William Henry Harrison

Consists of printed transcripts, in full or in abstract, of Harrison's papers.

Historian Lew Wallace wrote that, “William Henry Harrison was clothed with power more nearly imperial than any ever exercised by one man in the Republic. He was authorized to adopt and publish such laws, civil and criminal, as were best adapted to the condition of the Territory; he could arbitrarily create townships and counties, and appoint civil officers, and militia officers under the grade of general. Most extraordinary of all, however, to him belonged the confirmation of an important class of land grants. In this regard his authority was absolute.” In the Introduction, the Director of the Indiana Historical Commission wrote that, “In the Messages and Papers of Indiana Governors is to be found much of the material that is fundamentally essential to a proper understanding of Indiana history. In fact, the real background for the early history of the Old Northwest Territory is found in the messages, proclamat

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.