CHANGING LANDSCAPES:
AMBIGUITY, IMAGINATIONS, AND AMISH SETTLERS IN NORTHERN INDIANA,
1825-1850
By
Devon Ezra Miller

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
Anthropology—Doctor of Philosophy
2017

ABSTRACT
CHANGING LANDSCAPES:
AMBIGUITY, IMAGINATIONS, AND AMISH SETTLERS IN NORTHERN INDIANA,
1825-1850
By
Devon Ezra Miller
Over the past several decades, anthropologists and historians have recognized the
diversity and fluidity of the cultural interactions in the Great Lakes region during colonization
and settlement. These studies have focused either on the social processes of Indigenization,
assimilation, or acculturation on the part of Indigenous communities, or the incorporation of
Indigenous political alliances into European colonization. However, little scholarly attention has
been given to a critical examination of the social, economic, and political processes which led
settler communities such as Anabaptists to appropriate, re-appropriate, or generate new meanings
of the Indigenous places they settled. The Amish community of LaGrange and Elkhart counties,
Indiana, provides an excellent case study for examining the human agency involved in varying
epistemologies and ideologies producing and reproducing diversity within the Great Lakes
region during settlement.
Using a framework which draws from landscape, social memory, and diasporic studies,
this dissertation examines the formation of the Anabaptist community located in northern
Indiana. By exploring the competing histories found in the relevant archives and the built
landscape, I consider the discursive processes of place-making which shaped this Anabaptist
community. Since they shared pacifist ideologies and a collective memory involving
displacement and oppression, how did Anabaptists understand and interact with the people and
places where they settled? How did Anabaptists incorporate the changes they encountered into
previous understandings of how the world should be? How do competing histories provide a

fuller understanding of the formation of Anabaptist communities? How did the Anabaptist placemaking practices contribute to transforming the environment from an Indigenous landscape to a
landscape dominated by European technology and agriculture?

Copyright by
DEVON EZRA MILLER
2017

This work is dedicated to Susan Applegate Krouse, who walked on before this work barely got
off the ground. Without her relentless enthusiasm, which she displayed in my project early on, I
would never have had the opportunity to take on such a daunting task.

v

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank the Newberry Library for their contributions to this research. My
participation in 2012 as a fellow in the library’s Summer Institute with Jean O’Brien and Coll
Thrush had significant influence on this research. I am also grateful to the Newberry Library for
their support through a Summer Short-Term Fellowship, which made possible my time
exploring the land records in the courthouses of LaGrange and Elkhart counties in Indiana.
I am also indebted to Michigan State University and the Department of Anthropology for
their support in various ways that gave me time to finally complete my writing.
Many people have helped me with this research along the way. Floyd Miller, the librarian
at the Northern Indiana Amish Library, introduced me to the LaGrange County land records. Rita
Lehner and Dalonda Young of the LaGrange County GIS Department provided me with the
opportunity to dig through dust and pigeon dung to get to the the county tax records in the
courthouse attic. Joe Springer of the Mennonite Historical Library introduced me to the world of
Frederic Hage. Thanks also goes to Colleen McFarland, the archivist at the MCUSA archives in
Goshen, Indiana, for her help in locating valuable documents.
I could not have had a better dissertation committee. Their kind, yet firm, direction kept
me on the straight and narrow. Kyle Whyte spent countless hours orienting me to the
environmental ethics literature. Mindy Morgan was always able to keep my curiosity in check
and keep me on the right track. Heather Howard’s kind, encouraging, and inspiring words gave
me the confidence I need needed when it waned low.
John Norder had the unenviable task of trying to coax me through this whole process.
There must have been times when it would have been much easier to just turn me out to pasture.

vi

Together, we became better acquainted with Bestsellers as we hashed over the meaning of
landscapes more often than either of us ever wished.
Ned Krouse also deserves credit for his constant encouragement and his reminder that
“Susan always said it is an exercise; just get it done!”
Most of all I want to thank my family for their support. In the past when I read
acknowledgements, I assumed that acknowledging your family was just a nice thing to do. I have
learned that without them it is impossible. It truly is a joint effort. My kids would never let me
entertain the thought of not completing this project. So, to Zac and Anna, Neil and Hannah, Cody
and Sarah, Carrie, Geoff, Jake and Mark—thank you for your unwavering support and putting up
with my being gone from home so much.
And finally, to my incredible wife Margaret—thank you for the countless hours you spent
saving me from the humiliation of grammatical incompetency. You have been a wonderful
partner through all of this. Now it’s your turn and, if we are fortunate, I look forward to spending
many years sitting by the fire writing with you. You are the love of my life.

vii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES ..............................................................................................................x
LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................... xi
CHAPTER 1 ........................................................................................................................1
“A GOOD AND FLOURISHING REGION AND WELL CONTENTED SETTLERS”:
AN INTRODUCTION........................................................................................................1
The Setting ...............................................................................................................1
Terminology.............................................................................................................7
Methods....................................................................................................................9
CHAPTER 2 ......................................................................................................................21
“BUT IT IS NOTHING EXCEPT WOODS”:
SETTLERSCAPES ............................................................................................................21
Introduction ............................................................................................................21
Settlerscapes...........................................................................................................24
A Dwelling Perspective .........................................................................................26
An Embodied Landscape .......................................................................................33
Placelessness ..........................................................................................................41
Conclusion .............................................................................................................44
CHAPTER 3 ......................................................................................................................46
“THE SOIL IS RED LIKE THE COLOR OF OUR SKIN”:
A HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL ECOLOGY OF NORTHERN INDIANA .............46
Introduction ............................................................................................................46
A Historical Ecology..............................................................................................48
The Potawatomi .........................................................................................54
A Cultural Ecology ................................................................................................57
Treaties ......................................................................................................60
1833 Treaty of Chicago .............................................................................62
The Nottawaseppi Prairie ..........................................................................68
Conclusion .............................................................................................................73
CHAPTER 4 ......................................................................................................................76
“IT IS NOT AS IN EUROPE”:
ORIGINS, LITERACY, AND LIVELIHOOD .................................................................76
Introduction ............................................................................................................76
Origins....................................................................................................................78
Language....................................................................................................82
Literacy ..................................................................................................................84
Correspondence .........................................................................................85
Literature ...................................................................................................87

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Formularies................................................................................................93
Livelihood ..............................................................................................................97
Conclusion ...........................................................................................................107
CHAPTER 5 ....................................................................................................................109
“WHOEVER GOES FARTHER BACK”:
MIGRATION, CULTURE CONTACT, AND KNOWLEDGE .....................................109
Introduction ..........................................................................................................109
Migration..............................................................................................................111
Culture Contact ....................................................................................................119
Knowledge ...........................................................................................................129
Conclusion ...........................................................................................................138
CHAPTER 6 ....................................................................................................................141
“HE LIVED TO SEE THE WILDERNESS BLOSSOM AS THE ROSE”:
LAND, POWER, AND TRANSFORMATION ..............................................................141
Introduction ..........................................................................................................141
Political Deterioration ..........................................................................................144
Economic Disintegration .....................................................................................155
Social Degeneration .............................................................................................161
Conclusion ...........................................................................................................163
CHAPTER 7 ....................................................................................................................165
ON THE ROAD WITH SHIPSHEWANO:
A CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................165
Introduction ..........................................................................................................165
A Synthesis ..........................................................................................................166
Further Questions .................................................................................................168
Future Research ...................................................................................................171
Conclusion ...........................................................................................................173
APPENDICES .................................................................................................................174
APPENDIX A: THOMAS’S LIST OF FLORA..................................................175
APPENDIX B: TREATIES BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES AND THE
POTAWATOMI, 1789-1837 ...............................................................................178
BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................180

ix

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: Thomas’s List of Flora.......................................................................................175
Table 2: Treaties between the United States and the Potawatomi, 1789-1837 ................178

x

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Map of St. Joseph River Watershed ..................................................................49

xi

CHAPTER 1
“A GOOD AND FLOURISHING REGION AND WELL CONTENTED SETTLERS”:
AN INTRODUCTION
The Setting
In a short pamphlet on the origins of the Amish community in northern Indiana, John
(Hansi) Borntreger1 (1992) provides the reader with a brief glimpse of one of the earliest
migrations of the Amish to the area. Borntreger had been a three-year-old child on this
migration, and his is the earliest account of these events. Even so, Borntreger admits, it is not a
firsthand account, as he relied on the memory of other individuals. According to Borntreger, four
Amish families from Somerset County, Pennsylvania, packed their belongings onto “wagons, of
which each family had one, and three one-horse spring wagons” (ibid., 5) late in the spring of
1841. Heading west, they spent a week in eastern Ohio with family and acquaintances before
continuing their journey. They followed trails which took them through the southern tier of
counties in Michigan until they reached the small town of White Pigeon, Michigan. From there
they turned south, entering the northeast corner of Elkhart County, Indiana. Continuing in a
southwestwardly direction they found temporary homes in the vicinity of the Elkhart Prairie near
present-day Goshen, Indiana, where they anticipated purchasing some of the fertile fields on the
prairie that had been reported to them as being “a good and flourishing region” with “well
contented settlers” (ibid.,) by earlier visitors to the area. According to Borntreger, land prices on
the prairie had risen to such an extent during the interval between the report they had received
and their arrival that they were no longer able to afford the purchase price of any of the prairie

1

The original pamphlet was written in German and later translated into English. I will be
working from the translated version (Borntreger 1992) throughout this research unless noted
otherwise.

1

land they sought. However, each of the four families was able to purchase a plot of “timber land”
(ibid., 6) in the vicinity. The following fall, five other Amish families joined the original Amish
settlers in northern Indiana, beginning a steady flow of immigrants into the area from other
Amish communities in North America in the years to follow.
While Borntreger’s is the earliest account of this event, it was written nearly seventy
years after the actual event took place and is little more than a sketch or outline of what actually
happened. Borntreger does not state explicitly why these families chose to leave the familiarity
of their homes and venture into unfamiliar territory; he simply states without elaborating that “a
feeling arose” in the Amish community, prompting the search for new homes. In his account of
the demise of the Amish community in Somerset County, the Amish historian David Luthy
suggests the feeling may have been related to “Western fever” (Luthy 1986). Whether or not the
feeling was mutual among all the community members is unclear. Were they simply drawn to
northern Indiana by the appeal of cheaper land? Had tensions within the community grown to
such an extent that dissolution had become more feasible than conciliation? Did they seek greater
political and geographical isolation to buffer themselves against the potential threat of military
conscription by the United States government? How much did individual agency influence the
decisions to migrate? Most likely, each of these factors contributed in some degree to their
decision to migrate. However, none of these explanations fully account for how Amish settlers
perceived the places and people they encountered in migration.
The Amish are a subgroup of a Christian sect known as Anabaptists which emerged from
the Protestant Reformation in Europe during the sixteenth century. Up until the middle part of
the twentieth century, Anabaptist groups were associated with German ethnicity, having taken on
various degrees of cultural adaptation to the world around them. However, with a growing

2

emphasis on missions in the early part of the twentieth century, Anabaptists have expanded onto
every continent so that currently there are more non-German Anabaptists in the world than those
who are of German descent, most of which live in the southern hemisphere of the world.2
Nevertheless, northern Indiana remains the home of the world’s third-largest Anabaptist
community and the world’s second-largest Amish community.
The Amish settlers in this research should not be confused with the Old Order Amish
(OOA) made popular to the rest of the world over the past several decades through tourism and
reality television shows. Though these settlers were the ideological forerunners of the OOA and
the Conservative Amish Mennonites (CAM),3 both these latter terms are anachronistic in
describing the immigrant group I am focusing on. The OOA and the CAM did not emerge and
develop until the 1860s. Some have referred to the immigrant group in this research as Amish
Mennonites,4 which certainly is descriptive, given the fluidity and ambiguity between groups
during the time period being considered. However, in spite of the sound reasons for using the
term “Amish Mennonites,” I take my cue from a document written by Friedrich Hage,5 an Amish
elder during the time period being considered, wherein Hage refers to the members of this group

2

For an overview of the globalization of Anabaptism, see the Global Mennonite History

Series.
3

The Amish Mennonite Conference was the predecessor of various other conferences
which still exist in northern Indiana, including the Indiana-Michigan Conference and the
Conservative Mennonite Conference (see Wenger 1961).
4
Even though Borntreger uses this term, it appears to be anachronistic as well, as this is
the term often used to described the more progressive group growing out of the division
occurring during the 1860s which formally became known as the Conservative Amish
Mennonite Conference.
5
Various forms of the Hage surname are found in connection with Friedrich Hage,
including Hege, Hagey, Hauge, Hagen, and Hagie (see Hagey and Hagey 1954). This research
will use “Hage,” the form used by Gingerich and Kreider (2007) in their genealogical volume.

