mingos escalates into open warfare in western Pennsylvania, as Pennsylvania and Virginia try to assert conflicting claims on the western frontier. War parties kill several settlers on the Muskingum River in southern Ohio. George Rogers Clark, Simon Girty, and Simon Kenton serve together as scouts at Fort Pitt.
June 22; the Quebec Act is passed by Parliament, which extends the boundary of Quebec (still largely French, Catholic, and autocratic) to the Ohio River, and reaffirms the prohibition on western settlement by the colonies. The loyalty of the majority of French Canadians to the Crown is assured.
Adam Brown Sr. is taken by Indians near Greenbrier, Virginia, and becomes an adopted captive of the Wyandots.
Eighteen-year-old James Whitaker is captured by Indians near Fort Pitt, and becomes an adopted captive of the Wyandots.
In July, Logan informs colonial officials that the killing has ended, and Cornstalk, Shawnee Head Chief, asks the British Indian Department to mediate a peace, but clashes continue.
August 18; birth of Meriwether Lewis near Charlottes-ville, Virginia.
September 5 - October 26; the First Continental Congress meets in Philadelphia with twelve colonies represented. The Congress passes a Declaration of Rights and Grievances, and votes to boycott all trade with Great Britain.
1774
October 10; the Battle of Point Pleasant. Lord Dunmore's War ends when 300 Shawnee led by Cornstalk are forced to withdraw across the Ohio. There are sub-stantial casualties on both sides.
Later that same month, Cornstalk meets with colonial officials, pledging friendship and giving up all Shawnee claims to Kentucky.
December 26; death in St. Louis of Louis St. Ange de Bellerieve.
1775-1783 - The American Revolution. The Ohio tribes generally side with the British, although many try to remain neutral at first. The British commandant at Detroit is Lieutenant Colonel Henry Hamilton, called "Hair Buyer" Hamilton for reportedly offering bounties to Indians for white scalps regardless of sex or age. After an initial neutrality, the war divides the League of the Six Nations, with the Cayuga, Mohawks, Onondaga, and Seneca supporting the British while the Oneida and half the Tuscarora side with the colonies; Iroquois power is broken.
1775 - Birth of Lalawithika, the future Shawnee Prophet. Reportedly one of triplets, he is a younger brother of Tecumseh. Their father Puckeshinwa was among those slain at Point Pleasant.
Most Thawegila Shawnee leave Ohio, seeking refuge among the Creeks in Alabama. The mother of Tecumseh and Lalawithika goes with them, leaving her sons to be raised by their older sister Tecumpease.
March 10; a group of settlers sponsored by Judge Richard Henderson's Transylvania Company and led by Daniel Boone sets out for Kentucky. The Company has paid 10,000 pounds in goods to the Cherokee for 20,000,000 acres between the Kentucky and Cumberland Rivers.
March 15; James Harrod begins the first permanent settlement in Kentucky at Harrodstown (Harrodsburg).
March 23; in a speech to the Virginia Provincial Convention, Patrick Henry declares for American independence: "Give me liberty, or give me death."
March 30; the New England Restraining Act is passed by Parliament.
April 1; Daniel Boone and his party reach the site of Boonesborough in Kentucky.
1775
April 14; Benjamin Franklin and Dr. Benjamin Rush found the first American society for the abolition of slavery.
April 19; the Battles of Lexington and Concord. By nightfall, Boston is under siege by colonial militia.
May 10; the Second Continental Congress meets in Philadelphia.
That same day, Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold capture Fort Ticonderoga on authorization from Connecticut. Some suggest returning the fort to the British, as New York is not yet in rebellion.
May 23; unaware of the Revolution, a convention of Kentucky settlers is held at Boonesborough to set up the government of Transylvania.
Twenty-year-old Simon Kenton moves from Limestone on the Ohio River to Boonesborough, where he is appointed scout by Daniel Boone.
Birth of Jonathan Chapman (Johnny Appleseed) in Massachusetts.
June 16; the Second Continental Congress names Col. George Washington of Virginia General and Commander- in-Chief of the Continental Army.
June 17; the Battle of Breed's Hill (Bunker Hill).
