THREE CENTURIES OF THE MAUMEE VALLEY
By M. M. QUAIFE
The name "Maumee" is a variant
of Miami, and comes from
the Miami Indian tribe. When the French
first came into the
Northwest they found the Miami living in
eastern Wisconsin.
Following LaSalle's advent in the
Illinois country they moved
southward around Lake Michigan and for
many years (c. 1690-
1702) one of their important towns was located in the present-
day Chicago Loop. Eventually they
journeyed eastward to the
Maumee, with villages at Fort Wayne,
Defiance, and other points,
and their name became permanently
identified with the beautiful
river and valley they had appropriated.
In the era when wilderness was king and
practically all travel
was by water, the Maumee and Wabash
rivers constituted one of
the chief highways of travel between the
Great Lakes and the
Mississippi River system. For this
reason the Maumee Valley is
associated with the earliest activities
of the French in the western
country. Over its possession red race
and white, and French,
British, and American nations for
generations contended. Before
the white man arrived the lovely valley,
"fair as a garden of the
Gods," was the highway of uncounted
war parties from the Great
Lakes journeying southward to wage
against the southern tribes
the long warfare which made of Kentucky
a vacant wilderness
and won for it a name which means
"the dark and bloody ground."
In 1749 the French army of Celoron from
distant Montreal, re-
turning from its mission of warning the
English out of the Ohio
Valley, descended the Maumee from Fort
Wayne to Lake Erie
and Detroit, and a memorial of this
expedition still remains in
the name of Celoron Island, lying in the
mouth of Detroit River.
In 1752, young Charles de Langlade led
his Ottawa warriors from
Mackinac up the Maumee on his mission of
vengeance against
Pickawillany, and the chief, Old
Britain, for the crime of showing
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