3

at the time of his own arrival in North America simply as the “Amish” (Samuel Mast Collection,
file 7).
Ideologically, Anabaptists share similar values with Quakers and the Church of the
Brethren. Together, these three church groups are sometimes referred to as the three historic
peace churches, emphasizing their pacifist and nonviolent perspectives of the world. The
Quakers developed in England separately from Anabaptists (Bronner 1962; Barbour 1964) and
the Church of the Brethren (Bittinger 1970; Durnbaugh 1971; Lehman 1976), which developed
alongside each other in the Germanic states. These groups often migrated and settled together in
North America.
The Anabaptist community which was begun and thrived in northern Indiana has grown
to approximately twenty thousand members. It is primarily made up of members German descent
on a continuum ranging from culturally conservative OOA to fully assimilated Mennonites.
Within this continuum there are a wide variety of Anabaptist groups, such as the Beachy Amish,
Old Order Mennonites, Wisler Mennonites, Conservative Conference Mennonites, Burkholder
Amish, and other independent Mennonite groups (Wenger 1961). In recent years there has been
an increased Hispanic population which has fostered a Spanish-speaking Mennonite church in
the community as well. While all these groups share common core beliefs, they are far from
culturally homogeneous, expressing their faith in distinctive customs, behaviors, and attire. In
spite of their diversity, the connections between them run deep. Though cultural lines appear to
be clearly drawn between groups, the lines are porous and frequently transgressed by individuals
within the groups, but not without trepidation. Crossing these boundaries is at times the source of
fissures within families, the strongest of ties within the community. Change is most often
associated with assimilation and rarely moves toward cultural conservatism. At times the thin

4

boundaries between Mennonites and the Church of the Brethren groups are melded to create
hybrid congregations. In the midst of the cultural diversity there remains a shared ideology, not
only among contemporary members, but with their ancestral predecessors as well.
Before proceeding, it is important to understand my own relationship with Anabaptists. I
have both genealogical and ideological roots in this northern Indiana community. My parents
both grew up in Amish homes: my father in Arthur, Illinois, and my mother in LaGrange
County, Indiana. Upon marriage, my parents became members of a church belonging to the
Conservative Mennonite Conference, a group with strong ties to the OOA. My childhood years
were spent on the borders of this Anabaptist community in southern Michigan, near the research
area.
My interest in this topic began during a period in my life when I lived in a remote area of
Northwestern Ontario, Canada. As a young, naive adult in the early 1980s, recently graduated
from high school and married, my spouse and I became involved in a Mennonite mission. It was
a common practice for young Mennonite adults to spend several years in voluntary service rather
than going to college. It was during this time that I was awakened to the power inequalities
which existed between groups of European origin and Native Americans. Generally, Mennonites
refrained from participating in formal political processes due to their pacifist viewpoints which
had developed during the Protestant Reformation, which will be explained in more detail in
Chapter 4.
My years spent in voluntary service involved working at a residential school for First
Nations students. Students came from surrounding reserves, many from families who spent the
winter on traplines who wished for their children to receive a Western education. Though the
school was operated by the Mennonite mission, it was funded by the Canadian government, and

5

many of the school’s policies and practices reflected this dubious partnership. For example,
students were required to speak English in the presence of staff members, even though some of
the youngest students who were five and six years old could only speak their mother language.
Students failing to adhere to this policy wound up in isolation, and in some instances received
harsh physical abuse. Such policies aligned with the Canadian government’s ambition to
eradicate the culture of First Nations peoples and fully assimilate them into Western society.
Returning to southern Michigan after my experience in Ontario, Canada, I enrolled in college to
address these inequalities and how their effects might be mitigated. This led to exploring the
Indigenous past of my childhood home and the historic nature of relations between Anabaptists
and Indigenous peoples.
In this study I address the way in which Amish settlers understood, responded to, and
interacted with the unfamiliar landscapes they encountered in the Great Lakes region during the
nineteenth century. To demonstrate the complexity of the situation facing settlers, I weave
together a mosaic of factors from various facets of their lives, rather than attempting to isolate
specific motivations. It is guided by a series of concerns at the intersection of Anabaptist
ideology and praxis: First and foremost, how did the Amish, who shared an ideology of pacifism
and a collective memory of disenfranchisement throughout Europe, reconcile their migration into
the Great Lakes region with the removal of Indigenous groups from the region? This is followed
by a series of subsidiary questions intended to broaden the understanding of factors influencing
the decisions and outcomes of the Amish settlement process in northern Indiana.
1) How did Anabaptists incorporate the changes they encountered in the unfamiliar
landscape into previous understandings of what the world should be like?
2) How might competing narratives of the Potawatomi (the Indigenous group who had
inhabited northern Indiana for at least several generations prior to the arrival of
European settlers), the United States government, and non-Amish settlers broaden the

6

understanding of the processes which shaped and were shaped by the landscape in
northern Indiana?
3) To what degree did the Anabaptists contribute to the transformation of the Indigenous
landscape of northern Indiana, turning it into a landscape dominated by European
technology and ideology?
This research demonstrates the way ambiguous tropes of wilderness dovetailed with the lived
experience of Amish settlers to create imagined spaces for settlement. These spaces were viewed
as inhospitable landscapes which had become available through unjust actions of the United
States government, providing the agricultural land bases vital to the development and ideologies
of their distinctive ethno-religious communities (Barth 1969; Winland 1993). It is difficult to
determine where ideological assumptions ceased and everyday experience began.

Terminology
Throughout this research, the terms “Native,” “Native American,” and “Indigenous,”
often accompanied by the word “groups” or “peoples,” are used interchangeably to distinguish
the original inhabitants of North America from settlers of European descent. There is little
significance given to when one term or the other is used, except that when the general population
of original inhabitants are being referred to, the term “Indigenous” is most likely to be used. To
distinguish between European Americans and Indigenous peoples, the terms “Native American”
or “Native” peoples is used. When referring to specific tribes or people, their own preferred
name will be used when known. For example, the most prevalent tribes involved in this research
include the Miami, the Potawatomi, the Ottawa, and the Chippewa. These spellings will be
adhered to unless found differently in source materials being used. Certain exceptions will be
made, such as during the treaty era, wherein the United States government would often refer to

7

the treating tribes as “Indians.” In these contexts, the research will reflect the language used in
the documents for the sake of clarity and continuity.
In broad terms, the “settlement period” in the Great Lakes region as used in this research
refers to the period of time in which land was opened up for settlement until the federal land
patents had been sold and land was predominately occupied by United States settlers. 6 This
period began in southeastern Ohio as early as the 1770s as squatters crossed over the Ohio River
into the Old Northwest, which had been reserved exclusively for use by Native peoples.
Settlement continued into the latter part of the nineteenth century in such areas as the northern
parts of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota.
The time period chosen for this research covers a thirty-year span from 1830 to 1860. The
year 1825 represents the year Thomas Todd and C. W. Christmas (Boyd 2010; Boyd 2012)
began their work as deputy surveyors for the United States Land Office, marking off Elkhart and
LaGrange counties into a grid of townships and sections in preparation for sale to settlers. In
1830 the Indigenous landscape developed over previous centuries had not yet been altered by
Europeans except by a few preemptive settlers. At the other end of the time period in this
research, 1860 represents the period in which Amish settlers began to push and expand the
boundaries of settlement beyond the four original townships into neighboring townships. During
this time, clear cultural and ideological boundaries began to shift and develop among the Amish,
resulting in the formation of the more culturally conservative OOA sect and the beginnings of

6

These dates are not fixed. Though Richard White (1991) sets the era in the Great Lakes
region which he designates as the “Middle Ground” as ending in 1815, it can be argued that the
settlement period and the Middle Ground overlapped with each other significantly on either side
of this date. The settlement period began much earlier as settlers began to encroach upon the Old
Northwest as early as the 1780s, and the cultural creativity White wishes to describe continued
well beyond 1815.

8

the evangelically minded CAM. Also at this time, the United States entered into a civil war,
which shifted the focus temporarily away from expansionism and onto internal strife. All of
these changes brought with them new influences and a new era which characterized the area of
northern Indiana as a settled community, setting it apart and beyond the scope of this study.
Due to the detailed attention given to land records, the research area was narrowed to
make the research manageable. Geographically the area consists of four townships: Middlebury
and Clinton townships in Elkhart County, Indiana, and Eden and Newberry townships in
LaGrange County, Indiana. These four townships sit adjacent to each other. Each township
consists of thirty-six square-mile sections. I chose to isolate these four townships from the rest of
the townships in the counties since they are inclusive of the initial settlement area of the Amish
during the research period.7

Methods
This research is an ethnohistorical account of Amish settlement in the Great Lakes
region. In assessing the reliability of the data used in my analysis, I have considered such factors
as the social position of the one writing; whether the document is a copy or an original; whether
it is a translation of someone else’s words; the style of the document, that is, whether it is a
personal communication, a journal, or government document; who the intended audience may
have been; and who was allowed and not allowed to write (Brettell 1998). Although I have taken

7

To manage and analyze the data from the land records, I created an Excel spreadsheet
displaying the relevant information in various columns. Beginning with 1830 and through 1860,
I listed all land transactions by the respective counties for each of the townships considered in
this study. The spreadsheet includes data regarding the grantor, the grantee, the description of the
land being transferred, the amount of land in acres, the price per acre, the date of sale, and the
date recorded. The spreadsheet allows me to arrange and group the data in different categories
depending on the information being queried.

9

great care to ensure the details given are accurate and reliable, it is not a linear account or the
(re)telling of past events; rather, I have selected pertinent moments and materials which point
toward the contours, movements, and textures on the surface of those events which provide the
subtext and context (Casey 1981) of Amish settlement. It does not introduce a great deal of new
details to an account that is well known among the Amish and Mennonite community in northern
Indiana; rather, it is intended to provide a new perspective on existing materials familiar to
Mennonites but viewed in a vacuum from the surrounding society.
In the past, settler narratives have often been often construed in such a way as to
emphasize their arrival and the disappearance of previous inhabitants as a way of legitimatizing
the settlers’ presence in a particular place (O’Brien 2010). Anabaptists are no exception in this
regard. For example, in his announcement of the annual meeting of the Conservative Mennonite
Conference being held in northern Indiana, Conrad Showalter (2012) attempts to explain the
significance of the local history in the area. According to Showalter, Anabaptist settlement in the
area is preceded by the removal of the Potawatomi from the area, including a local elder by the
name of Shipshewano. According to Showalter, Shipshewano returned to the area in 1840, where
he died and was buried in 1841, the same year the first Amish settlers arrived in the area.
Subsequently, the Potawatomi are not mentioned in Anabaptist narratives; rather, the emphasis is
placed on documenting and tracing genealogical and ecclesiastical records which establish their
own identity in the area. The plethora of local and church histories of settlers remain silent
regarding their cohabitation with the Potawatomi in northern Indiana after this point,
perpetuating the myth that the land was empty and free for settlement.
Often Anabaptist historians have not been any more favorable in their account of
interactions between the Amish and Indigenous peoples in North America than amateur

10

historians have been. For example, Steven Nolt (2015) depicts these relations as almost always
being of “goodwill” (ibid., 132). The example that Nolt gives involves an Amish community in
Iowa in 1840, who, after discovering their homes were located in a “Half Breed Tract,” decided
to relocate. Nolt interprets this as a gesture of goodwill in conceding the land to its rightful
owner. In The Leading Events of Johnson County, Iowa, Clarence Aurner (1912) provides a
different perspective, suggesting the Amish moved for fear that they would lose their lands
because it “was uncertain to its title” (ibid., 387). Aurner’s perspective suggests there were
monetary reasons behind the relocation of this Amish community rather than the goodwill
suggested by Nolt. The impulse to portray these interactions between Anabaptists and Native
peoples in terms of “goodwill” may be attributed to the desire to prop up the image of
Anabaptists as a peace-loving people who had the good of all people in mind.
There are exceptions to this tendency to romanticize the past and be more critical of it. In
the series The Mennonite Experience in North America, Richard MacMaster (1985) portrays the
movement of the Amish and Mennonites to and within North America during the late
seventeenth century and throughout the eighteenth century in less than altruistic terms. Not
unlike their fellow European immigrants, MacMaster claims these people were simply
“following normal lines of trade, empire, and migration” (ibid., 31-32). In a subsequent volume
in the same series, Theron Schlabach (2007) asks a more profound question of the Amish and
Mennonites, who during the nineteenth century were gobbling up land that had only recently
been stripped of Native tenure and made available for purchase by the United States government.
Schlabach asks whether the Amish and Mennonites’ “constant engrossment with soil might have
stimulated deep second thoughts about how they were relating to God’s creation and to fellow
humans. This was especially true since they were so staunchly pacifist” (ibid., 37).

11

Of these three approaches, I find Schlabach’s the most useful. Much of the driving force
behind this research comes from the question Schlabach asks: How did Anabaptists, who had
experienced displacement in Europe, view displaced Indigenous peoples whose land they were
now inhabiting? A partial explanation to this question may be the posture the Amish were
accustomed to in relation to the magistrates whose land they lived on in Europe, in which they
viewed themselves as subjects rather than citizens, therefore not being concerned with who had
lived on the land before them. If such views carried over to their experience in the United States,
then very likely they relied on the approval of the government as their cue to which lands they
could inhabit. This would explain their relationship with the government, but does little to
explain their understanding of the impact settlement had upon Indigenous peoples. Although
Schlabach never pursues the question he presents, he opens it up for others to do so.
One scholar who has moved in this direction is Reginald Good (1998, 2001) in his work
on the Anabaptist community and the Mississauga near Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. Good
attempts to rewrite the way in which an offer of land by the Mississauga to Mennonite Loyalists
in Pennsylvania is understood. Rather than seeing the offer as legitimizing the presence of
Anabaptists in southern Ontario, Good looks at the way in which these actions served to
dislocate and colonize the Mississauga. I find Good’s work, wherein history serves the interest of
social justice by correcting Anabaptists’ perceptions of settlement and acknowledging the
rightful presence of the Mississauga in their homeland, to be much more in line with the kind of
work I intend to do in this research, and I draw inspiration from it.
Neglecting to acknowledge the presence of Indigenous people contributes to the silencing
of what “actually happened,” leading to variations of what is “said to have happened” (Trouillot
1995), or appeared to have happened. According to the Haitian-born anthropologist Michel-