June 20; the Wyandots at Detroit give James Rankin a tract of land just below the Assumption Mission church.
July 2; Washington arrives at Boston.
August 23; King George issues a Proclamation for Suppressing Rebellion and Sedition.
Birth of Robert Armstrong, son of George and Jane Armstrong, in Pennsylvania.
Francisco Cruzat replaces Pedro de Piernas as lieutenant governor of Upper Louisiana at St. Louis.
December 31; Montgomery and Arnold fail in their assault on Quebec.
1776
1776 - January 10; Thomas Paine publishes his revolutionary pamphlet Common Sense, advocating American independence.
March 5; Washington fortifies Dorchester Heights over- looking Boston with guns brought from Ticonderoga by Henry Knox.
March 17; the British evacuate Boston.
The third Moravian mission town of Lichtenau is founded on the Muskingham River in Ohio. 2500 to 3000 Delaware are in Ohio, with 300 to 400 living in the three mission towns.
Death of Netawatwees, chief of the Turtle Band of the Delaware (and former Head Chief). He is succeeded by his grandson Killbuck.
In early June, a convention of Kentucky settlers at Harrodstown rejects Judge Henderson's Transylvania government and votes to be part of Virginia. George Rogers Clark and John Gabriel Jones are elected to Virginia's new House of Delegates.
June 11; the Second Continental Congress appoints a committee to draft a declaration of independence from Great Britain. The final draft is largely the work of Thomas Jefferson.
Eleven-year-old Elizabeth Foulks is captured by Indians near Cross Roads, Pennsylvania, and becomes an adopted captive of the Wyandots.
June 29; the Virginia constitution is adopted and Patrick Henry made governor.
July 4; the Second Continental Congress signs the Declaration of Independence, approved two days before.
In early July, 14-year-old Jemima Boone and her friends Betsey and Fanny Callaway, 16 and 14, are captured by a small band of Shawnee and Cherokee near Boonesborough. Leaving a trail and delaying their captors, the girls are rescued after three days by Jemima's father Daniel.
July 9; the Declaration of Independence is read to Washington's troops.
August 27; the Battle of Long Island.
September 16; the Battle of Harlem Heights.
1776
In November, Cornstalk, who has kept the Shawnee neutral and given himself up as a hostage, is murdered by American frontiersmen near Fort Pitt. His successor is Blackfish, a bitter enemy of the Virginians.
December 7; the Virginia Assembly declines to seat Clark and Jones, but creates Kentucky County out of Fincastle County, with Harrodsburg as its seat.
December 26; the Battle of Trenton follows Washington's daring crossing of the Delaware River.
1777 - January 3; the Battle of Princeton.
In March, George Rogers Clark begins organizing a Kentucky militia and suggests that the scattered settlers find refuge at the larger fortified stations. Blackfish with 200 Shawnee warriors begins to harass the settlements.
April 24; Daniel Boone and a dozen men are cut off by Indians in front of Boonesborough. Boone is rescued by Simon Kenton.
In May, Captain William Linn arrives at Fort Pitt with a large supply of powder brought upriver from New Orleans.
June 17; Hamilton convenes the tribes of the Northwest Confederacy at Detroit. Painted and singing a war song, he urges them to attack the Americans.
June 22; Benjamin Linn and Samuel Moore, sent by Clark to spy out the Illinois country, return with the news that most British forces have withdrawn to Detroit.
By July, only Boonesborough, Harrodsburg and St. Asaph's (Logan's Fort) remain in Kentucky as settlers flee to the stockades for protection or return to the east. All summer, Blackfish's Shawnee strike alternately at the three stations.
In August, the newly appointed County Lieutenant, Col. John Bowman, arrives in Kentucky with 100 men to relieve the settlements.
August 16; the Battle of Bennington.
September 1; Fort Henry, Virginia is besieged for 23 hours by almost 400 Mingos, Wyandots and Shawnee. Half of the 42 man garrison is killed in early skirmishes.
1777
September 2; reinforcements arrive at Fort Henry and the Indians withdraw after burning the surrounding settle-ment. Maj. Samuel McCulloch, separated from his men and pursued by Indians, escapes by making a daring leap on horseback down a 150 foot embankment.
