Miamis, from the Chippewa word Omaumeg,
were they called in English.

They had been described by early travelers as a pleasant-faced, lively,
very polite people, slow of speech, swift of foot, fond of racing, and
obedient to their chiefs.

Their present home was in the Wabash River valley of northern Indiana,
up as far as the modern city of Fort Wayne. They claimed this country
and also all of western Ohio, where they formerly had lived. The
Shawnees and the Wyandots of Ohio had moved in behind them, they said,
and were merely tenants upon their lands.

Little Turtle, or Mich-i-kin-i-kwa, had become their chief. He had
been born on the Eel River near Fort Wayne in 1752. Therefore now at
the close of the Revolution he was thirty years old. He had not been
born a chief, nor even a Miami. To be sure, his father was chief and a
Miami, but his mother was a Mohegan of the Delawares. By Indian law he
had ranked as only a warrior and a Mohegan. An Indian was known by his
mother.

As a boy of eleven or twelve he had been stirred by the Pontiac war, in
which the Miamis had joined. As a warrior he had campaigned with the
British under General Burgoyne who surrendered at Saratoga.

So by his deeds and his experience in field, camp and council he was a
veteran and had won the chieftainship of the twelve hundred Miamis.

Although his name was Little Turtle, he had nothing little in his
make-up. On the contrary, he was of good size, strong and dignified,
with a long face and full high forehead--not the face or forehead of a
Miami. He seems to have been rather sarcastic, and unpopular.

Those were bloody days while the new United States was trying to extend
across the Ohio River. A treaty was made with the Cherokees and
Chickasaws of the South, and with the Six Nations of the North; one was
supposed to have been made with these Ohio country tribes, also.

These Indians said that they would do nothing for peace until they had
talked with their British "father" at Detroit. They were not sure that
the king had really surrendered their lands beyond the Ohio.

They asserted that their treaty, by which they had sold their lands,
had not been signed by the proper chiefs.

In the seven years since the end of 1782, some two thousand American
settlers and traders had been killed or captured, along the Ohio River;
twenty thousand horses had been stolen. The rifle was more necessary
than the ax and plough.

The Miami vi