12

Rolph Trouillot, these silences may occur at any of the four crucial points in the history-making
process: “the moment of fact creation (the making of sources); the moment of fact assembly (the
making of archives); the moment of fact retrieval (the making of narratives); and the moment of
retrospective significance (the making of history in the final instance)” (ibid., 26). I take each of
these warnings into careful consideration in this research.
To account for the first two of these silences, I have chosen to focus my attention upon
the historical landscape as a way to increase our current understanding of the settlement period in
the Great Lakes region. Duncan and Duncan (1988) argue that the study of landscapes is similar
to literary criticism’s approach to reading texts. Though landscapes are not texts in the same
sense as written text, they can only be understood in relationship to the various social, political,
and economic processes, along with the ideological beliefs, which gave rise to them. Much as the
study of contemporary landscapes relies on the descriptions given by the people who live in
them, studying historical landscapes calls for an interrogation of the archival data (Nogue i Font
1993). I have chosen to designate the historical landscapes engaged by the wide variety of
settlers converging upon them in terms of settlerscapes.
In Chapter 2, I theorize ways that people on the move understand, respond to, and interact
with new environments. The term settlerscapes is introduced in this chapter as a way to
emphasize the cultural impact of settlement. This concept is grounded in Tim Ingold’s (2000)
dwelling perspective, which understands a landscape to be the ongoing interaction between
humans and the environment and emphasizes the social, economic, and political processes as
well as the religious beliefs which shape those interactions. A dwelling perspective of landscape
relies on the concept that memory is embedded within a landscape, so that over generations the
rhythms and cycles of a landscape are embodied by those who interact with a particular

13

landscape over a long period of time. This form of remembering and interacting with landscapes
is problematic for religious diasporas such as Amish settlers who are on the move. However,
such people learn to interact with unfamiliar places through the homeland they carry with them
in the form of story, song, art, ritual, and performance (Boyarin 2015). Although seldom in one
particular place long enough to put down roots, such groups have the ability to make any place
their home, a concept best understood in terms of placelessness (Relph 1976; Lane 2002; Tuan
and Strawn 2010). This chapter establishes the premise that Amish agricultural practices inflicted
devastating consequences upon the well-being of displaced Indigenous peoples.
By placing these documents in conversation with other documents not normally
associated with them, they are seen from a new perspective within the larger social fabric of the
era. One of the reasons for this approach is due to the lack of primary documents directly
connected with the first Amish families to settle in northern Indiana. To my knowledge there are
no accessible diaries or firsthand accounts given by those who were a part of that initial
movement. Several possibilities exist as to why none of these documents are in circulation today,
with the most immediate one being that they do exist, but have not been made available to the
public. It could also be that they did exist but were not deemed worthy of being retained, and
were destroyed or reused for other purposes by the authors. Other possibilities include the lack of
literacy among the early settlers: perhaps they simply did not leave a written record of the event.
Another possibility may be that diaries kept by women were not considered important
enough to be included in male-dominated archives. By at least the early twentieth century,
Amish women were keeping record of the mundane details of their lives. In her unpublished
paper, Marilyn Lehman (2007) describes the way in which the mundane events recorded in the

14

journals of contemporary Amish women are both formative and informative in lives of OOA
women. One example Lehman gives describing the everyday events of one OOA woman reads:
“Tue January 4[,] 40 eggs
was nice. baked Bread
flicked [mended] I made Andy a shirt Girls made cop digher [head coverings] in
eve we was att Sams for supper” (ibid., 4)
The diaries intersperse Pennsylvania Dutch words into the mostly English script, adding to its
earthy feeling. Lehman observes: “These everyday texts bear witness to ordinary women in
ordinary times preforming the traditional roles of wife and mother within the private sphere of
the home” (ibid., 5). Along these same lines, Martha Moore Davis (1997) gives a similar account
in her book Sarah’s Seasons in which she examines the diary of Sarah Fisher, an OOA woman
Davis befriended in Iowa. In her account, Davis includes a description of Sarah’s garden, which
maps the landscape of the community she is a part of with the paths of her garden representing
the roads which separate the districts of the OOA church to which she belongs. Although both
Lehman’s and Davis’s works address a much later period than the study period covered in this
research, they suggest that Amish women may have been much more active in documenting the
experiences of their families than the archives reflect.
Understanding historical landscapes can be problematic. Though they may be considered
a text, they are not read in the same sense as you would read the text of a book. Historical
landscapes are a text in the sense that along with the text there is a (sub)text and a (con)text that
help make sense of the “primary text” (Basso 1979; Black 2012). Much as the punch line of a
joke or humor relies on the assumption that the interlocutors share a presumed knowledge of
what Basso (1979) calls the “secondary text,” or subtext, which undergirds the primary text, the
experience of historical landscapes calls upon those who attempt to share it to also share a
knowledge of the presumed subtext (Robertson and Richards 2003; Black 2012). Again, as jokes

15

only makes sense or are acceptable in certain contexts, understanding the movement of settlers
only makes sense when understood in the context of the events in which they took place.
In attempting to make sense of the primary texts of Amish settlers, attention must be
given to the relevant secondary texts and particular contexts in which they were written. Thus,
studying historical and cultural landscapes turns out to be an ethnohistorical project, wherein
archival research (Holdsworth 1997) brings together the intertextuality of many voices
converging to bring about new meaning and new kinds of communities in old and familiar places
(Rodman 2003). For this reason, I have chosen to take a different approach in this research than
what is typically taken in ethnohistorical studies. It is an attempt to show the convergence of
different cultures during the settlement period in the Great Lakes region. It is not indicative of
the events that took place; rather, it is evocative of what happened, as in Edward Casey’s (2005)
description of Margot McLean’s landscape art.
In his book Earth-Mapping, Casey (ibid.) explains the artwork of McLean as doing the
work of mapping landscape. By mapping the landscape, McLean is not plotting out points on a
cartographic representation of the land. She is using actual materials, such as leaves and dirt,
mixing them with pigments, and incorporating them into her pieces of work. Often McLean’s
pieces are centered around a snapshot of an endangered animal in the distance or out of focus,
framed by the earthy material she created. The frame, a mixture of pigments and materials she
has gathered from the landscape, places the animal back in its world, giving the viewer a sense of
the animal’s world. According to Casey, it is the perspective by the “scale” and “level” (ibid.,
32) of McLean’s paintings which acts as mapping. For example, in McLean’s work Wyoming,
the viewer goes back and forth between drawing up close to where McLean has given the
antelope “a place of their own” (ibid., 35 italics in original), and then drawing back to feel a

16

sense of their world through the telescopic view of the frame. Casey refers to McLean’s work as
“thick mapping” (ibid., 31 italics in original). Casey goes on to explain, “Such mapping is
especially appropriate for effecting commemoration, which is always a remembering-through a
material medium—for example, through a monument or a text” (ibid., italics in original)
This is the kind of work I have in mind when I say that this ethnohistory is evocative. As
Casey puts it, evocative mapping “alludes to what was so” (ibid., 30), rather than what is or will
be so, as in mapping and charting. Faced with a lack of documents related directly to the first
settlers, the snapshot given through Borntreger’s account provides a ground-level perspective
into the world of these early Amish settlers. The documents used in this research, drawn from the
landscape, frame the moment of migration in Borntreger’s account in such a way that the
relationship between the frame and the moment are viewed at once as the “distillations of
remembered landscapes” (ibid., 28). The texture and hues of meaning found in the documents
emanate and recall the opportunities and risks, the moods and attitudes impacting the decisions
being made by settlers regarding places to live. The reader will find themselves viewing the
moment of migration through the broader events taking place in the region before being drawn
into the daily lives of what it meant to be an Amish settler in the Great Lakes region during the
early part of the nineteenth century.
Documents used in this research are materials derived from the landscape, much as leaves
and dirt McLean uses in her landscape art are materials from the landscape. For example, the
Amish diaries mentioned above are taken from the daily interactions with the land Amish women
lived on. The records of deeds, the correspondence, the devotional materials, and the politically
motivated materials stored and preserved in the archives all bear witness of the social life being
generated in relation with the surrounding landscape. These documents contain the textures of

17

mundane life, the shades and hues of meaning, and the unspoken circulation of knowledge
important to understanding the life of nineteenth-century Amish settlers.
These documents are used to map the experience of Amish settlers in northern Indiana by
focusing on different scales of interaction, placing those experiences in the context of the broader
social setting. Chapter 3 is a wide-angle view of the ecological and historical circumstances in
the region leading up to settlement. Chapter 4 and Chapter 5 zoom in to provide the social and
historical factors contributing to the migration of Anabaptists from Europe to North America and
on into the Great Lakes region. Finally, Chapter 6 is a microcosm of the early settlement in
northern Indiana, analyzing the dealings of individual settlers which are an indication of what
actually happened.
In Chapter 3, I begin the movement between scales of perspective which map the
memory of landscape in northern Indiana during the settlement period. It begins by framing the
event with layers of the ecological, historical, and cultural context of northern Indiana preceding
Anabaptist settlement in the area. Using reports found in travel journals, the ecological setting of
the St. Joseph River system forms the basis from which all activity and interactions emerge.
Subsequent layers drill down from the overall treaty process between the Potawatomi of northern
Indiana and southern Michigan to the addendum of the 1833 Treaty of Chicago (United States
1833b) whereby the Nottawaseppi Prairie was ceded to the United States government. The focus
of this exercise is to demonstrate the vital role of United States settlers in the strategies of both
the Potawatomi and the United States government in treaty negotiations. In spite of minimal
formal participation in the treaty-making process, settlers shaped the outcome of those treaties by
their mere presence.

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Chapter 4 moves into seeing the world of nineteenth-century North America as
Anabaptist settlers perceived it. This chapter considers the residual influence Anabaptists
brought with them from Europe which shaped their perceptions of the places they settled. This
chapter begins with a brief overview of the European origins of Anabaptists and the Amish. It
considers such influences as language, literacy, religious experience, and livelihood. Two
priories are given in this chapter. The first is the way in which the memory of their experience
was carried with the Amish to North America in religious literature such as hymns, formularies,
and devotionals. The second is given to the earthy practices the Amish brought with them,
particularly, the innovative agricultural practices they had developed in Europe which informed
how they understood and related to the places they settled.
Chapter 5 builds on the previous chapter by exploring the North American influences on
Amish perceptions of migration and settlement. It traces the migration of Anabaptists and the
Amish to eastern Pennsylvania where their original communities were established at the
invitation of William Penn. It follows their migration from eastern Pennsylvania into western
Pennsylvania and into the southern portions of the Great Lakes region. Of particular interest is
the abiding effect initial contact with Indigenous peoples in eastern Pennsylvania had in shaping
Amish identity in subsequent areas of settlement. It also examines the ways in which knowledge
regarding places open for settlement was constructed and disseminated through such sources as
promotional literature, firsthand reports, and kinship networks.
Chapter 6 brings together the various scales and levels of perspective as the
complementarity of interests merged in northern Indiana, making room for Amish settlers. The
systematic dispossession of land from Indigenous peoples by the United States government
through ideological, legal, and political means hinged upon the cultural transformation of the

19

landscape, which could only be accomplished by European settlers such as the Amish. This
chapter shows the way these differing scales of interest and perspective met in the records
produced in the dispossession of Native lands. Local land records, such as transfer of deeds and
tax receipts, show the advantages Amish settlers gained by their ideological and vocational
practices and beliefs.
Chapter 7 summarizes the preceding chapters by providing some final thoughts and
analysis. It charts a path forward for future research regarding issues touched upon here which
will need further attention down the road. It also introduces and acknowledges issues, such as the
gender issue mentioned earlier, encountered unexpectedly during research which affected
choices made by the Amish regarding settlement. The desires of women and the influence of
family life affected when and where families chose to migrate and settle. Another topic which
arose during this research was the prominence of the whiskey trade among Anabaptists during
the settlement period. In some cases, the sale of whiskey provided an economic means to support
migration. Details of this trade, including who Anabaptists sold their product to, are an area very
little is known about. This chapter also suggests directions for future research in such areas as the
oral history, commemoration, and commodification of the Indigenous landscape in subsequent
generations following settlement.

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CHAPTER 2
“BUT IT IS NOTHING EXCEPT WOODS”:
SETTLERSCAPES
Introduction
It occurred to me early on in my research that a perspective from the land held a certain
advantage in relating the story of the Amish settling in northern Indiana. Looking back, I now
realize I had only a dim idea of how to go about the task of drawing the story from the landscape.
I had been inspired by Norman Habel’s book The Land is Mine: Six Biblical Land Ideologies
(1995), which I had read during my seminary years. Habel suggests that if the land would be able
to tell its story, the account of the Israelites’ entrance into the Land of Canaan would look quite a
bit different than that portrayed in the Hebrew scriptures, privileging neither the Hebrews nor the
Canaanites. While it may be problematic to assume that the landscape provides a sort of text that
can be read, especially when there is deep temporal distance involved, it is an idea that I wish to
explore, though not as a lineal, objective text, but rather as one embodied in the experience of the
people who inhabit it.
I am a cabinetmaker by trade. I grew up watching my father, an accomplished carpenter,
transform our house into a comfortable family home. When I was eight I took on my first solo
woodworking project. I found two pieces of wood in our old corncrib, fashioned them into a
simple cross with a single nail, and pounded it into our front yard for the world to see. My
mother, pretending to be impressed, conjectured that someday I would be a carpenter. These
days I have a modest shop with an assortment of tools, mostly hand tools, especially suited for
my trade. While it is not an elaborate shop, I am at ease in it when I am surrounded by the
familiarity of my tools and faced with the challenge of a new project. Much of my work includes

21

variations of the simple lines of that first cross I constructed years ago, though perhaps more
elaborate and complex. Custom projects offer challenges often requiring considerable calculation
and strategy which takes place outside of the shop, often late at night while lying in bed unable
to sleep. Once satisfied I have reached a reasonable solution to the problem, I return to the
familiarity of my shop where everything is at hand and with little thought reach for the right tool
to shape, mold, and join the wood in an appropriate fashion as prescribed by the project. I am at
home in my shop because I am a cabinetmaker.
In contrast, I am becoming an anthropologist. Scholarship, in many ways, is an
unfamiliar landscape to me. While education was important during my growing-up years,
scholarship was never seen as a viable option as a vocation. I continue to find it difficult to
recognize reading, analyzing, and writing as viable work despite all the tedious detail, grueling
effort, and consuming hours I have encountered during my research. Fortunately, I am
surrounded by a group of patient, nurturing, and distinguished scholars who have refused to
abandon me and continue to encourage my efforts to develop the skills needed as an
anthropologist. Yet there are days after being immersed in the unfamiliar landscape of
anthropology and scholarship that I find a reprieve in the familiarity of my shop, allowing me to
reorient my perspective. In fact, it is the time spent in the simple, intimate, and mundane space of
my shop that produces the most creativity and productivity in my anthropological endeavors.
Being a cabinetmaker, I find the novelist Gabriel García Márquez’s (1981) statement on
the writing process helpful in making the certain connections between cabinetmaking and the
research and writing process. Márquez writes:
Ultimately, literature is nothing but carpentry….Both are very hard work. Writing
something is almost as hard as making a table. With both you are working with
reality, a material just as hard as wood….Basically very little magic and a lot of
hard work are involved…[I]t takes ten percent inspiration and ninety percent