September 30; Congress is forced to flee Philadelphia for York, Pennsylvania.
October 1; George Rogers Clark leaves Harrodsburg for Virginia. He writes to Governor Patrick Henry, urging a military expedition to secure the Illinois.
October 4; the Battle of Germantown.
October 14; "Gentlemanly Johnny" Burgoyne surrenders to Gates at Saratoga.
A vague appropriation for the protection of Kentucky is authorized by the Virginia Assembly. Clark, just turned 25, is appointed to raise the forces needed.
November 15; the Articles of Confederation are adopted by Congress.
The Continental Army goes into Winter Quarters at Valley Forge.
1778 - January 2; Clark receives secret instructions from Governor Henry to take Kaskaskia.
January 18; Captain James Cook discovers the Hawaiian Islands.
February 6; impressed by Burgoyne's surrender, Louis XVI recognizes the United States and signs a treaty pledging full military support.
February 8; Daniel Boone is taken captive by the Shawnee. Blackfish refuses to turn him over to Hamilton at Detroit, and he is adopted into the tribe.
In February, General Edward Hand marches north from Fort Pitt with a force of Pennsylvania militia. No hostile Indians are found but two attacks are made on defense-less villagers. The mother of the friendly Delaware chief Captain Pipe is wounded and his brother killed. The "Squaw Campaign" ends Pipe's neutrality.
1778
March 28; convinced that the Americans have lost the war in the west, Simon Girty, Alexander McKee and 5 others desert Fort Pitt. General Hand resigns and is replaced by Lachlan McIntosh.
May 11; death of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, leading champion of American rights in Parliament.
May 12; Clark embarks down the Ohio River, picking up supplies at Pittsburgh and proceeding to the planned rendezvous at the Falls of the Ohio. Twenty families travel with Clark, and settle on Corn Island.
Wyandots led by Half King unsuccessfully attempt to draw out the garrison at Fort Randolph on the Ohio. The Indians then move up the Kanawha toward the Greenbrier settlements.
May 29; Half King's Wyandots attack a blockhouse 20 miles from Fort Union. Held off until relief arrives from Fort Randolph, they give up the attack.
In June, Girty and McKee reach Detroit, where McKee is appointed Superintendent of Indian Affairs and Girty becomes an interpreter for Hamilton. Noted for his savagery (possibly learned from the Iroquois), the "Great Renegade" is present at most of the major con-frontations between the Ohio tribes and the Americans.
June 16; Daniel Boone escapes from the Shawnee at Old Chillicothe. Covering 160 miles in four days, he reaches Boonesborough to warn of impending attack.
June 17; Fernando de Leyba replaces Francisco Cruzat as lieutenant governor of Upper Louisiana at St. Louis.
June 18; American forces enter Philadelphia as the British withdraw.
June 20; death of Pierre de Laclede Liguest while returning to St. Louis from New Orleans. He is buried near the mouth of the Arkansas.
June 26; George Rogers Clark with just 175 men sets out from the Falls of the Ohio to attack the British outposts in the west.
June 28; the Battle of Monmouth. Washington almost traps the retreating British, who retire to their stronghold at New York. The theater of action shifts to the south and west.
1778
July 4; Kaskaskia falls to Clark without a shot being fired. Prairie du Rocher and Cahokia soon follow. The Illinois country is now in American hands. Simon Kenton is sent back with dispatches.
July 20; Clark's emissaries, Dr. Jean B. Laffont and Father Pierre Gibault, persuade the habitants of Vincennes to swear allegience to the Republic of Virginia.
In late July, Clark visits St. Louis at the invitation of Lieutenant Governor Leyba. The meeting is cordial (Clark reportedly falls in love with Leyba's sister), and Clark is able to obtain supplies on credit from Auguste Chouteau and other merchants.
In August, the deserted Fort Sackville at Vincennes is occupied by Captain Leonard Helm, sent by Clark to secure that post.
