A discourse on the aborigines of the Ohio Valley

This article is of interest partly because of the identity of the author. Harrison’s amazing government and military career included appointment as Governor of Indiana Territory at age 27, where he would manage the entire Northwest Territory minus the new state of Ohio. Two years after he gave this address he was elected U.S. President, where he would die only a month after inauguration.

Harrison addresses the question of where tribes in the Ohio valley had been located prior to inter-tribal wars with the Iroquois, and which lands had been conquered by the Iroquois. He had on a number of occasions between 1795 and 1815 negotiated treaties for peace and for land. These negotiations often meant days or weeks of meetings with tribal chiefs, where they narrated the history of their occupation of particular lands, in order to establish their claims of possession. Harrison’s arguments in this paper were based on that knowledge he had personally gained from these Indians of the tribes’ history in the region.