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perspiration. (Ibid.)
If the theme of landscape was going to be the inspiration in my research, the perspiration would
come from wrapping my mind around the phenomenology of landscape—how people understand
and experience the places in which they live—and drawing it out in the archives. Why is it
important to give so much attention to introspection?
The answer lies at the intersection between the nature of this study—an anthropological
understanding of landscape for people on the move—and my own experience of place. By this I
mean that by bringing the often overlooked relationship of people and place into focus, it
eliminates the subconscious by bringing the periphery into the center. In this view a place has
value and meaning much the same as my shop—equipped with tools, various species of wood,
and an assortment of finishes—has for me as a cabinetmaker; or the office has for the scholar
sitting at their desk in front of their computer surrounded by the familiarity of their books. The
tools, the boards, the designs, the desk, the computer, and the books are all part of what it means
to be a cabinetmaker or scholar in that particular shop or office. If meaning and value can be
found in a shop or office, then it seems likely that similar clues can be found in the mundane
experience of people as they engage with their surrounding environment.
In this chapter I lay out a theoretical framework to explore the questions outlined in
Chapter 1 regarding Amish Mennonite settlement in northern Indiana. I define my use of the
term settlerscapes, constructed with various aspects of landscape, social memory, and diaspora
studies and forming a framework to better understand the devastating impact transformed
landscapes had upon Indigenous peoples during the settlement period. This approach depends
largely on a phenomenological understanding of landscape.

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Settlerscapes
Over the past several decades, anthropologists and historians have recognized the
diversity and fluidity of the cultural relations in the Great Lakes region during colonization and
settlement (Sleeper-Smith 2000; Buss 2011). Much of this research has grown out of Richard
White's seminal work The Middle Ground (1991). White’s book focuses upon the fur trade in the
region from the middle of the sixteenth century to the early part of the nineteenth century,
emphasizing the alliances, accommodation, and new meaning being produced throughout the
various scales of interaction within and between European colonial structures and Algonquian
nations in the Great Lakes region. The concept of Middle Ground has given complexity and
texture to Indigenous-white relations which have often been oversimplified as linear narratives of
either acculturation or persistence. However, according to White, the Middle Ground terminated
in 1815, leaving the impression that Indigenous agency had subsided and the complexity of the
landscape had given way to some other narrative.
One of the ways scholars have picked up the narrative where the Middle Ground left off
is by focusing on the dis-possessive impulse of settler colonialism. According to Patrick Wolfe
(2006; 2013), the compulsion for land is the essence of settler colonialism, which forges ahead
until it acquires whatever territory it desires through whatever means are available. Here again
the narrative narrows to a linear flow in which the land lust of individual settlers and settler
groups becomes reified, homogenized, and structured as though settlers were an indispensable
cog in a machine set on a predetermined course. However, the unidirectional agency of settler
colonialism skips over the liminality, diversity, and reciprocity of cultural relations which existed
throughout the Great Lakes during the nineteenth century between settlers, Indigenous

24

communities, and the United States government. I suggest that this period of change and
uncertainty in the Great Lakes region is better understood in terms of settlerscapes.
The term settlerscapes recognizes the significance of settlers in reshaping the landscapes
they encountered while allowing for the uncertainty of cultural relations. According to Joan
Nogue i Font (1993), any attempt to understand a landscape must take into consideration the
essential characteristics of that particular landscape. He states:
Any external intervention of a place should consider the essential characteristics
that define that place from the inside, and a phenomenology of landscape provides
an important vehicle for this understanding. In modern society, it is crucially
important to know the integral character of a place because technology can so
readily change, remake, or destroy environments. With a knowledge of place and
landscape, people—particularly the insiders of a place—have a foundation from
which to provide environmental description to others, including outside experts.
In this way environments can be worked with and maintained in a way that
respect and support their essential character, which at least partially is grounded
in the natural landscape. (Ibid., 178-179)
Following this line of thinking, social scientists, geographers, and architects have used terms
such as cityscapes (O’Neill 2009), seascapes (McNiven 2004), and farmscapes (Morehart 2010)
in describing the essential elements of peoples’ experience of local landscapes. Scholars across
disciplines have also used sensory-oriented terms as smellscapes (Jackson 2011; Śliwa and Riach
2012) and tastescapes (Pazo 2014) to analyze the essence of how people relate to and understand
the world in which they live. Rather than referring to the sensory aspects of the landscape,
settlerscapes, as conceptualized in this research, refers to the social processes which influenced
the outcome of communities during the settlement period. The use of the term settlerscapes
reflects the temporality of the social processes through which clearly recognizable Indigenous
landscapes became transformed into distinctive, settled communities. In this view, settlers, rather
than simply being viewed as the tools used by the United States government to transform
Indigenous landscapes into settled communities, are seen as having their own agency in that

25

transformative process, as will be seen in the negotiations of the 1833 Treaty of Chicago (United
States 1833a) covered in Chapter 3. Much as the Middle Ground has done for the fur trade, the
use of the term settlerscapes recognizes both the competitiveness and complementarity of
interests converging in particular places. It acknowledges the unevenness of the power relations
within a landscape while recognizing the diversity of individual settlers and settler groups. In
settlerscapes, settlers are given a face rather than being treated in monolithic terms.
The Amish settlers who arrived in northern Indiana during the 1840s provide an excellent
case study to examine these transformative processes. Anabaptist farmers shared the collective
memory of disenfranchisement in western Europe from the sixteenth through the eighteenth
centuries. Isolation allowed them to develop innovative agricultural practices they carried with
them to North America (Séguy 1973). These agricultural practices were understood by
Anabaptists to be what geographers refer to today as land reclamation (Curtis and Campopiano
2014). In land reclamation, swamps, woodlands, and fallow grasslands considered to be waste or
unused lands are revitalized to become productive agricultural lands. However, when
considering the Potawatomi’s historical use of swamps, woodlands, and prairies in northern
Indiana, the agricultural practices of Amish settlers are more accurately understood as being a
process of land transformation. It is important to distinguish between land reclamation and land
transformation because of the implications it has upon cultural interaction.

A Dwelling Perspective
To understand how settlers, particularly Amish settlers, may have understood new and
unfamiliar landscapes they encountered during settlement, I turn to the British anthropologist
Tim Ingold’s (2000) dwelling perspective of a landscape. For now, though, from a dwelling

26

perspective a landscape, is understood to be the forms which emerge from the human activity of
dwelling rather than simply the imposition of the imagination upon the raw materials of nature
by humans. In this view, culture is not simply a matter of the mind, nor is it performed in thin air.
Culture is embodied and emplaced within a landscape so that over time, humans embody
particular ways of engaging the world in which they live, which generates what philosophers
refer to as a way of being-in-the-world.
Human geographers have long recognized the interdependency between humans and the
places in which they live. Yet much of this literature has focused on the symbolic representation
of human activity in the landscape (Cosgrove and Daniels 1988). In their edited volume,
Cosgrove and Daniels focus on the representation of the ideas, values, and motives of people
being made visible through the built environment. Landscapes are seen as a text which, when
read and interpreted properly, discloses the foundations of culture. While there are certain
benefits to this approach, it diminishes the impact of the larger social, political, and economic
processes that are at work in particular places. Though imbued with meaning, landscapes are not
simply the symbolic inscription of the values, beliefs, and motivations of groups and individuals
upon inert, natural pieces of land. This sort of objective representation, found in the work of such
geographers as Cosgrove and Daniels, resembles the Cartesian dichotomy of the mind and body
which alienates the consciousness of the individual from the surrounding world as though it had
no influence on the person’s behavior.
An anthropological perspective of landscape can go a long way in helping explain the
experience of individuals and groups. For many years landscapes were simply the assumed
backdrop of human activity in ethnographies, a sort of stage on which the elements of culture
were played out (Low and Lawrence-Zúñiga 2003). In such an approach, land is given

27

quantitative or spatial attributes in relation to culture, taking notice of location, climate, physical
characteristics, and perhaps land use.
Another way anthropologists have dealt with the influence of the environment upon
culture is by distinguishing between space and place. Low and Lawrence-Zúñiga’s (2003) edited
volume focuses on various ways humans create space to differentiate its use and power. A theme
developed in this volume which I find particularly useful is the concept of “Spatial Tactics,”
which sees space “as a strategy and/or technique of power and social control” (ibid., 30). In other
words, space is given a political component which allows those who have the ability to shape
and label space to be manipulated in favor of their own interests. The abstract nature of space
allows humans to quantify space in such a way that it can be calculated, conquered, and
controlled. People can do things with spaces, but they live in places (Tuan 1977).
Along these same lines, Ingold (2000) makes the distinction between land and landscape
in terms of their quantitative and qualitative characteristics respectively. Land can be measured
linearly in terms of feet, rods, and miles. It can also be quantified and divided in terms of acres,
sections, and other administrative divisions. Using the Spatial Tactics similar to what Low and
Lawrence-Zúñiga propose, those who control the land have the power to represent it in ways
which benefit the concerns of particular groups or individuals depending on the situation. When
distinguishing between land and landscape, Ingold points out that one asks “how much” land
there is, but you ask of landscape “what it is like” (Ingold 2000, 190-1). A landscape is not
merely space that can be manipulated to represent or perform certain tasks or projects. A
landscape consists of the forms which emerge through the human activity of dwelling in which
“cognition occurs through engagement with the world, rather than being prior to it” (Vergunst
2012).

28

Ingold aptly draws the contrast between the manipulation of land and landscape as the
difference between the calculations of the surveyor’s chains and links and the forms generated in
the process of quotidian activity by those who inhabit particular places. Yet the surveyor’s
activity of following their measuring devices from one place to another to demarcate and
represent the land is not unlike that of those who inhabit, or travel within or through a landscape.
As with the inhabitant or traveler, the surveyor is always in one place, but as they move around,
their horizon moves and shifts with them (Casey 2007) and so does their perspective, irrespective
of the lines that the surveyor’s instruments have marked off. The surveyor’s lines are not unlike
the road or trail that the traveler follows, the river the hunter or fisher navigates, or the paths
leading to buildings, gardens, or fields. They do not set apart one place from another; rather, they
are connecting devices created and shared by humans and other organisms holding places
together within a landscape (Nogue i Font 1993).
A common trait of both the symbolic view of landscape and Spatial Tactics is that they
are socially constructed. By this I mean that landscapes and space are not the raw material of the
natural world, nor are they the inevitable outcome of human interaction. Rather, landscapes and
space are a part of the shared and learned perceptions of how groups see and interact with the
world in which they live. While landscapes and space provide and furnish people with the
possibility of certain actions (Carolan 2008), they may also constrain actions. For example,
Preston (2009) cites the self-imposed limitations of the Amish draft horse on agriculture to
illustrate how the material world limits the desire of individuals to lust after their neighbor’s
land. While Preston’s view of Amish contentment may be somewhat distorted by a romanticized
understanding of Amish ideology, his case that humans face constraints in the environments in
which they live is a point well taken.

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Phenomenologically, humans are always someplace. As long as humans have bodies here
on this earth, those bodies need to be somewhere. As Edward Casey puts it, “we are placelings”
(Casey 1996), and we are inextricably connected to the places in which we live. According to
Casey, one of the fundamental traits of places is that they gather or hold things together such as
“experiences, histories, and even languages and thoughts” (ibid., 24). They are held together, not
in the way a container holds water, but in the way ligaments and tendons hold the body together
in such a way that they articulate with each other without losing their connection. It is in the
holding together that meaning is generated, not in a lineal movement, but in the sedimentation of
layers accumulated or brought together through time.
During the nineteenth century, land being considered for potential agricultural or
industrial development by United States settlers was represented as being void of meaning. On
the one hand, land was declared as being forested, wilderness, empty, vacant, or wasteland by the
United States government, and on the other hand, the same land could be advertised as fertile,
productive, and pleasant agricultural land to prospective settlers (Lewis 1988). By disregarding
the fertile river valleys; the abundant fisheries in lakes; and the wildlife supported by the wideopen, rolling prairies, and managed by various Native communities, it was effectually opened for
inhabitation, settlement, and improvement.
For example—in a document which I will elaborate upon in Chapter 4 and 5—Friedrich
Hage, an Amish elder writing to kin back in Europe in 1839, gives a spatialized description of
the land to the west of his home in Holmes County, Ohio, in anticipation of further settlement by
Amish Mennonites. In his letter, Hage measures the available land west of Holmes County in
terms of “two to three hundred hours distance in one piece” (Samuel Mast Collection, file 7), an
hour being the distance a man could walk in one hour and typically considered to be