For five weeks beginning in August, Clark councils with the Northwestern tribes at Cahokia, including Wyandots led by Half King. Half King will keep most Wyandots neutral until 1782.
September 6-16; Boonesborough is besieged by a war party of 450 Shawnee and French Canadians led by Blackfish. The siege fails after 9 days.
September 17; the Delaware chiefs White Eyes, Captain Pipe, and Killbuck sign a treaty at Fort Pitt which provides for an alliance between the Delaware and the Americans and allows construction of a fort on Delaware lands in Ohio. Some Delaware feel that they have been duped, and Pipe resumes his pro-British efforts.
October 7; Hamilton sets out from Detroit with 175 whites, mostly French, and 60 Indians to retake Fort Sackville and Vincennes.
In November, White Eyes is murdered while escorting General Lachlan McIntosh from Fort Pitt to the site of the new fort in Ohio. The Delaware are told he died of smallpox; only a handful of Americans know the truth.
November 21; McIntosh establishes Fort Laurens on the west bank of the Tuscarawas River. The first American outpost in Ohio is designed by a military engineer and garrisoned with Continental regulars.
December 17; Hamilton recaptures Vincennes.
1779
1779 - Near the end of January, Simon Girty and 17 Mingos attack an American detachment near Fort Laurens, capturing valuable dispatches.
February 6-23; Clark with 200 men, nearly half of them French volunteers, makes an epic march through winter flood waters from Kaskaskia to Vincennes. Hamilton surrenders the fort, deceived as to American numbers.
February 23; Indians kill 18 soldiers in front of Fort Laurens. The fort comes under siege by a war party of Wyandots and Mingos.
March 23; a relief column from Fort Pitt reaches Fort Laurens, only to find the siege lifted and Indians gone.
In the spring, the settlers at the Falls of the Ohio move from Corn Island to the Kentucky mainland and found Louisville at the east end of the falls.
In May, Col. John Bowman assembles 300 mounted American volunteers to cross the Ohio and raid the Shawnee. Old Chillicothe is burned and Blackfish killed, but Clark's plans to launch an attack on Detroit from Vincennes are forestalled by this diversion.
Scouting for Bowman, Simon Kenton is pursued to the Ohio and captured by the Shawnee. Forced to run the gauntlet eight times and twice threatened with burning, he is reprieved at the urging of Chief Logan and his former comrade Simon Girty. He is turned over to the British at Detroit.
Many Kiscopocoke and Piqua Shawnee begin to move down the Ohio valley and into Spanish Louisiana to get out of the war zone. They are joined by Thawegila Shawnee from the Creek towns. Those who stay in Ohio join the Chilicothe and Mequachake bands, determined to fight on.
June 1; Thomas Jefferson is elected governor of Virginia. He soon drafts the statute of Virginia for religious freedom.
June 3; Simon Kenton succeeds in escaping from Detroit. He safely makes his way back to Kentucky.
1779
June 21; Spain declares war on Great Britain but refuses to recognize American independence.
In early August, Fort Laurens is abandoned after repeated brushes with starvation and losses to the Indians. "A slaughter pen, impossible to maintain..."
General Sullivan's campaign against the Iroquois in New York in late summer; destruction of towns, crops and stores, with the Seneca particularly hard hit.
October 4; Indians led by Simon Girty ambush Col. David Rogers on the Licking River in Kentucky. They capture 600,000 Spanish dollars and other valuable supplies being conveyed from New Orleans to Fort Pitt.
1780 - In the spring, 300 boats arrive at the Falls of the Ohio with supplies and more families, followed by a number of unmarried young women. Louisville begins to grow.
The British plan a three-pronged attack to sieze control of the Mississippi basin, on the Kentucky settlements, St. Louis and the Illinois, and New Orleans. In April, Capt. Henry Bird leaves Detroit with 600 Indians and whites and six cannon to raid Kentucky. Moving down the Maumee River-Miami River corridor, his ranks swell to nearly 1,200.
May 9; St. Louis receives word of an impending attack by the British. The militia at Ste. Genevieve is ordered to St. Louis by Leyba, but Clark is unable to send help.
May 19; a mysterious darkness envelops much of New England and part of Canada in the early afternoon. The cause has never been determined.
