Jean Baptiste Richardville and the Treaty-Era Fortune

The fortune: Richardville, principal chief of the Miami (his full profile is in the People section), stood at the center of the trade at the Forks of the Wabash and at the center of every treaty negotiation between the Miami and the United States from 1818 to 1840. The treaties paid annuities, and they paid Richardville personally: land grants under the successive treaties totaled 28,320 acres, with cash payments of $31,800, and the final Treaty at the Forks of the Wabash in 1840 gave him $25,000 under its fourth article and seven sections of land under its tenth. He dealt in land and trade goods from his house at the Forks for four decades.

Its scale: Henry Schoolcraft, who knew the trade firsthand, called Richardville "the most wealthy man of the native race in America" (the judgment is quoted in the Indiana Magazine of History). He died on August 13, 1841, holding more than $200,000 in cash — the History Center describes the estate's money as $200,000 in gold and silver — alongside thousands of acres, and he was widely considered the wealthiest man in Indiana at his death.

What it left: The Richardville House at the Forks of the Wabash, built in 1827 with $600 of federal money and roughly $1,600 of his own — about $2,200 in all — with a wall safe for the estate's cash. The house stayed in the family until 1894, was acquired by the Historical Society in 1991, and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2012. It is treated with the great houses at the end of this section.

Sources:

1. Indiana Magazine of History, article on Richardville (Drouet de Richerville) — Schoolcraft quotation; more than $200,000 in cash at death.
2. The History Center, Fort Wayne — Richardville House and estate accounts; $200,000 in gold and silver.
3. Treaty at the Forks of the Wabash, 1840, articles 4 and 10; treaty grant totals as carried in the People section profile.