30

approximately three miles. Using this calculation, the land Hage was describing included the
balance of Ohio, the entire states of Illinois and Indiana, and parts of Iowa, Michigan, and
Wisconsin—in essence what had earlier made up the Old Northwest. The land, as Hage puts it,
had been “purchased from the Indians or wild people” (ibid.) by the United States government.
By the time Hage wrote his letter, the land had undergone the scrutiny of the chains and links of
the deputy surveyors, and could be purchased “cheaply from [the United States] government, a
dollar and a quarter or two florins, fifty-seven kroners an acre” (ibid.). The land was further
spatialized through Hage’s representation of these vast spaces by designating it as “nothing but
forest.”
That Hage’s representation is misguided is beside the point. By disregarding the fertile
river valleys; the numerous lakes systems; the wide-open, rolling prairies; and, most importantly,
the ongoing inhabitation of the land by various Native communities, he depicts the land open for
settlement by suggesting that previous owners of the land have abandoned or given up their title
to the land, making it available for inhabitation, settlement, and improvement. The proponents of
settler colonialism would view Hage’s spatially oriented description as a form of Spatial Tactics.
Hage was making the case that the land under consideration was no longer in the possession of
Indigenous peoples, and ownership of personal property was available to anyone who could
come up with the cash needed for its purchase. Hage was blinded by his lack of understanding of
how Indigenous peoples, viewed their relation to the land. Hage saw land tenure in terms of its
economic value in relation to its spatial value while Indigenous understood their relationship to
be one of stewardship (see Chapter 3), an understanding much more along the lines of Ingold’s
dwelling perspective.
I suggest that the dwelling perspective informs our understanding of Amish settlers’

31

perception and encounter with the landscape of northern Indiana. First of all, it holds formal, or
doctrinal, aspects of living together within the quotidian practices of Anabaptists, which are
often held at arm’s length from each other. Second, while individual perceptions are the subject
of much of this research, it explains the historical and social processes shaping those perceptions.
Third, it suggests that other influences, particularly culture and the landscape, account for the
behaviors and attitudes of Anabaptist settlers rather than self-contained explanations (Burmeister
2000). Together these factors help explain the choices Anabaptist settlers made regarding
potential places of settlement.
This is where Ingold departs from others in his understanding of landscape. Because
humans are always somewhere, they are never nowhere; “the landscape becomes part of us, just
as we become part of the landscape” (Ingold 2000, 191). The reciprocity between humans and
the landscape is such that each is shaped by the other in an ongoing process of embodiment. The
primary concern in Ingold favoring the process of embodiment over what he refers to as the
“movement of inscription” (ibid., 193; italics in original) lies in the importance that Western
thought has placed upon form rather than process. Ingold’s dwelling perspective, then, has a
spatial and temporal aspect to it, but not in the abstract, quantitative sense; rather, in an ongoing
dialectic of human participation in the rhythms within the landscape through which the landscape
is constantly being transformed and meaning is being generated. The dwelling perspective, then,
focuses not on the forms in the landscape, but on the processes through which forms emerge
during the activities of dwelling. The process of embodiment that Ingold has in mind finds its
roots in the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty and Martin Heidegger, who pushed back against
the distinctions and limits made between not only the mind and body, but between the body and
world in which it lived.

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An Embodied Landscape
Memory has often been portrayed as a repository of past experiences stored in the brain
for future reference. Casey (1971) characterizes memory as the ambiguity which exists between
the empirically real and imagined possibilities. This ambiguity exists at several levels. First of
all, time is an ambiguous element in memory. History textbooks most often portray the past in a
linear progression. However, the distinction between the past and present becomes blurred, as
time gathers irregularly around significant temporal landmarks, and it can leave large gaps in
between those landmarks. Time is neither consistent nor regular in memory. The origin of
memory is ambiguous as well. Is memory an individual experience, or is it created in the context
of the collective community? Armstrong (2000) suggests that the lines between individual and
group memory are opaque as individuals discuss a past that has been informed by local
knowledge, becoming absorbed into the identity of the larger community.
However, people can control these ambiguities. Eidson’s (2000) work in Germany
demonstrates that people choose which narrative or memory to identify with depending on the
situation. Ethnic or religious communities which may be at odds with each other in quotidian
circumstances reinforce their differences by drawing on divergent pasts. These same
communities may slacken those boundaries and draw on broader local and regional memories
held in common when challenged by external forces. Trouillot (1995) echoes the ambiguity of
memory in his treatment of the production of history. He distinguishes between “historicity 1”
(ibid., 29), the social and historical process, or what actually happened, and “historicity 2”
(ibid.), the narrative or myths regarding the socio-historical process, or the knowledge about
what happened. The production of historicity 2 is the result of a selective process which silences
some sources while privileging others. Why certain memories matter to certain people becomes

33

as much a part of history as the narrative of history itself.
Typically, when the memory of place is addressed for people on the move, it is in relation
to a homeland, either real or imagined. But what happens when the homeland is no longer even
an imagined possibility? How do displaced communities incorporate new places into their
collective memory? In Basso’s (1996) work with Western Apache place names, he expands on
the relationship between language and landscape to include how the names and stories associated
with places help explain why things are the way they are today for the Western Apache. The
names associated with contemporary places do not necessarily originate in these places; rather,
they originated elsewhere and were carried with the Western Apache as they migrated and
applied them to the present landscape. It is not just the immaterial that people bring with them to
unfamiliar places; they also bring with them the material as well in the form of plants (Brook
2003), architecture (Burmeister 2000), and technology (Hornung 2014) to remind them of home.
Just as memory in general is ambiguous and circumstantial, so is the specific memory of
place. Burmeister (2000) differentiates between the “private sphere” (ibid., 542), where
immigrants are much less likely to abandon established practices and beliefs brought with them
from the homeland, and the “public sphere” (ibid.), where new conditions under existing social
and economic processes are more likely to bring change. Allowing for these different spaces of
activity in immigrant communities challenges the self-contained approach often taken by
historians of Anabaptists. As Bender states:
[T]he larger political and social terrain of diaspora involves intimate and
personal engagement, just as the intimate and personal engagement with place and
well-worn territory opens towards larger political and social landscapes. It is a
question of moving to and fro between scales of human activity and understanding,
creating open-ended interactions between agencies and historical and spatial
contingencies, and exchanging oppositional either/or explanations for much more
fluid and/and ones. (Bender 2001, 77, italics in original)

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The key for Bender in understanding the world of immigrants is their account of former
landscapes they bring with them in relation to the new landscapes they encounter, and that they
shift between them depending on circumstances or context. People on the move cannot be
pegged into a particular landscape, whether from the past or the present, but are simultaneously
in both.
Wertsch (2008) suggests that specific memories are often represented in collective
memory by established schematics of narrative or myth which are recognizable in the collective
context. Paying attention to stories can help us understand how people on the move account for
their experience of migration (Eastmond 2007). These stories come in various forms, including
local histories and oral traditions, as shown in Chapter 1, but also, as in the case of the Amish
Mennonite settlers, in the form of hymnology, devotionals, and doctrinal statements (Matsuoka
and 松岡秀明 2005). According to Maurice Halbwachs, religions reproduce the “history of
migration…and reforms that we can find at the origin of the societies that practice them”
(Halbwachs 1992, 84). These stories provide clues in how people understand unfamiliar
landscapes in terms of their past experience.
The other factor contributing to the idea of embodiment which Ingold has in mind in the
dwelling perspective involves time. As with land, time is measured in units: hours, days, months,
years, and so forth. The way in which the body experiences time, however, is similar to how it
experiences the landscape. It experiences time in rhythms and cycles of the landscape so that the
younger generation is gradually incorporated into society. The body is continually between the
past and the future, and the past informs the body how to behave in the future. Phenomenologists
refer to this dance between the past and the future as “retention” and “protention” (Cerbone
2006).

35

Although I use the term “dance” somewhat metaphorically, in reality retention and
protention are much like a dance. Dancers, if they have danced the dance before, get their cue
from the music and their previous experience to know where their next step will be and where to
place their foot. Merleau-Ponty would credit this series of movements to the “habitual body”
(Carman 1999, 220) so that little thought is given to where one would step while being engaged
with their partner. Should the band suddenly disrupt the expected sequence of notes with the
insertion of an unfamiliar line, the dancer suddenly shifts to what Merleau-Ponty refers to as the
“body of the moment” (ibid., 220). The body is suddenly brought back into focus, needing to
improvise by interpreting the new lines in terms of its previous knowledge and experience. This
awareness, or lack thereof, of the body in the world is what Merleau-Ponty calls body schema:
that “bundle of skills and capacities that constitute the body’s precognitive familiarity with itself
and the world it inhabits” (ibid., 220). I take this to be the kind of embodiment that Ingold has in
mind in which humans participate in the cycles and rhythms of the landscape in generating the
forms which emerge.
Merleau-Ponty (1962) was more interested in extending the continuation of experience
rather than prescribing its limits to the mind. The example he relied on was the blind person’s
cane, which became an extension of the person, orienting them within the world in which s/he
moved. Merleau-Ponty’s example suggests that even modes of perception are culturally
constructed. The case of Daniel Kish supports this theory. Kish lost his eyesight to a disease at
the age of two months (Kish 2009). However, his mother refused to limit Kish’s activities, and
consequently he was not constrained by the normal limits society places upon blind individuals.
In the process, or lack thereof, Kish developed his own echolocation system by creating a
clicking sound using his tongue and the roof of his mouth. The clicking sound bounces off

36

surrounding objects, allowing him to detect size, distance, and even texture. Using this
echolocation technique, Kish is able to ride bike, hike in the woods (even in the dark), and carry
on with his life independently. Kish’s example is important for two reasons. First, brain imaging
has shown that Kish is not simply hearing the sounds, but activates the occipital cortex in such a
way that it “supports the idea of echolocation-derived topographic representation of the object in
the environment” (Arnott et al. 2013, 948). Although comparable to peripheral vision, Kish can
actually see the images his echolocation technique detects. Second, and perhaps more
importantly to Merleau-Ponty, is that Kish’s example demonstrates that not only do societies
construct what they perceive, but also how they perceive the world. Kish contends that had he
relied on the dependency normally placed on blind people by society, he would never have been
allowed to develop his system of echolocation. He suggests that blindness, and therefore vision,
are socially constructed; that is, they are shaped by the expectations and limitations of the society
of the individual.
If what Kish contends is accurate—that sight and blindness are socially constructed, and I
have no evidence to doubt his experience—then it is not that difficult to accept Merleau-Ponty’s
belief that how we see the world we live in is shaped by our experience and the society we live
in. The practices, beliefs, and behaviors of people become embodied through time as they
interact with the world and the people around them, shaping not only the meaning of the world in
which they live but also the manner in which they perceive the world.
Ingold’s other inspiration for the dwelling perspective is derived from Martin
Heidegger’s essay “Building Dwelling Thinking” (1971a), wherein Heidegger sets out to inquire
into the nature of the housing crisis in Germany after World War II. Heidegger noticed that a
dwelling had simply become a structure in which people lived, and it did not necessarily mean

37

that these dwellings were homes or that dwelling was taking place in them. The connection
Heidegger is making between houses and homes is the connection Ingold is making between
forms and processes. In the one, houses are given preeminence, and in the other, forms. Forms
can be houses, and all houses are forms. Heidegger attempts to breach this dichotomy by
exploring the etymology of the words “dwelling” and “building”.
To make proper sense of Heidegger’s reasoning, the etymology must be followed in the
German language of the original essay. The German words for building and dwelling are,
respectively, bauen and wohnen. Heidegger explains that the Old High German word for bauen
was buan, which meant wohnen, and meant to remain or stay in a place, the same as the English
word “dwelling.” According to Heidegger, the original meaning of bauen, which was equivalent
to wohnen, has been lost in the German language, but traces of it can be seen in words such as
Nachbar, which in English is “neighbor,” which literally means “near dweller.” The word bauen
is the root for the German imperative word bis, or “to be,” as in ich bin, or “I am,” and du bisht,
or “you are,” so that in essence when one says “I am” or “you are,” they are really saying ich
wohne and du wohnst, or “I dwell” and “you dwell.”
The significance of the word bauen is particularly salient for the Amish Mennonites who
settled northern Indiana. Their descendants continue to use Pennsylvania Dutch, a dialect of
German, in their homes. In its current use in the Pennsylvania Dutch dialect, bauen still means
both “to build” and “to cultivate”; activities performed, as Heidegger suggests, not alongside of
wohnen, but comprising wohnen. So “to build” and “to cultivate” is “to dwell” or “to be,” which
gets us to what philosophers, and of late anthropologists, refer to as being-in-the-world. But
before I go there, I want to back up and address the other half of Heidegger’s etymological
endeavor which, unfortunately, Ingold neglected to pursue, but which reflects heavily on the idea

38

of dwelling, and of culture in general.
While Ingold spends a great deal of time aligning himself with the notion that building is
at the same time dwelling, he skips over the second part of the bauen and wohnen duo. What
Heidegger meant by “to build, is really to dwell” (ibid., 349) makes sense only when
understanding what Heidegger meant by wohnen. And Heidegger does not disappoint in this
regard as he embarks on a separate but less lauded etymology of wohnen. Heidegger points out
that while both bauen and wohnen have the sense of staying in a place, or remaining, similar to
the English word “dwelling,” wohnen adds more clearly the experience of remaining in a place.
The origins of the German word wohnen trace back to the Gothic word wunian, which according
to Heidegger “means to be at peace, to be brought to peace, to remain in peace” (ibid., 351). It is
worthwhile to quote Heidegger at length here to get the full sense of what he understands
dwelling to consist of:
The word for peace, Fried, means the free, das Frye; and fry means preserved from
harm and danger, preserved from something, safeguarded. To free actually means
to spare. The sparing itself consists not only in the fact that we do not harm the one
whom we spare. Real sparing is something positive and it takes place when we
leave something beforehand in its own essence, when we return it specifically to its
essential being, when we “free” it in the proper sense of the word into a preserve of
peace. To dwell, to be set at peace, means to remain at peace within the free, the
preserve, the free sphere that safeguards each thing in its essence. The fundamental
character of dwelling is this sparing. It pervades dwelling in its whole range. That
range reveals itself to us as soon as we recall that human being consists in dwelling
and, indeed, dwelling in the sense of the stay of mortals on the earth. (Ibid., 351,
italics in original)
I return to the earlier reference of Heidegger’s being-in-the-world which is intended to be
descriptive of human existence. In his earlier work “Being and Time,” Heidegger parses out what
human existence on earth consists of based on his understanding of the German word Dasien, or
being there. In brief, for humans to be on earth they need to be somewhere, and they arrange
their world according to their way of being-in-the-world, whether it be a farmer, a scholar, a