May 26; St. Louis is attacked by 950 British and Indians under Capt. Emanuel Hesse. The attackers are driven off by cannon fire, but 79 habitants are killed, wounded or captured out of a total population of less than 700. An attack is also made against Cahokia across the river, and is also driven off.
In June, Bird attacks the settlements between the Licking and Kentucky Rivers, taking 350 prisoners and much plunder before withdrawing. His Indian allies are disgruntled, believing an attack should have been launched against Boonesborough.
June 28; seriously ill at the time of the attack, Leyba dies at St. Louis. He is replaced as lieutenant governor by his predecessor, Cruzat.
1780
In July, French troops under General Comte Donatien de Rochambeau arrive at Newport, Rhode Island.
Birth of Between-the-Logs, near Lower Sandusky. His father is a Seneca, his mother a Wyandot of the Bear Clan.
In response to unfulfilled American promises, the majority of the Delaware end their neutrality and join Captain Pipe in supporting the British. Some Delaware led by Killbuck join the Americans at Fort Pitt and make war on their brothers.
In August, George Rogers Clark strikes against the Shawnee. He destroys Old Chillicothe on the Little Miami on August 6, and Piqua on the Miami on August 8.
August 16; the Battle of Camden.
September 22; Wyandots at Detroit cede two arpents of land on the Detroit River southwest of their village to Father Pierre Potier in appreciation for his many services to the Nation.
October 7; the Battle of King's Mountain.
In December, Greene replaces the incompetent Gates as commander of the American army in the South.
December 21; Great Britain declares war on the Netherlands because of that country's joining in a neutrality pact aimed at breaking the British blockade.
1781 - January 2; Lieutenant Governor Cruzat sends troops from St. Louis under Capt. Eugene Pourre to destroy the British supply base at Fort St. Joseph in southwest Michigan.
February 17; after a grueling march through the winter wilderness, Pourre's men capture Fort St. Joseph. They burn the fort and then withdraw.
March 1; with Maryland's approval, the Articles of Confederation are finally ratified.
March 6; Pourre's expedition is welcomed back to St. Louis.
March 15; the Battle of Guilford Court House. Cornwallis withdraws to Wilmington, North Carolina, then moves north into Virginia.
1781
William Walker Sr. is captured by a Delaware war party in Virginia, and his uncle killed. Taken to a Delaware town on the Whetstone (present Delaware, Ohio), the 11-year-old Walker is made to run the gauntlet and is subsequently adopted.
A Grand Council of the Northwest Confederacy is held at New Chillicothe (the former Piqua) in early summer, followed by bloody warfare in Kentucky. Simon Girty leads the tribes against the settlements.
Two of Girty's brothers also live among the Indians as interpreters and traders, James with the Shawnee at Girtystown (present St. Mary's, Ohio), and George with the Delaware.
Moravian missionaries arrive among the Wyandots.
Adopted Wyandot captives James Whitaker, 24, and Elizabeth Foulks, 16, marry at Detroit and settle near Lower Sandusky.
July 16; death of Father Pierre Potier at the age of 73, ending 37 years of service at the Assumption Mission. He is buried two days later in the sanctuary of the mission church. The long Jesuit mission to the Wyandots comes to an end.
George Rogers Clark sets out from Fort Pitt with 400 men to try again to mount an assault on Detroit, up the Wabash from Vincennes.
August 25; one hundred Pennsylvania volunteers under Col. Archibald Lochry, intending to join Clark, are ambushed near the mouth of the Miami River by Indians and Tories led by Joseph Brant. Half the Americans are killed and most of the others captured.
Brant's war party joins 100 British Rangers and 300 Indians from Detroit under Capt. Andrew Thompson and Alexander McKee, in an attempt to waylay Clark on the Ohio.
Clark safely reaches Fort Nelson at Louisville, but the expedition against Detroit is called off when fearful Kentucky settlers refuse their support.
September 8; the Battle of Eutaw Springs.
October 19; Cornwallis surrenders to Washington and Rochambeau at Yorktown. "The World Turned Upside Down."
