Map of Villages
This map, a combination of maps of Native villages dating from 1682 to 1823, shows “Winamac’s Village” near the Tippecanoe River in what would become the town of Winamac. The period of time in which the village supposedly existed is not given.
Tradition holds that the peninsula where now sits the Winamac Park was a hunting and fishing campground area used by the Potawatomi of the region. Whether “Winamac” had a village in the area is not as clear.
It is possible that a village was here, whether or not it was the home of or named for Chief Winamac. The dates of his possible death have been “documented” as both 1812 and 1821, both long before white settlers began to arrive in the area. (Note: Those dates are not a factor of any typographical error, of someone inverting the 1 and the 2. Two distinct stories and a few variations of his death are out there.)
The history of the Chief Winamac about whom the town is named is riven in contradictions, and we do not know who named the village on the embedded map or when it was so named.
A Century of Achievement
Pulaski County, Indiana 1839 – 1939, by John G. Reidelbach. Edited and Published by Richard R. Dodd, 1972. Indexed by Iona Harshberger Nale & Julia Phillips Fagan
The following information comes from a book that was researched and written by Judge John G. Reidelbach. The book remained unfinished and unpublished at his death in 1939. Portions of the book were printed in local newspapers over the years. Eventually, after several years as a “project” of local historian and former County Clerk, Richard Dodd, the book was published for limited distribution.
The Judge did not cite his sources, so much could be folklore rather than history. Some information is vetted, for example, minor excavations have shown that an Indian village probably existed in the vicinity of the Winamac cemetery. This village was vacated decades before white settlers arrived and any documentation about who lived there would have been from stories told by Natives to white settlers, those decades later. Other information can be contradicted.
What follows is verbatim from Mr. Dodd’s publication, with footnotes from today.
Chief Winamac
Winamac: What is it? Where is it? It was an Indian village since the middle of the 18th century when Chief Wynamack and his Miami tribes1 lived in their wigwams and huts upon the hills of the Winamac cemetery, a quarter of a mile west of the Tippecanoe River, until 1818. Upon a treaty made between the Potawatomi and Miami Indians in that year,2 the village was abandoned by the Miamis and Chief Wynamac established another Indian village, naming it “Winamac,” on the south bank of the Wabash River about ten miles below Logansport, Indiana.3 Thereafter scattering tribes of the Potawatomi Indians still maintained their homes near the present town of Winamac when the town was surveyed and platted by John Pearson, Jesse Jackson, John B. Niles, John Brown and William Polk in the fall of 1838, some of the Indians remaining more than ten years thereafter.
…. Some writers say that Chief Winnamack was a Miami Indian while others say that he belonged to the Potawatomi tribe. About the year 1763 the Potawatomi Indians, who were a division from the Ojibway Indians of Canada,4 drifted down along Lake Michigan and settled upon and occupied the territory from Lake Michigan to the Wabash River, at first locating there by permission of the Miami Indians and later crowding the Miamis further south to the south side of the Wabash River. While Chief Winnamack and his tribe were occupying the vicinity of Winamac and Pulaski County the Potawatomi Indians were in possession of this territory and Chief Winnamack lived among and ruled a tribe of Potawatomi. 5 The fact that he had located another village named after him along the south side of the Wabash River, below Logansport, and resided there until his death in 1821 among the Miami would indicate that he may have become affiliated with the Miami Indians after leaving the Potawatomi.6
At any rate, this Indian Chief was considered very friendly and in sympathy with the Americans and was at first opposed to Tecumseh and his brother in declaring war against the Americans. However this chief was afterwards forced by circumstances to fight with the British in spite of the fact that he and another opposing chief were particularly active in persuading their tribes to “set still” while their two fathers would fight out the war as their own business and in their own way.
Chief Winnamack was a War-Chief of some distinction, and after the War of 1812 he repeatedly visited Washington. He was always openly free to the Americans and thereafter, because he was compelled to fight with his Indian warriors and affiliates, the American government had accused him of double crossing them by fighting for the great Prophet at the Battle of Tippecanoe.
An attempt was made to court-martial him and after making numerous trips, which covered a period of almost ten years, to Washington he was by no means convicted of that aberration. It is said that on his last return trip from Washington when he and other warriors of his tribe were making the return trip through Delphos, Ohio, and while coming toward Fort Wayne, where he had been attending a treaty meeting, he was shot by one of his Shawnee warriors accidentally. Then he lay at the point of death for a long while but improved and lingered for nearly a year when he died in the summer of 1821 somewhere in Chicago.7
A legendary story has it that Chief Winnamack was buried on the grounds where the Methodist church of Winamac now stands. It is also said that Chief Winnamack’s own hut or wigwam was on the site of a vacant lot east of the Methodist church, while the Indian village was where the cemetery is now, but this is legendary. It has also been said that the reason Chief Winnamack and his tribe were compelled to fight with Tecumseh and his Shawnee Indians was because he had frequently in treaty conferences with the Americans surrendered great portions of the Potawatomi lands while he was under the influence of whiskey, accepting in exchange for their lands, fire arms, hunting dogs, whiskey, trinkets, blankets and other shiny and attractive articles which the Indians fancied so much.
Footnotes
1The Chief Winamac for whom the town is named was a Potawatomi, and the area including Pulaski County was populated by Potawatomi.
2The treaty of 1818 was between the U.S. Government and the Miami Tribes.
3A marker from the Trail of Death notes Winnemac’s Old Village on the south side of Towpath Road, but this is on the north side of the Wabash River. The Miami lived on the south side of the river.
4The Potawatomi were not a division of Ojibway. The Council of Three Fires is a centuries-long Anishinaabe alliance of culturally-related indigenous peoples, the Ojibwe (Chippewa), Odawa (Ottawa) and Potawatomi.
5Winamac was a war chief, not a ruler of a tribe. However, he could have established a village.
6Mr. Dodd contradicts himself with the account of Winamac’s death in 1821. A letter from the Indiana State Library to Mr. Dodd dated September 12, 1961, gives the date of Winamac’s death as November 22, 1812 at the hand of Shawnee chief Captain James Logan. Researching the death of Captain Logan, you find that he died on November 22, 1812. He and his scouting party had been captured by Winamac, and in an attempt to escape, Winamac was killed and Logan hit in the abdomen. Logan died three days later.
7A letter from the Indiana State Library to Mr. Dodd dated September 12, 1961, states he was not killed accidentally by one of “his” Shawnee warriors, but “was killed in an encounter with the Shawnee chief Captain James Logan (Spemicalawba)….” And again, Mr. Dodd’s account has Winamac traveling to and from Washington, D.C. until his death in Chicago in 1821, apparently after he died in 1812.
Back to Winamac’s Village
Did a village exist? Possibly, because some artifacts have been found at the cemetery.
Confusions and Contradictions
For more information on the confusing history of Chief Winamac, which leads to confusion on the subject of a village, visit https://museum.pulaskihistory.net/indigenous-peoples-of-pulaski-county/the-chiefs-winamac/.