The Glaize in 1792: A Composite Indian Community

Abstract

The geographical setting for this community is an old buffalo wallow, the glaize, at present Defiance, Ohio. In 1792, the locale became the headquarters for the militant Indian confederacy protesting White encroachment on Indian land northwest of the Ohio River. The multicultural society included a French and English trading town and seven Indian villages whose inhabitants were principally Shawnee, Delaware and Miami. The detailed description of individual towns, leading figures, and social life highlights the interesting diversity of this frontier population. Reconstruction of the events of a single critical year, preliminary to the destruction of the towns by the American army in 1794, indicates the local roles of people important in a half-century of Indian-White relations in the United States and Canada.