1782
1782 - February 27; the House of Commons adopts a resolve against further prosecution of the war in North America.
March 4; the Wyandots at Detroit give a tract of land measuring 6 by 40 arpents to Father Jean Francois Hubert, Vicar-General of Detroit, and the Sisters of the Congregation de Notre-Dame de Montreal, to establish a house of the congregation. It lies south-southwest of the Wyandot village and east of James Rankin's property.
March 8; the Gnadenhutten Massacre. A party of 160 American volunteers from Washington County, Pennsylvania under the command of Col. David Williamson attacks the neutral Moravian mission town of Gnadenhutten, killing 90 Christian Delaware - men, women, and over 30 children - and burning the mission church. The survivors flee to Canada.
March 14; birth of Thomas Hart Benton, son of Jesse and Ann Gooch Benton, in Hillsboro, North Carolina.
Later that month, Moravian missionaries are removed from the Sandusky River by the British at the request of Half King. Wyandot neutrality is ended.
April 19; the Netherlands recognizes American independence.
June 5; the Wyandots defeat a large American force advancing on the villages on the Sandusky, and capture the commanding officer, Col. William Crawford. Simon Kenton, who advised against the expedition, is among the survivors.
June 11; in response to an impassioned plea from Captain Pipe, Half King turns Col. Crawford over to the Delaware, who burn him at the stake (actually, slow roast him) in revenge for the Moravian massacre. Simon Girty is present, and may have tried to ransom Crawford, though most accounts say he taunts the tortured victim.
August 15; Indians and Tories led by Simon Girty and Capt. William Caldwell raid Bryan's Station, Kentucky. They are pursued by hastily assembled militia.
August 19; the Battle of Blue Licks. Girty's war party defeats the Americans led by Major Hugh McGary. Among the 60 American dead is Daniel Boone's son Israel.
October 9; birth of Lewis Cass, son of Jonathan and Mary Gilman Cass, in Exeter, New Hampshire.
1782
October 12; Fort Henry, Virginia is again under siege by a force of 40 Tories and 250 Indians, including James Girty. Betty Zane risks capture or death by fetching powder from her brother Ebenezer's fortified house out-side the stockade. The siege fails.
November 10; George Rogers Clark with 1100 mounted riflemen (including Simon Kenton) defeats the Shawnee in Ohio and burns six towns, including New Chillicothe. The war in the west is largely over.
1783 - February 4; Great Britain declares a formal cessation of hostilities with the United States.
February 5; Sweden recognizes American independence.
March 24; Spain recognizes American independence.
Eight-year-old Robert Armstrong is captured by Indians (probably Delaware) in western Pennsylvania. Taken to Lower Sandusky, he is adopted by the Wyandots.
July 26; Jean Pierre Chouteau marries Pelagie Kiercereau in St. Louis.
September 3; the Treaty of Paris. Great Britain recognizes American independence. Lands west of the Alleghenies and south of the Great Lakes are ceded to the new nation, where despite the British ban there are already 25,000 settlers. Contrary to the treaty, British troops continue to hold Detroit and other western forts. Spain recovers the Floridas, but France gains very little.
October 4; the Society of Friends (Quakers) state their opposition to slavery in an address to Congress.
November 25; the British evacuate New York.
December 4; Thomas Jefferson writes to George Rogers Clark, attempting to interest him in leading an expedition overland to the Pacific. Clark declines.
1784 - January 14; Congress ratifies the Treaty of Paris.
Simon Girty leaves the United States to settle near Amherstburg, on the east side of the Detroit River opposite the Isle of Bois Blanc, some 20 miles south of Detroit. Here he marries Catherine Malott, an Indian captive. For the next 10 years he continues to encourage the Ohio tribes to resist the Americans.
1784
John Adams is sent as Minister to Great Britain, Thomas Jefferson to France. After 8 years as envoy to France, Franklin returns home in triumph.
Birth of Isaac McCoy, son of William McCoy, in western Pennsylvania.
October 22; the Second Treaty of Fort Stanwix. The Iroquois make peace with the Americans, giving up all claims west of the Alleghenies and agreeing to allow the sale of tribal lands. Many refuse, and remain in Canada with Joseph Brant. The Six Nations remain divided.
