The grave that was lost for a hundred years — and found scattered

1812–1912 · FOUND, IN PART

Little Turtle died on July 14, 1812, and was buried in a family burial ground near Spy Run Creek. The grave was unmarked, and within a few generations the city had forgotten where it lay. What is known of its recovery comes from the account J. M. Stouder published in the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette of August 4, 1912, and reprinted in the Indiana Magazine of History: on July 4, 1912 — within days of the centenary of the burial — the brothers Albert and Charles Lochner, digging a cellar for a house for Dr. George W. Gillie on Lawton Place, uncovered several Indian graves, and one held the goods of a chief: a sword with a silver hilt wrapped in gold braid, which Stouder identified as the sword presented to Little Turtle by George Washington, a peace medal, silver armlets, anklets, crosses and brooches, the flintlock remains of a pistol, knives, spurs, a tomahawk. On the strength of the sword and medal, Stouder concluded, and the historian Calvin M. Young agreed, that the grave of Little Turtle had been found.

What is not known begins with the skull. The 1912 account records that the skull was kept, presented to a Fort Wayne dentist, Dr. M. W. Ivins, and "sent to the Smithsonian Institute for examination, and on its return will be returned to the grave." The accounts preserved in the record do not say whether it came back. Of the rest of the remains, the same account says, in one level sentence, that they "were scattered and carried away by the curious as mementos." The house was built — its plans altered, the grave left under what became the memorial plot at 634 Lawton Place, purchased in 1959 by the Smeltzly sisters and given to the city as a park — but no one can now say how much of the man himself rests in it. The grave goods had a longer, better-papered afterlife: Stouder, a local collector, acquired many but not all of the objects; most reached the Allen County–Fort Wayne Historical Society in the 1930s from the Stouder family, Mrs. George Gillie, and E. L. Dotson; and in December 2016 the Society published formal notice in the Federal Register of its intent to repatriate 76 items it had determined were the unassociated funerary objects of that grave. What was scattered in 1912 beyond the collectors' reach — the pieces carried off as mementos, and whatever became of the skull — the record does not recover. The trail ends with a grave that is identified, commemorated, and known to be incomplete.

Sources:

1. J. M. Stouder, account in the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette, August 4, 1912, reprinted as "The Grave of Little Turtle," Indiana Magazine of History — the discovery, the inventory of the grave goods, the Smithsonian sentence, and the scattering of the remains.
2. Allen County–Fort Wayne Historical Society, "Notice of Intent to Repatriate Cultural Items," Federal Register, vol. 81, no. 242 (December 16, 2016) — the 76 items, the 1912 excavation at 634 Lawton Place, and the acquisition history from Stouder, Gillie, and Dotson.
3. Historical Marker Database, Chief Little Turtle marker, Lawton Place — the 1959 Smeltzly purchase and dedication of the site as a public park.