The two forts the spades cannot find

1722 AND 1794 · UNLOCATED

The markers know; the archaeologists do not: Five forts stood within a square mile of the center of present Fort Wayne, and the two that matter most to the city's founding have never been found in the ground. The French built Fort St. Philippe des Miamis in 1722, a palisaded post garrisoned by as many as thirty men; General Wayne's men built the first Fort Wayne in the autumn of 1794, the post that gave the city its name. Historical markers treat both sites as settled — the state marker in Guldin Park states that the French built their palisaded fort "on this strategic site" in 1722 — but the markers rest on documents and tradition, not on excavation.

What is known: the documentary geography. A map drawn by Father Jean Bonnecamps, who was on the ground in 1749, places the French post of that period on the right bank of the St. Marys a short distance north of the present Nickel Plate railroad tracks. What is not known: the footprint of either fort. In work reported in Indiana Archaeology in 2009, archaeologists Christopher R. Andres, Dorothea McCullough, Michael Strezewski, and Robert G. McCullough set out deliberately to discover the two sites, using the historical documentation, remote sensing, survey, and test excavation. They found eighteenth-century material in the urban ground — glass trade beads, copper alloy fragments, an iron arrow point, an olive-green glass bottle sherd, a lead bale seal — and their report closes with the plain sentence that defines this entry: although the artifacts were found, "the fort sites were not determined in this initial effort." Two and a half centuries of building stand on top of both posts; streets, rail lines, and the flood works have cut the ground the palisades stood in. The trail ends at that 2009 report: an initial effort, its authors called it, and no later published investigation in the record reached has announced either fort found.

Sources:

1. Christopher R. Andres, Dorothea McCullough, Michael Strezewski, and Robert G. McCullough, "Archaeological Investigations of Fort St. Philippe des Miamis (1722) and the First American Fort (1794) in Fort Wayne, Indiana," Indiana Archaeology, vol. 4, no. 1 (Indiana Department of Natural Resources, 2009) — the investigations, the artifacts recovered, and the conclusion that the fort sites were not determined.
2. Indiana Historical Bureau, Fort Miamis marker (installed 2000, Guldin Park) — the marker text asserting the 1722 fort on that site.
3. Allen County Genealogical Society of Indiana, "1712 French Fort" and forts pages — the Bonnecamps map of 1749 and its placement of the post on the St. Marys.