1785 - January 21; the Treaty of Fort McIntosh. The Delaware, Ojibwa, Ottawa and Wyandots acknowledge American sovereignty in Ohio. A line is drawn between white and Indian territory, and the principal of the law applying to white criminals on Indian land is acknowledged. In practice, the new government can enforce neither condition.
At a council at British-held Detroit to discuss the Fort McIntosh treaty, adopted Wyandot captive Adam Brown Sr. ransoms 14-year-old William Walker Sr. from the Delaware and takes him into his household. (Brown had reportedly known Walker's family in Virginia.)
In the spring, George Rogers Clark's parents, brothers and sisters move to Kentucky, where they build "Mulberry Hill" on a large tract outside Louisville.
May 20; Congress passes the Land Ordinance of 1785, providing for the survey of the first seven ranges of townships in the Ohio country by Thomas Hutchins. This establishes the rectangular survey system subsequently applied to all U.S. public lands.
Simon Kenton, now 30, discovers that the man he thought he had killed 14 years before is still alive. Resuming his own name, he again settles at Limestone, Kentucky (present Maysville) on the Ohio River.
1786 - January 31; the Treaty of Fort Finney. The Shawnee acknowledge American sovereignty in Ohio and are forced to sign away their Ohio lands east of the Miami River. Indian Agent Richard Butler threatens the deaths of Shawnee women and children otherwise.
May 9; birth of Auguste Pierre Chouteau, eldest son of Pierre and Pelagie Kiercereau Chouteau.
1786
In October, in response to raids in Kentucky by Mingos, Cherokees, and dissident Shawnee, Col. Benjamin Logan leads an attack on the Shawnee villages on the Mad River in Ohio. Once again, the wrong Indians are attacked.
In December, the tribes of the Northwest Confederacy meet in Grand Council at Huron Village near Detroit to protest American policies. The Shawnee repudiate the treaty of Fort Finney, citing ignorance of the terms, coercion and unfairness. The government refuses to negotiate with the Confederacy but will only deal with individual tribes, and contrary to the treaty of Fort McIntosh, Americans are pushing onto lands reserved for Indians. The Confederacy resolves resistance.
1787 - January 7; birth of Catherine "Caty" Sage, daughter of James and Lovice Ott Sage, in Cripple Creek, Virginia.
February 21; Congress passes a resolution calling for a convention to be held in Philadelphia for the purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation.
May 14; the Constitutional Convention convenes in Philadelphia. George Washington is elected president of the convention.
July 13; Congress passes the Northwest Ordinance, creating the Territory Northwest of the River Ohio (Northwest Territory). It includes the present states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin. The Ordinance establishes the system by which territories are created and may subsequently enter the Union as states, bans slavery in the territory, assures religious freedom and encourages education. Arthur St. Clair of Pennsylvania is appointed governor of the territory.
September 17; the Constitutional Convention approves the Federal Constitution for adoption, and transmits the document to the President of Congress.
October 26; Congress directs Governor St. Clair to pacify the Ohio tribes by whatever means necessary.
In the late autumn, Manuel Perez replaces Francisco Cruzat as lieutenant governor of Upper Louisiana.
1787-1788 - Hamilton, Madison and Jay author the Federalist Papers, urging adoption of the Constitution.
1788
1788 - January 18; the first English settlement in Australia is begun on Botany Bay as a penal colony.
In April, settlers from Massachusetts and Connecticut sent out by the Ohio Company establish Marietta, Ohio, at the mouth of the Muskingum River. The settlement is named in honor of Marie Antoinette.
June 21; nine states having voted approval, the United States Constitution is ratified.
In July, death of Half King at Detroit. His successor as Head Chief of the Ohio Wyandots is Tarhe.
Lieutenant Governor Perez sends emissaries to the Shawnee and Delaware, inviting them to settle in Upper Louisiana near Cape Girardeau. The Spanish wish to form a buffer against attacks by the Osage.