39

shopkeeper, a seamstress, and so on. Yet being-in-the-world is not just about the activities such
as the cultivation and building in bauen; it is the caring as shown in the wohnen of Heidegger’s
being and Casey’s (1996) definition of culture that gives meaning to those activities. This has led
some to expand Heidegger’s hyphenated term “being-in-the-world” to be more accurately
expressed as “being-well-in-the-world” (Holst 2014). In this way the focus goes beyond the
activity to include the quality of human existence in relation to the surrounding world; that is,
other people, the land, plants, animals, and other ontological distinctions made by individuals or
groups.
There is certainly some validity in the distinction between dwelling and physical
buildings as suggested by Heidegger. However, I suggest that the quantitative foil of dwelling is
life. Living can be discussed in terms of how many days or years one has lived, or the exact
locations where one lives. But when we talk about dwelling we are—or should be—describing
the way we go about daily activities in relation to the world in which we live. It is interesting
that, on the one hand, we can measure and locate time, land, and life independently, and on the
other hand, rhythms, landscape, and dwelling are interdependent on each other to make proper
sense of them.
An important aspect in Ingold’s dwelling perspective revolves around the interaction
between humans and the landscape captured in the phrase “poetics of dwelling” (Ingold 2000,
26). This concept, again, comes from Heidegger, who develops this thought in an essay entitled
“…Poetically Man Dwells” (Heidegger 1971b). To dwell poetically, as Heidegger puts it, is to
take measure of one’s existence in relation to one’s surroundings in the context of the larger
society, and is dependent on the linguistic abilities of humans (Gordon 2000). The poetics of
dwelling expresses the social cohesion generated through the ability of humans to represent their

40

experience of the world in which they live as social groups. This does not mean that humans are
dependent on poetry as a literary form; rather, it is a response to their interaction with the places
in which they live.
While poetic language may be a direct response to the landscape (Gell 1995), it is not the
only way social understanding of the landscape is reproduced. As Bainton et al. states: “Ties to
the land are inculcated through a variety of performative actions, including poetry, song dance,
and ritual” (Bainton et al. 2012:23-24). I would include several other actions along with
Bainton’s list, including “The Dreaming “of the Walpiri Aborigines of Australia (Faulstich
1998), rhetoric (Lewis 1988), and the art or skill of mapping practiced in various ways by people
throughout the world (Harley 1988; Casey 2005; Norder 2012). In addition to these more formal
practices, performance, and mapping, I would also include the mundane practices of everyday
life such as the repeated treading of familiar paths to villages, wells, or fields (Nogue i Font
1993); caring for orchards (Cloke and Jones 2001); building fences (Brady 2006); and other
agricultural practices developed through time (Setten 2001). However, the overlap of the formal
aspects of dwelling—the ideologies of a culture—do not always neatly align with the mundane
practices of everyday life (Stoler 2002). Often there is disconnect between the ethic of living,
and the practice of living which are held together by the poetics of dwelling. By drawing
attention to both the formal and the mundane aspects of peoples’ lives, a clearer picture emerges
of how people understand and perceive the world in which they live.

Placelessness
A final aspect of the term settlerscape as used in this research pertains to the mindset of
immigrant populations. As an immigrant population enters a new and unfamiliar landscape, they

41

do not simply shape the landscape to fit their needs; rather, they enter an ongoing story that is
already in progress and never complete. For example, when the Amish Mennonite settlers
entered northern Indiana, there was already a flurry of activity taking place in the region
involving the Miami, the Potawatomi, the United States government, other United States settlers,
and British and French traders, all of whom had been interacting with each other in various ways
and for various periods of time.8 These distinctions are important as they increase our
understanding of the many interests competing for resources in often densely populated places.
Success for individuals or groups was never certain, and the kinds of strategies which worked for
a particular group or individual at one place or time period were never assured of being
successful at another place or time.9
Over the past several decades, diaspora studies have swelled dramatically in response to
globalization to include border, transnational, migration, hybridity, and refugee studies. The term
itself has evolved from a noun to more abstract meanings and adjectives (Brubaker 2005).
“Diaspora,” a Greek term meaning dispersal, by nature invokes the relationship between people
and place. When considering place, diaspora studies often concentrate on how groups maintain
social, political, and religious relationships with their homeland.
Stephane Dufoix offers four modes of existence organizing the relationship between the
familiarity of the landscape in the homeland and the unfamiliarity of new places of settlement in
collective memory of diasporic communities: centroperipheral, enclaved, atopic, and antagonistic

8

For example, see Tanner (1978) and Cayton and Tuete (1998) for entanglement of
relations between Native Americans; European colonial powers; and European missionaries,
traders, and settlers.
9
For the unpredictability of Potawatomi strategies of resistance, see the Midcontinental
Journal of Archaeology (2006). For the unpredictability of the success of Amish settlements, see
Luthy (1986).

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(Dufoix 2008). Dufoix’s atopic mode is the most salient and informative in the study of diasporic
religious communities as conceptualized in this research. In the atopic mode, identity is not
dependent on a physical territory, but “on a way of being in the world between states that is built
around a common origin, ethnicity, or religion that does not reduce one to being a subject of a
host country” (ibid., 63). In the atopic mode, religious and ethnic identities are sustained
throughout multiple communities through common rituals, practices, and origin stories
(Bottomley 1991; Levitt 2003).
According to Paul Christopher Johnson, the term “diasporic religious community” resists
definition. Rather, he sees them being generated along the line of the dwelling perspective, as a
formative relationship between people and the places they inhabit. According to Johnson, “If
religions are sometimes the cause of diasporas, diasporas sometimes make religions” (Johnson
2007, 42, italics in original). Thus, diaspora (the memory of past dispersal) reciprocates with
religion (the ritualization of those memories) in generating a dwelling perspective as they
encounter new contexts. Dwelling, rather than being attached to particular places, becomes a way
of encountering unfamiliar places, resulting in a sense of placelessness (Relph 1976).
This sense of placelessness is elaborated upon in Belden Lane’s book Landscapes of the
Sacred (2002), in which he proposes four axioms which characterize sacred places: 1) they
choose and are not chosen; 2) they are the ordinary made extraordinary; 3) they can be walked
upon without being in them; and 4) they are both local and universal. Emerging from Lane’s
study on American spirituality is the versatility, adaptability, and translatability of landscapes in
creating sacred places amid placelessness. Yi-Fu Tuan describes placelessness as the ability to
“set up tent anywhere” (Tuan and Strawn 2010, 50), attributing this adaptability to the mobility
associated with migration. As people move away from religious places associated with the past,

43

they erect monuments or buildings which resonate with the sacred places they have left behind.
As people move farther away—both spatially and temporally—from the sacred places of their
ancestors, storytelling fills in for sacred place. Thus, any new place or any new moment can
become sacred through the act, or ritual, of storytelling.
I am not the only one who has noticed the characteristics of diasporic religion in
Anabaptist groups. However, these studies have primarily focused on the religious and political
aspects of their experience with minimal recognition of the effect on the mundane (Winland
1993; Urry 1999; Loewen 2006; 2008). I suggest that for the Amish Mennonites who settled in
northern Indiana, the poetics of diaspora discourse, encouraged by the slippages between
familiarity of the past and the unfamiliarity of the new, and formal and mundane, generated a
sense of placelessness as a way of being-in-the-world wherever they set up tent.

Conclusion
In many ways, my cabinet shop is a sacred place. It is a place where my being-well-inthe-world is grounded. Prior to the advance of settlers, the well-being of Indigenous peoples was
rooted in the landscapes they had been a part of for generations. The term settlerscapes
emphasizes the agency of individual settlers and settler groups in the transformative processes by
which Indigenous landscapes were obliterated. This is important to the present study as it helps
to unravel how Amish settlers reconciled their actions with their beliefs. Rather than being seen
as simple manipulation of the natural environment, which the Amish viewed as land reclamation,
their agricultural practices are more accurately portrayed in terms of landscape transformation.
Even while the Amish saw themselves as peaceful agriculturalists who loved the land, their
practices inflicted violence upon the landscape on which the well-being of the Indigenous

44

peoples depended. For the Amish, their past experience in Europe blinded them to the
consequences their settlement practices would have upon the outcome for Indigenous peoples in
the Great Lakes region. The remainder of this project is given to showing the disjuncture
between the perception and reality of Amish settlement in northern Indiana.

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CHAPTER 3
“THE SOIL IS RED LIKE THE COLOR OF OUR SKIN”:
A HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL ECOLOGY OF NORTHERN INDIANA

Introduction
On September 20, 1826, the United States government met with the Potawatomi and
Miami on the Wabash River to negotiate a treaty which would affect most of northern Indiana
and southwestern Michigan. Governor Lewis Cass, Governor James R. Ray, and General John
Tipton were appointed as commissioners by the United States government to convince the
Potawatomi and Miami to assemble their people on a few select reservations in the southwestern
portion of Michigan Territory in anticipation of their removal from the area. The commissioners
were met by a delegation of spokesmen from the respective tribes, including Awbenawben and
Metea of the Potawatomi, and Legro of the Miami. The negotiations began on October 3, 1826,
with Governor Cass berating the effects the United States settlers’10 plow and gunpowder had
brought on the region, depleting the game and other resources the Potawatomi and the Miami
depended upon for their subsistence. Over the course of the following week, both sides remained
unmoved in their positions: the United States government insisting the Potawatomi and the
Miami would benefit by moving west of the Mississippi River; and the Potawatomi and Miami
insisting that they were content to stay in Indiana and Michigan. Finally, on October 11, 1826,

From this point on I will simply refer to “United States settlers” simply as “settlers” unless I
am referring to a specific group of settlers such as “Amish settlers.” It should also be noted here
that United States settlers were not the first Europeans to interact with Indigenous peoples in the
Great Lakes region. French trappers, traders, and farmers had been in the region nearly one
hundred and fifty years before United States settlers began their intrusion upon the region (See
Widder 1992).
10

46

after considering an emotional appeal by Governor Cass on the previous day as to the benefits to
be gained by the Potawatomi and Miami from relocation, Awbenawben replied:
Father, when you collected us here, you pointed to us a country, which you said
would be better for us where we could live. You said we could not stay here. We
would perish. But what will perish. But what will destroy us. It is yourselves
destroying us for you make the spirituous liquor. You speak to us with deceitful
lips, and not from your hearts. It seems so to me. You trampled on our soil, and
drove it away. Before you came, the game was plenty, but you drove it away. The
Great Spirit made us red skins, and the soil he put us on is red, the color of our
skins. You came from a country where the soil is white, the color of your skin. You
point to a country for us in the west, where there is game. We saw there is game
there, but the Great Spirit has made and put men there who have a right to that game
and it is not ours. (United States 1826)
Awbenawben’s comparison of skin color with the color of soil evokes the understanding
the Potawatomi embraced regarding their relationship with the land, an understanding which ran
deeper than ownership of the land and their ability to hand it off to the white people at a price. It
speaks of belonging to the land and a responsibility to remain upon it and care for it as their
ancestors had done before them. There is something else that Awbenawben implies in his
response to Governor Cass’s appeal. Governor Cass’s appeal that the “white man” is creating
havoc in the region is not convincing to the Potawatomi and the Miami. Awbenawben recognizes
that the United States government is inserting settlers as a pawn in the negotiations of these
lands. However, the Potawatomi and Miami are reluctant to take Governor Cass’s bait. Nowhere
is the impact of settlers upon the complementarity of interests in the Great Lakes region more
evident than in the negotiation of the treaties between the Potawatomi and the United States
government.
In this chapter I demonstrate the pivotal role settlers played in shaping the outcome in the
struggle over the possession of land in the Great Lakes region, particularly in northern Indiana,
the area concerned in this study. I begin by providing a brief ecological and land use history of

47

the study area under consideration. This is followed by an overview of the cultural history,
beginning with the impact of the fur trade and ending with the treaty-making process in the
research area. Finally, I focus specifically on the role of settlers in negotiating the 1833 Treaty of
Chicago (United States 1833a), and its effects on the outcome of land tenure in northern Indiana.

A Historical Ecology
The counties of LaGrange and Elkhart, the subject area of this study, are situated next to
each other in the eastern portion of the northern tier of counties in Indiana, with Elkhart being the
westernmost county of the two. These counties are bounded by Michigan to the north, Steuben
County, Indiana, to the east, Noble and Kosciusko counties, Indiana, to the south, and St. Joseph
County, Indiana, to the west. Elkhart County covers an area of 468 square miles, consisting of
sixteen townships. LaGrange County is smaller, encompassing 368 square miles, and is divided
into eleven townships.
The entirety of both counties lies within the St. Joseph River Watershed (Figure 1). The
watershed encompasses 4,685 square miles in present-day southwestern Michigan and
northeastern Indiana (St. Joseph River 2009). As Meyer’s (1954) investigation into the historic
landscape at the southern tip of Lake Michigan demonstrates, the region was far from isolated,
but rather ideally situated to bring together the diverse interests represented throughout
northeastern North America, as well as regions to the west. The St. Joseph River Watershed is
situated in a larger region recognized by scholars as the Great Lakes region, which is part of a
larger geographical and cultural region identified as the Northeast region of North America.
According to Tanner’s (1987) social, historical, and geographical overview of the Great Lakes

48

region, the geographical boundaries extend west from Lake Ontario to the Mississippi River and
north from the Ohio River Valley to the northern shore of Lake Superior.

Figure 1: Map of St. Joseph River Watershed. Includes Elkhart County, Indiana; LaGrange
County, Indiana; St. Joseph County, Michigan; and the Nottawaseppi Prairie Reservation (St.
Joseph River Website 2009).

