Eel River (Wabash River tributary)
Template:For Template:Use American English Template:Infobox river
The Eel River is a Template:Convert<ref name=NHD>U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline data. The National Map Template:Webarchive, accessed May 19, 2011</ref> tributary of the Wabash River in northern Indiana in the United States. Via the Wabash and Ohio rivers, its waters flow to the Mississippi River and ultimately the Gulf of Mexico. The Eel River rises southeast of Huntertown in Allen County and flows southwest through Allen, Whitley, Kosciusko, Wabash, Miami, and Cass counties to join the Wabash at Logansport. The river was called Kineepikwameekwa Siipiiwi - "river of the snake fish" by the Miami people, who inhabited the area at the time of European contact, the English rendered it as Ke-na-po-co-mo-co. It is the northern of the two rivers named Eel River within Indiana.
Origins and history
Natural history
Originating as an "ice-marginal channel" at the edge of the retreating Saginaw Lobe of the Wisconsin Glacier, the Eel River was later buried by the glacier's advancing Erie Lobe.<ref>Water Resource Availability. 1996, p. 46</ref> As the Erie Lobe retreated, the Eel formed a single stream with what is now upper Cedar Creek in DeKalb and Allen counties. The ancestral Eel River was also fed by glacial meltwater surging under the ice from the southeast through a "tunnel valley" known today as Cedar Creek Canyon.<ref Name=WRA47>Water Resource Availability. 1996, p. 47</ref> Blockage of the Eel's channel by outwash from the canyon and a decline in the volume of meltwater forced the upper Eel to change course into the canyon, creating today's Cedar Creek.<ref Name=WRA47/> This is a classic example of stream piracy that shifted almost Template:Convert of land from the Eel-Wabash watershed to that of the St. Joseph-Maumee.<ref Name=WRA47/><ref>p. 121.</ref>
Indigenous peoples and French exploration
The waterways were where indigenous peoples settled in prehistoric and historic times, as they were sources of food and water, and the avenues for transportation and trade. The Miami, an Algonquian-speaking people, called the river Kineepikwameekwa Siipiiwi or Ke-na-po-co-mo-co, meaning "river of the snake fish."<ref>Winger 1934, p. 3. The author, a professor of history at Manchester College, notes that the original form of the word was Kenapekwamakwah or Kineepikwameekwa ("Snake-Fish-Town" or "Eel River Village"), the name of the main village of the ″Kilatika Miami″or ″Eel River Miami Band″.</ref><ref>Winger 1939, p. 63. The author notes that the name is Miami in origin.</ref> Later French explorers, who also followed the waterways, called it the Rivière L'Anguille (Eel River).
Political and military history
Before the United States consolidated its hold on the Northwest Territory, the Eel formed a rough boundary between the Potawatomi tribe on the north and the Miami tribe on the south.<ref>Winger 1939, pp. 63-64.</ref> In addition, it was an area of competition between French and British colonial forces for decades before the American Revolution. Afterward, the US fought with American Indians in numerous battles sometimes called the Northwest Indian War.
In November 1780, a French militia force under Auguste Mottin de la Balme,<ref>Magnin, Frédéric (2005). Mottin de la Balme, cavalier des deux mondes et de la liberté, Paris: L'Harmattan, Template:ISBN.</ref> who planned to seize a British trading post on the Eel near present-day Columbia City, was destroyed by the Miami led by Chief Michikinikwa, also known as "Little Turtle".<ref>Winger 1934, pp. 5-6.</ref> On 19 October 1790, Chief Michikinikwa's warriors surprised and virtually annihilated a U.S. force under Colonel John Hardin in the Eel bottomlands southeast of present-day Churubusco.<ref>Winger 1934, pp. 4-5.</ref>
On 7 August 1791, the Eel was the scene of another battle, when General James Wilkinson destroyed the Miami town of Kenapacomaqua Template:Convert upstream from present-day Logansport.<ref>Barce, Elmore, The Land of the Miamis, Fowler, IN: The Benton Review Shop, 1922, pp. 188-194.</ref><ref>Wilkinson's account of this expedition is found at American State Papers, Indian Affairs, March 3, 1789 to March 3, 1815, vol. 1, p. 134 Template:Webarchive, Indiana University, Glenn Black Laboratory.</ref><ref>Another account is found in James Handasyd Perkins and John Mason Peck, Annals of the West (1857) pp. 569-570.</ref><ref>Known locally as the Battle of Olde Towne, Wilkinson's raid is also described at [1] on the Cass County, Indiana USGenWeb site.</ref>
In September 1812, Colonel James Simrall, acting under orders from General William Henry Harrison, ravaged Miami farms and villages along the Eel in present-day Whitley County. He defeated a Miami force that stood and fought.<ref>Winger 1934, p. 9</ref><ref>"Eel River Battlefield War of 1812", Historical Marker Database</ref>
Literary reference
Ross Lockridge Jr., Raintree County, Boston: Houghton Mifflin (1948), pp. 93–94.
See also
Notes and references
Bibliography
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External links
- Sequential Development of Eel River and Cedar Creek
- Little Turtle, the Great Eel River Chief DEAD LINK
- The Eel River Post and Fort DEAD LINK
- Along the Eel DEAD LINK
- Introduction to the Eel River DEAD LINK
- The Eel River of Northern Indiana DEAD LINK
- Template:GNIS