September 13; Congress passes a resolution calling for the new government to begin operations on Wednesday, March 4, 1789, authorizing the first national elections and declaring New York the temporary national capital.
Daniel Boone leaves Kentucky in the autumn, having lost his lands in a series of court suits.
In December, the settlement of Cincinnati, Ohio, is laid out by John Filson and Israel Ludlow on the Ohio River, opposite the mouth of the Licking. Originally called Losantiville, it is soon renamed in honor of the Order of the Cincinnati, the Revolutionary War veterans organization.
1789 - January 9; the Treaty of Fort Harmar reconfirms the provisions of the Treaty of Fort McIntosh, and is signed by a significant number of chiefs including Tarhe, but American encroachment continues. A notation states that the Wyandots claim the lands granted to the Shawnee, and if the Shawnee will not be at peace, the Wyandots will dispossess them and take back their lands.
January 19; birth of Jean Pierre Chouteau Jr., Cadet or second son of Pierre and Pelagie Kiercereau Chouteau, in St. Louis.
February 4; electors unamimously elect George Washington as first President of the United States, with John Adams as Vice President. (The votes are not counted until April 6, however.)
1789
April 28; the crew of HMS Bounty mutinies in the South Pacific. Captain William Bligh and 18 loyal sailors are set adrift in a launch.
April 30; George Washington is sworn in as President.
July 14; the fall of the Bastille. The French Revolution begins.
September 25; Congress approves the first 10 amendments to the Constitution (the Bill of Rights).
October 14; birth of John R. Walker, Wyandot, eldest child of William and Catherine Rankin Walker. The young parents are 19 and 18 respectively.
c. 1790 - The main Kansa village is moved from its old site near the abandoned Fort de Cavagnial to a new location on the Blue River near the present Manhattan, Kansas.
1790 - January 8; President Washington delivers an address to Congress on the State of the Union.
March 1; Congress authorizes the first U.S. Census. It establishes the population at 3,929,214.
March 21; recalled from France, Thomas Jefferson reports to President Washington in New York to take up his new office as Secretary of State.
April 17; death of Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia at the age of 84.
May 19; as the result of a treaty negotiated by Alexander McKee, the Wyandots surrender much of south-west Ontario, including most of their lands around Windsor. The British establish two reserves for the Wyandots in western Canada, the Huron Mission Reserve opposite Detroit and the much larger Huron or Anderdon Reserve on the Canard River near Amherstburg.
July 16; the District of Columbia is established.
The Miami war chief Little Turtle is elected to command of all the war parties of the Northwest Confederacy.
1790
October 22; The Ohio allies led by Little Turtle defeat Col. Josiah Harmar's expedition against them near the present Fort Wayne, Indiana.
Auguste Chouteau is granted trade with the Kansa by the Spanish, and Pierre Chouteau spends the winter of 1790-91 at the new Kansa village.
1791 - March 3; the District of Columbia is established.
March 4; Vermont is admitted to the Union as the 14th state.
That same day, Governor Arthur St. Clair is appointed major general and commander-in-chief of American forces.
June 19; Parliament approves the Constitutional Act, establishing constitutional government in Canada and dividing Quebec into Lower and Upper Canada.
Eight-year-old Jonathan Pointer, an African-American, is taken by Indians near Point Pleasant, Virginia, and becomes an adopted captive of the Wyandots.
Pierre Menard, 24, moves from Vincennes to Kaskaskia, where he opens a store in partnership with Toussaint DuBois.
November 4; St. Clair's Defeat. The Ohio allies led by Little Turtle defeat American forces under Maj. Gen. St. Clair near the future Fort Recovery. With the loss of over 600 men, this is the greatest Indian victory over the Americans. The mouths of the dead are filled with earth, a reply to the American hunger for Indian land. St. Clair resigns from the Army but retains the governorship of the Northwest Territory.
December 5; death of Mozart in Vienna at the age of 35.
December 15; the Bill of Rights is ratified.
December 30; Francisco Luis Hector, Baron de Carondelet, is appointed governor of Louisiana and West Florida.
1792 - March 7; 21-year-old William Clark is commissioned a lieutenant of infantry, attached to the 4th Sub-legion.
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