The Island: Little Turtle's Stronghold on the Eel River
Near Fort Wayne, Indiana
The elevated ground south of the Eel River that locals call The Island was once one of the most strategically important places in the old Northwest Territory. This area of high ground served as a principal stronghold of the Miami people under Chief Little Turtle, one of the most brilliant military commanders the young United States ever faced. Little Turtle led a confederacy of Miami, Shawnee, Delaware, and other nations to decisive victories over American forces in the early seventeen nineties, inflicting the worst defeat the United States Army ever suffered at the hands of Native Americans at the Battle of the Wabash in seventeen ninety-one. It stood at the center of a network of villages and trade routes that the Americans were determined to break, and eventually did, forcing most of the Miami out of Indiana by eighteen forty-six.
