Piankashaw Claims on the Ohio–Wabash

At Vincennes on August 27, 1804, they ceded to the United States the tract between the Ohio and Wabash rivers below Clark’s Grant, the grant lying across the Ohio from Louisville and the Falls of the Ohio. The Falls are therefore the east end of the ceded tract, which ran west along the Ohio toward the Wabash. The Delaware had made a matching cession of the country between the Ohio and Wabash at Vincennes nine days earlier, on August 18, 1804, but their treaty admitted that the Piankashaw had “obstinately persisted in refusing to recognize the title of the Delawares” to it, and said the treaty’s promises would be void if the Piankashaw rejected a settlement and the United States did not take the land without their consent.

In the 1805 Grouseland treaty the Potawatomi, Miami, Eel River and Wea acknowledged the Delawares’ right to sell the tract, “which tract was given by the Piankashaws to the Delawares, about thirty-seven years ago” (roughly 1768), while the Miami contended that they had meant only to let the Delawares occupy it, not to give up the soil, and the Delawares then released their claim.