There are over forty subwatersheds which drain into the St. Joseph River, consisting of
over 3700 river miles (St. Joseph River 2009). The main river begins in present-day Hillsdale
County, Michigan, and flows 210 miles before spilling into Lake Michigan (Indiana Department
of Natural Resources). From its rise the river flows through the counties of Branch and St.
Joseph in Michigan before dipping down through the northern border of Elkhart County and

49

exiting the western border of Elkhart County into St. Joseph County, Indiana. It reaches its
southernmost point in South Bend, Indiana, before turning north and reentering Michigan, where
it eventually empties into Lake Michigan.
A number of tributaries which feed the St. Joseph River flow through LaGrange and
Elkhart counties. The Elkhart River bisects Elkhart County as it flows diagonally through the
county. It enters the county in the southeast corner and empties into the St. Joseph River as it
leaves the county in the northwest corner. In LaGrange County, tributaries of the St. Joseph
River include the Little Elkhart River, which drains the central portion of the county, and the
Pigeon and Fawn rivers, which drain the northern portion of the county. These tributaries drain
lowlands which at the time of settlement were dense marshes (Anders and Baskin 1874; Ford
1920).
There are also a number of lakes in LaGrange and Elkhart counties. The largest lakes and
the highest concentration of lakes are in the southeast corner of LaGrange County. A number of
smaller lakes are found in the northern part of LaGrange County. Only a few small lakes are
scattered throughout Elkhart County. Most of these lakes have sandy bottoms and shorelines;
however, several lakes in the northern part of the county have marl bottoms (Anders and Baskin
1874; LaGrange County Historical Society 1882; Hanan 1928).
The St. Joseph River Watershed consists of a combination of gently rolling hills and
flatlands. At the time of settlement there were two distinct environments which could be broken
down further into smaller ecosystems: wetlands and uplands. The wetlands consisted of a
mixture of hardwood swamps, bogs, and emergent marshlands drained by the river systems. The
uplands were made up of grasslands, or prairies; various types of oak savannas; and various pine,
hemlock, and hardwood forests (Albert and Comer 2008).

50

This region of northern Indiana had sustained Indigenous communities for generations
before United States settlers arrived during the first part of the nineteenth century. These settlers
did not stumble upon a land void of resources. The journals of early travelers, traders, and
explorers in the region indicate the diverse flora and fauna communities which existed in these
ecosystems. Although direct reports of the St. Joseph Watershed are minimal, other reports of
nearby and similar watersheds help indicate the types of flora and fauna present in this region
prior to settlement. One such report is that of Samuel R. Brown in The Western Gazetteer, or
Emigrant’s Guide in 1817 (Lindley 1916). In general terms Brown describes the river systems in
Indiana and Michigan in this manner:
“The country [between fort Wayne and the St. Joseph’s of lake Michigan]
in every direction, is beautiful, presenting a fine prospect. There are no hills to be
seen; a champaign country, the greater part prairie, afford inexhaustible grazing,
and presenting the most delightful natural meadows, and the grass cured would be
almost equal to our hay; there are also, vast forests of valuable timber, and the soil
exceedingly rich” (Ibid., 143).
He continues:
All the rivers in the interior of Indiana and Michigan, have spacious bottoms, and
they uniformly wander from the line of their courses, so that in making fifty miles
progress, in a direct line, they water one hundred miles of territory by their
sinuosities. By these frequent bends, the length of river coast, and the quantity of
bottom land is nearly doubled, which amply compensates for extra toil and
expence [sic] of navigation. (Ibid., 144-45)

Brown specifically describes the river as “admirably calculated for the convenience of inland
navigation. The sources of the rivers are invariably in swamps or lakes, and the country around
them perfectly level” (ibid.). He goes on to say, “The St. Josephs [of Lake Michigan] is a
charming river, and navigable to within a short distance of the river of the same name. Its current
is brisk, and at the upper villages, one hundred yards wide” (ibid., 144).

51

Brown also has high praise for the area surrounding the actual river. He describes its
land, its fauna and floral composition, and its usage this way:
Small lakes are discovered in every part of this extensive and romantic country.
We found them covered with ducks, and other water fowls. For the diversion of
fishing, we had no leisure; consequently, I am not able to inform you whether
they abound with fish, but presume they do, as many of their outlets empty into
the tributaries of the great lakes….The immense prairies on the south bank of the
St. Josephs, (of lake Michigan) afforded us many rich, beautiful, and picturesque
views. They are from one to ten miles wide; and of unequal lengths. They are as
level as lakes; and in point of fertility, not inferior to the lands around Lexington,
[Kentucky], or the best bottoms of the Ohio. We crossed two, whose southern
limits were not descernable [sic] to the naked eye; they were doubtless capacious
enough to form two or three townships each; and perfectly dry, being at least one
hundred feet above the river bottoms. These natural meadows are covered with a
tall grass; and are separated by strips of woods, containing oak, maple, locust, lyn,
poplar, plum, ash, and crabapple. In these wood lands, we generally meet with
creeks, runs or springs; but never in the open prairies, unless in wet and rainy
seasons, when the waters form temporary sluggish brooks, wherever there is
sufficient descent for the purpose. The Indians have cleared large fields upon its
banks: several Canadian French families reside with them. Their manners and
habits of life are semi-savage. (Ibid., 143-44)
Even though Brown acknowledges the agricultural habits and skills demonstrated by the
Indigenous peoples living within the St. Joseph River Watershed, his perception of these people
as being less than human is reflected in his designation of them as “semi-savage.” This sentiment
is rooted in deeply held religious beliefs dating back to John Elliot, the Puritan missionary to
Indigenous peoples in Massachusetts. For example, in 1650, in reporting to his superiors on the
state of his efforts, Elliot writes that the Massachusetts Indians desired the ordinance of baptism
but “that they should first be Civilized, by being brought from their scattered and wild course of
life” (Elliot as quoted in Tinker 1993, 36). Five years later Elliot gives an update whereby he
notes that the ability for the Indians to build houses, fences, and churches without the help of an
“English Workman” erased his argument for “delaying them from entering the Church-Estate”
(ibid.). The European concept of what constitutes personhood was closely linked with one’s

52

connection to the Christian church and was pervasive among United states settlers, including the
Amish, which will be seen in Chapter 4 and 5.
David Thomas, a “pomologist, florist and writer of agriculture subjects” (Lindley 1916,
42) who traveled throughout the western United States, gives a more detailed description of the
fauna and floral compositions of these watersheds. In the summer of 1816, Thomas and a
merchant by the name of Jonathon Swan visited the Wabash River Watershed in Indiana which
lies adjacent to the southern rim of the St. Joseph River Watershed. Thomas reports that at the
time of his visit, there were no longer any bison in the region.11 However, Thomas lists elk; deer;
black bear; a few panthers; grey and black wolves; their smaller cousins the coyote, which
Thomas calls the “Prairie Wolf”; raccoons “in great number”; “pole Cats,” or skunks, which
were very numerous; fox; porcupine; and various species of squirrels as being found in the
region (ibid., 116). Whether this is simply an omission, or a reflection of the impact the fur trade
had upon the region by the time of Thomas’s travels is not known.
Thomas includes birds such as pelicans, swans, crows, the “sandy hill Crane,” the
“Prairie Hen,” robins, red-headed woodpeckers, “the Hen Hawk,” and wild turkeys (ibid., 117).
His list of fish includes gar, catfish, sturgeon, and various species of pike and perch, as well as
freshwater clams and crawfish (ibid., 118).
Of most significance, Thomas includes a list of floral life in the region (APPENDIX A).
The list of 105 “vegetables growing indigenously” (ibid., 126), though not an exhaustive list, is

11

In his description of the portage between the St. Joseph and Kankakee rivers, George
A. Baker (1899) quotes Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac as saying of his visit to southern Michigan
in 1701: “There are so many vast prairies dotted with woods, thickets and vines where the waters
of the streams keep the shores always green and the reaper has left unmown the luxuriant grasses
which fatten buffaloes of enormous size.” The cause of the buffaloes’ demise in this region
which occurred during the eighteenth century coincides with the advance of the fur trade in the
region.

53

representative of the wide variety of vegetation present within the watersheds in Michigan and
Indiana. The list includes each plant’s common name as well as its Latin classification,
mentioning both edible and inedible plants, ranging from the “papaw [sic]” (ibid., 126) to the
white pine. Thomas compares the papaw12 with the persimmon as being a fruit-bearing species
numerous throughout the area, though unknown in the eastern part of the United States. He
describes the papaw’s fruit as being “cylindrical, and larger than a turkey egg, ripens late in
autumn, and then becomes yellow. The seeds like those of the persimmon, resemble gourd seed.
The scent and flavour are too luscious to be agreeable to those who are unused to this fruit; but
the disgust soon abates, and we find it highly delicious” (ibid., 115).

The Potawatomi
At the time of settlement, the St. Joseph River Watershed was inhabited primarily by the
Potawatomi. The Potawatomi combined maize horticulture with hunting and other sources of
subsistence, including fishing, maple sugaring, and the gathering of a variety of berries and
plants. They preferred to establish their summer villages adjacent to bodies of water where they
planted their fields in season. From these villages they had access to the woodlands, prairies, and
marshes where they could hunt, tap maple trees, collect honey, and gather berries, plants, and
roots. The introduction of horses in the middle of the eighteenth century allowed the Potawatomi
to expand their subsistence methods and territory (Clifton 1977; 1978; Edmunds 1993).
The Potawatomi are an Algonquian-speaking people of the Great Lakes region. They are
part of a historic alliance known as the Anishinaabe, which besides the Potawatomi includes the

Thomas’s “papaw” is the contemporary “pawpaw” and is still used in desserts today. Its flavor
and texture resembles that of the mango found in most contemporary supermarkets.
12

54

Ojibwa and Ottawa. The Potawatomi refer to their language as Neshnabemowen. Although the
Potawatomi maintained a clan-based kinship system, by the time settlers arrived in northern
Indiana, decision making occurred at the village level. While the United States government
identified these villages by the representative headman of the village, the Potawatomi selfidentified these villages most often by local geographical features.
The territory occupied by the Potawatomi at the time of settlement was the third in a
succession of migrations which has been recognized by scholars. The earliest of these territories
locates the Potawatomi in the southern portion of lower present-day Michigan from the protohistoric period until the seventeenth century. They remained there until 1641 when they fled to
the area of Door County, Wisconsin, in response to intertribal conflicts which arose over the fur
trade (Clifton 1977; Edmunds 1978). As the Potawatomi regained security through their relations
with the French, they began to expand their territories. This process was well underway by 1670.
By 1800 Potawatomi had established themselves in southern Wisconsin, northern Illinois,
northern Indiana, and southern Michigan. During the 1830s, increased pressure from the United
States government and settlers resulted in many of the Potawatomi being displaced from this
territory to places such as Kansas, Canada, and northern Michigan. The response of various
bands and villages of Potawatomi to these pressures varied according to the interests of the
particular community. Some bands moved voluntarily. Some resisted removal and were allowed
to remain on their land. Some moved to Canada or northern Michigan. Others resisted removal
until forcibly removed by a United States military escort.
Clifton (1977; 1978) has dealt most extensively with the Potawatomi from an
anthropological perspective. His book The Prairie Potawatomi (Clifton, 1977) is undoubtedly
the most cited ethnohistorical reference regarding the Potawatomi in the Great Lakes region. It

55

covers the Potawatomi’s entrance into the Great Lakes region from the early historic period
through their experience west of the Mississippi River in the 1960s, where they ended up as a
result of their treaties with the United States government. Rather than seeing these displacements
as forced removals, Clifton sees them fitting in with the other migrations which “had been a
favored adaptive strategy” (ibid., 279).
A work of equal importance regarding the Potawatomi, although of lesser breadth, is
Edmunds’ (1978) historical work. This work covers the time period in which the Potawatomi are
engaged with the French in the fur trade and through the 1830s, regarded as the height of the
removal period of the Potawatomi from the Great Lakes region. Other smaller works (Fay 1971;
Barreis 1973; Clark 1979; Murphy 1988) have contributed to the ethnography of the Potawatomi,
usually with a focus on a specific individual or case.
In his work on the adaptive strategies of the Potawatomi during the removal period, Mark
Schurr (2010) emphasized the inadequacy of relying on any one of these adaptive strategies or
objectives as being descriptive of individual communities, and instead stressed the diversity
which existed among the Potawatomi during the removal period which will be discussed later on
in this chapter.13 However, each of these contributions fail to address the engagement between
settlers, the Potawatomi, and the United States government, yet they do provide an analytical
framework in which to begin to consider the nature of those relationships. Rather than passively
complying with the interests of Europeans, Native communities are seen as having agency in the
processes which determined their futures.

13

In 2006 the Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology devoted an entire issue to the topic of the
Potawatomi during the removal period.

