Bones on the Ground

Elizabeth O'Maley

Oct 2014 · Indiana Historical Society

About this eBook

What happened to the Indians of the Old Northwest Territory? Conflicting portraits emerge and answers often depend on who’s telling the story, with each participant bending and stretching the truth to fit their own view of themselves and the world. This volume presents biographical sketches and first-person narratives of Native Americans, Indian traders, Colonial and American leaders, and events that shaped the Indians’ struggle to maintain possession of their tribal lands in the face of the widespread advancement of white settlement. It covers events and people in the Old Northwest Territory from before the American Revolution through the removal of the Miami from Indiana in 1846. As America’s Indian policy was formed, and often enforced by the U.S. military, and white settlers pushed farther west, some Indians fought the white intruders, while others adopted their ways. In the end, most Indians were unable to hold their ground and the evidence their presence now lingers only in found relics and strange-sounding place names.

About the author

 Elizabeth O’Maley, a graduate of Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, worked after college as a school psychologist in Cincinnati, Louisville, Indianapolis, and Fort Wayne. She is the author of the Indiana Historical Society Press book By Freedom’s Light (2009) .Eilzabeth O’Maley died on May 20, 2014.