The battles of the valley, each its own beat — and none of them here

1763 — 1781 · EVERY NAMED FIGHT, PRINTED AT ITS OWN GROUND

The capture of Fort St. Joseph, 25 May 1763: In Pontiac's Rebellion the valley's one fort fell to the valley's own people: Potawatomi warriors took Fort St. Joseph at Niles and carried off its British garrison, Ensign Schlosser prisoner among them. The fight was at Niles, some fourteen miles of river above the rapids, and it is boundary-printed here at that address.

The raid of 1780, and the defeat at Petit Fort: In the autumn of 1780 the Cahokia party of Hamelin and Brady — about sixteen men at the start by the British commander's report, grown on the road — timed its arrival at Fort St. Joseph for the first hunt, took the traders prisoner and carried off at least fifty bales of goods toward Chicago. A British detachment under Lieutenant Dagreaux Du Quindre, with Potawatomi under Chief Anaquiba and his son Topenebee, pursued and overtook the raiders at Petit Fort, a day's journey beyond the Rivière du Chemin in the Indiana dunes, on 5 December 1780, where the raiders were defeated, killed, wounded and taken. The plunder was won at Niles and lost at the lake shore; neither end of the affair touched the rapids.

The Spanish raid, 12 February 1781: The valley's last fight of the colonial era was a one-day seizure: Pouré's Spanish expedition from St. Louis raced across the frozen St. Joseph, took Fort St. Joseph before its handful of defenders could arm, claimed the fort and the river for Spain, distributed the plunder among the Native people present, and marched home. Niles's ground again — the last flag of the four that flew over the post.

The defeat that did not happen here — nor anywhere in this valley: The American defeat a reader of Indiana's war record expects in this generation is La Balme's: the French officer whose Detroit expedition broke apart in November 1780, one detachment raiding Fort St. Joseph as above, while La Balme himself was killed and his force destroyed by Miami warriors under Little Turtle at Kekionga, at the head of the Maumee. That defeat belongs to Fort Wayne's ground, and it is printed here only to be assigned there. For Mishawaka's own ground the finding is complete and plain: no battle, defeat, raid, ambush or armed clash on the rapids ground — at the village, the ford, or the townsite — stands in any source read for this build, French, British, Spanish, American or Potawatomi. The wars of the valley passed this ground by, upriver at the fort and down the lake shore at the dunes, and the Story of Mishawaka section prints the negative at the same size as the beats: this was never fought-over ground.

Sources:

1. City of Niles, "A History of Fort St. Joseph" — the 1763 capture and Schlosser's imprisonment; the 1781 Spanish raid and abandonment.
2. Major De Peyster's report of 8 January 1781, as carried in the Petit Fort record — Hamelin's sixteen men, the fifty bales taken, Du Quindre's pursuit and the surrender demanded at Petit Fort on 5 December 1780; the pursuit force under Anaquiba and Topenebee.
3. The Fort St. Joseph reference record — the 1780 raid's plundering and the raiders' defeat near Petit Fort; the Spanish expedition of 12 February 1781.
4. The tribes, wars and spine fragments of this build — the searches behind the negative: no armed clash of any party is recorded for the rapids ground in the county histories, the treaty record or the valley scholarship read.