Chief Richardville's House: The Richest Man in Indiana
Near Fort Wayne, Indiana
In eighteen twenty seven, the United States government contributed six hundred dollars toward the construction of a house for the principal chief of the Miami Nation. The chief himself added funds from his own considerable fortune to bring the total cost to twenty-two hundred dollars. The result was a handsome Greek Revival cottage on the banks of the Saint Marys River. It still stands today, the oldest building in Fort Wayne and the only surviving treaty house in the United States.
The man who lived there was Jean Baptiste de Richardville. He was born in seventeen sixty one at Kekionga, the son of a French fur trader and Tacumwah, a Miami woman of high standing. His mother was herself a formidable figure, a trader and entrepreneur who had built a commercial empire controlling the portage between the Three Rivers and the Wabash system. Richardville inherited her business instincts and expanded them.
By the time of his death in eighteen forty one, Jean Baptiste de Richardville was considered the wealthiest man in the state of Indiana. He owned property throughout the region, maintained a trading network stretching from Canada to the Gulf, and had negotiated treaties with the United States government as the principal Miami chief since eighteen twelve. He was fluent in French, Miami, and English, and maneuvered between three cultures with extraordinary skill.
He was also presiding over the dissolution of his nation's hold on this land. The treaties he signed, including the Treaty of Mississinewas in eighteen twenty six, which funded this very house, extracted territory from the Miami in exchange for annuities and federal recognition of certain individual land holdings. Richardville delayed, negotiated, and protected what he could. But he could not stop the tide.
He died in August of eighteen forty one. Five years later, the Miami who remained in Indiana were loaded onto canal boats and removed to Kansas. His house endured. The National Park Service designated it a National Historic Landmark in twenty twelve.