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A Cultural Ecology
The impact of Europeans was experienced indirectly in the Great Lakes region long
before the first traders or missionaries were seen. Reports, trade goods, and epidemics
originating with the white men filtered into the region, presumably creating curiosity, fear, and
grief. While Indigenous peoples along the New England coastal region and in the St. Lawrence
Valley were increasingly in contact with Europeans from the latter part of the fifteenth century, it
was not until the early part of the seventeenth century, when French traders and Jesuit
missionaries penetrated the pays d’en haut, that the Indigenous peoples in the western Great
Lakes encountered Europeans face-to-face.
The fur trade dominated the contact between the French and Native peoples in the
Northeast from 1600 until the latter part of the eighteenth century. Initially, the exchange of
goods and materials between French traders and various Indigenous societies was based upon
reciprocity rather than the supremacy of one group over the other (Haefeli 2007). However, as
exchange developed into the extensive trade network that became known as the fur trade, the
establishment of alliances based on kinship and gift exchange wielded leverage and advantage
for the overlapping interests represented in the region. Social spaces and identities in the region
were renamed and remapped from the onset by Europeans in interest of their own advantage,
although Native peoples did not necessarily operate according to these realignments (Witgen
2007). However, because Native communities did relish European goods, incorporating them
into their existing mode of life, they maintained these alliances. Richard White suggests that
what Europeans saw as the fur trade, Indigenous societies saw as a “European-goods trade”
(White 1991). In Charles Cleland’s history of Native communities in Michigan, he describes the
changes taking place during this period as adaptive strategies in which decisions were made

57

based either on preserving certain interests or incorporating new interests which were seen as
beneficial to the society (Cleland 1992).
The initial lack of settlers in the Great Lakes region contributed to the establishment of
the fur trade by the French (Smith 1973). Many Europeans saw La Nouvelle France as an
undesirable place for immigration; others, like the Protestant French Huguenots, were excluded
from immigration to New France. Consequently, the French had difficulty finding settlers for
their colonies (Moogk 2000). The lack of settlers in the region compelled the French to engage in
extensive and expensive gift giving in order to maintain amiable trade relationships with the
Indigenous communities (Desbarats 1995). Rather than seizing land, the French pursued treaties
which emphasized the establishment and maintenance of peaceful alliances across broad
geographical and social boundaries throughout the region (Havard 2001). Without settlers to
occupy and advance their territory, the French relied on the Jesuits, missionaries for the Roman
Catholic Church, as ambassadors to maintain the trade alliances they established (Salisbury
1992). However, as Trigger (1965) argues, Jesuits were more than mere mercenaries of the fur
trade; they became key figures in France’s effort to create a new Catholic presence in North
America.
During the eighteenth century, the French and British grappled for control in the Great
Lakes region. The transition from complete French control to British control signaled changes in
relations between Indigenous communities, settlers, and the colonial government. Further
changes occurred in the wake of the American Revolution, which was marked by the
establishment of new political boundaries which often disregarded the social geography of the
region (Taylor 2002). However, the changes varied from one area to another.

58

As the United States emerged as the dominant European presence after the American
Revolution, settlers became a prominent factor in re-shaping the interactions in the Great Lakes
region. American expansion has often been thought of by historians in terms of pushing the
frontier farther west to accommodate the pioneering settlers. It may be asked: What is a frontier?
Who pushes the border? In this way of thinking, civilization is on one side of the line and empty
land on the other. In the introduction to their edited volume Contact Points, Cayton and Teute
(1998) draw attention to a shift in positionality of the American settler. Throughout British
America, expansion had occurred with settlers faced east toward Europe, and to the west was the
“backcountry.” In the emerging United States, settlers turned and faced west toward the
“frontier.” However, the frontier, according to Cayton and Teute, was more of zone than a line,
with multiple zones and multiple interests contending within those zones.
For example, as Tanner (1978) points out, at Auglaize in the Ohio country, various
Indigenous societies, European traders, and settlers inhabited the same community and
developed longstanding relationships which followed them throughout the region in spite of the
community’s decimation. As Mann (1999) points out in the case of the Miami in Indiana,
Indigenous communities were often reluctant to abandon their previous alliances with European
trade partners, consequently being forced into obscurity, their presence ignored by the United
States. The case of the Miami is just one example of the complexity of the relations between
Indigenous peoples, the United States government, and settlers of European origin, a situation
which falls within what this project describes as a settlerscape. While the erasure of the Miami in
central Indiana took on the form of refusal to be acknowledged, that of their neighbors to the
north, the Potawatomi, took on very different form: a long, arduous, politicized treaty-making
process with the United States government. The rest of this chapter will be devoted to the treaty-

59

making process and its contribution to the concept of settlerscapes in characterizing the
circumstances by which the Potawatomi were displaced from northern Indiana and southern
Michigan.

Treaties
The removal period for the Potawatomi is bookended by two often overlooked events: the
signing of the 1789 Treaty of Harmar (United States 1789), and removal of a small group from
Kansas to northern Wisconsin in 1911, an event not discussed here (Indian Rights Association
Papers, roll 23). The State of Indiana had originally been part of the United States territory
known as the Territory Northwest of the River Ohio, more commonly referred to as the
Northwest Territory. Previously this region had been under British rule and was set aside for
exclusive use by Indigenous tribes. Soon after the United States gained control of the region in
the 1783 Treaty of Paris, settlers pressured the United States Congress to open the land for
settlement. In 1787, the United States Congress responded by enacting the Northwest Ordinance,
which provided the terms in which the land could be surveyed and made saleable. However,
competing claims and interests of the British, the United States, various Indigenous tribes, and
settlers persisted in the territory, challenging the expansionism of the United States. The Treaty
of Harmar in 1789 was the first of a series of treaties involving the Potawatomi which was
intended to alleviate these tensions.14
The Treaty of Harmar was in many ways more of a peace treaty than a land cession,
although it did attempt to establish a “line between the lands of the United States of America,

14

For a complete list of treaties between the United States government and the Potawatomi
between 1789 and 1840, see APPENDIX B. The full text of these treaties are located in the
United States Statutes at Large, Vol. 7, 1848.

60

and lands of said nations, forever” (United States 1789, 28). However, it did little to ease the
tensions in the Northwest Territory. In 1795, the Treaty of Greeneville (United States 1795)
divided the territory in half: one half, including most of Ohio and the southeast corner of Indiana,
for the United States and their settlers; the other half, including the rest of Ohio and Indiana and
all of Michigan and Illinois, for the Indian tribes (Cayton 1998). Over the next forty years, the
United States government and the various bands of Potawatomi negotiated nearly forty treaties
ceding most of the Potawatomi’s land to the United States. Additionally, the United States
government grouped villages together in what they referred to as “bands” to streamline the treaty
process (Clifton 1977; 1978; Edmunds 1993).
In 1816, in the midst of the treaty period with the Potawatomi, Indiana became the
nineteenth state of the Union.15 At the time Indiana received its statehood, much of the southern
portion of Indiana had already been ceded to the United States government by various
Indigenous nations in that area. Two years after Indiana received its statehood, participating
tribes ceded the majority of central Indiana to the United States in provisions set forth by the
1818 Treaty of St. Mary’s (United States 1818). In the 1821 Treaty of Chicago (United States
1821) and the 1826 Treaty of Mississinewa (United States 1826b), the Potawatomi ceded much
of the remaining portions of Indiana, including the area that would become Elkhart and
LaGrange counties, to the United States government.
Embedded within these treaties, apparent provisions were made for the Potawatomi to
enjoy usufructuary rights to the land for as long as it remained the proprietary interest of the
United States government. For example, the 1821 Treaty of Chicago stated, “The stipulation

15

In 1800, as Ohio was becoming a state, Indiana had become a separate territory. Other states
soon followed, and the Northwest Territory began to dissolve.

61

contained in the treaty of Greeneville, relative to the right of the Indians to hunt upon the land
ceded while it continues the property of the United States, shall apply to this treaty” (United
States 1821, 220). For the United States government, such terms had limits based on when those
lands would be surveyed and put up for sale to United States settlers. For the Potawatomi, these
terms meant they could continue to carry on with their way of life much as they had for
generations, as these treaties were open ended without any sort of termination. In fact, such
treaties often left the impression that “Indian tribes who have a right to those lands, are quietly to
enjoy them, hunting, planting, and dwelling thereon so long as they please, without any
molestation from the United States” (United States 1795, 52). The problem with the language of
the treaties is that they gloss over the negotiation process where the Potawatomi’s thoughts and
feelings are more accurately portrayed. An example of this is the 1833 Treaty of Chicago (United
States 1833b).

1833 Treaty of Chicago
The 1833 Treaty of Chicago (ibid.) was negotiated during what Schurr (2006) refers to as
the Removal Period for the Potawatomi. In 1830 the United States government’s Indian policy
took on a new dimension. President Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Act of 1830 (United
States 1830) made provision for any tribes in the eastern United States who were thought to be
standing in way the government’s interests to be moved to lands west of the Mississippi River.
The policy was directed towards any “Indians as may choose to exchange the lands where they
now reside, and move [west of the Mississippi]” (ibid., 412). The policy held an enigma for
Native tribes and nations foreshadowed by Awbenaben’s speech directed toward the United
States commissioners four years earlier. Awbanawben stated, “You point to a country for us in

62

the west, where there is game. We saw there is game there, but the Great Spirit has made and put
men there who have a right to that game and it is not ours” (United States 1826, roll 1). Not only
did Native people such as Awbenawben realize the distress displacement would bring upon his
people, he understood and respected the ramifications it would have upon the people whose land
they would be asked to settle upon west of the Mississippi.
This policy dealt a direct blow to the Potawatomi of northern Indiana and southern
Michigan through the 1833 Treaty of Chicago (United States 1833b), in which a few select
Potawatomi headmen exchanged most of the remaining land held in reserve for the Potawatomi
for lands west of the Mississippi River (Silliman 1931; Fay 1971). Allegedly, those who had
signed the treaty for the Potawatomi did not fully represent the interests of the remaining bands,
who remained resistant to the prospect of removal. After several failed attempts by the United
States government to encourage the Potawatomi to voluntarily move west, a final effort was
made to assemble, escort, and relocate the remaining Potawatomi communities to the west
(McDonald 1899; Clifton 1977; Edmunds 1978). The final significant removal involving the
Potawatomi of southern Michigan and northern Indiana occurred in 1841, originating in Calhoun
County, Michigan. I will return to this in Chapter 7 to demonstrate the direct effect this removal
would have upon the counties of LaGrange and Elkhart, Indiana, twenty-five miles to the south.
The complexity of these relations shows up in the negotiation of such treaties as the
Treaty of Chicago (United States 1833a). It is an oversimplification to say that settlers were
pressuring the United States government to remove Potawatomi from the region, or that the
Potawatomi were opposed to living alongside settlers. At times settlers did pressure the United
States government to open more land for settlement. At other times settlers petitioned their
government to allow tribes to stay, as they had established local trading networks they felt

63

comfortable with (McClurken 1986). Likewise, as mentioned earlier, the Potawatomi had
varying interests. Various bands relied on different adaptive strategies in relating to the United
States government and settlers (Schurr et al. 2006; Secunda 2006; Wagner 2006; Schurr 2010).
Potawatomi relations with settlers often entered into these strategies. Culturally conservative
Potawatomi groups saw settlers as a threat to their way of life and complained about them
constantly encroaching on their lands. Other Potawatomi communities who valued their
homelands claimed settlers had become like their brothers, in an appeal to the United States
government to allow them to remain on their lands. Settlers became a significant bargaining chip
for both the Potawatomi and the United States government in their negotiation of these treaties.
The term settlerscapes helps explain circumstances such as those described above. Rather
than simply describing what happened, settlerscapes considers the experience all those involved
in the treaty-making process. Again, settlerscapes emphasize the moment or period in
colonialism whereby clearly the Indigenous landscapes that had been shaped and inhabited for
centuries, and even millennium, were transformed into settled places by United States settlers.
One form of being-in-the-world was being subsumed by another, and settlers were the vanguard
of that change.
At times misunderstandings resulted in unexpected relations between settlers and Native
peoples due to unpredictable circumstances. For example, in Michigan, the Ottawa,16 the
Potawatomi, and the settlers grew dependent upon each other as a result of the economic crisis in
the late 1830s (Gray 1994). Later, as the Ottawa and Potawatomi were under the threat of
removal, settlers who had initially been at the fore of the removal effort pleaded to the United

16

The preferred contemporary spelling of the tribe is Odawa. For the sake of this study I will
follow the spelling used in the documents during the settlement period.

64

States government to allow the Ottawa and Potawatomi to remain as their neighbors. For
example, in McClurken’s (1986) work on the adaptive strategies of the Ottawa to avoid removal,
he shows how settlers were an integral part of resistance strategies in the Great Lakes region.
According to McClurken’s research, social and economic ties between settlers and the Ottawa
became instrumental in the Ottawa’s success in remaining in Michigan, with settlers “exerting
pressure on the United States government” (ibid., 54) on the Ottawa’s behalf. Again these efforts
were met with mixed results.
With the increase of encroaching settlers, the United States government felt pressure to
acquire the remaining reservations located on the prairies in southern Michigan which were
considered desirable for farmland (Edmunds 1978; Schurr 2006). A treaty concluded on 26 and
27 September 1833 in Chicago (United States 1833b) ceded most of the land held in reservation
for the Potawatomi in previous treaties between the United States government and the United
Nation of the Chippewa, Ottawa, and Potawatomi (UNCOPI).17 On the final day the United
States acquired the reservation on the Nottawaseppi Prairie in present-day St. Joseph County,
Michigan. The treaty was intended to allow the Potawatomi to remain on their reservation on the
Nottawaseppi Prairie for two years to prepare for their move west of the Mississippi River.
While the historical processes leading up to and the consequences of the 1833 Treaty of Chicago
are well known, the negotiation process which led to the signing of the treaty remains obscure,
particularly in regard to the impact settlers had on the negotiations.

17

Though there had been an alliance between these three groups, the designation of a United
Nation was a maneuver by the United States government to make it more convenient to treat
with these three identities together rather than separately. Furthermore, none of the three tribes
were a monolith; rather, they consisted of scattered, autonomous groups who shared cultural and
linguistic characteristics.

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On September 10, 1833, the commissioners of the United States government convened to
treat with representatives from UNCOPI. Representing the United States were Governor George
Porter of Michigan; Colonel Thomas Owen, United States Agent for the UNCOPI; and Colonel
William Weatherford from the state of Illinois. By the weekend, Metawaa, a Chippewa chief;
Aptekezhick, a Potawatomi chief; and other leaders from UNCOPI had also gathered, and the
negotiations began on the morning of September 14. Governor Porter began the negotiations
with an opening address. The role settlers were going to play in these negotiations became
immediately evident in Governor Porter’s initial comments:
We bless the Great Spirit my children for a clear sky and a bright sun. We think the
Great Spirit has been kind to his red + white children, that he has allowed them to
assemble here. The day is auspicious of good results. We are happy to observe, that
you have not listened to the bad birds which have been flying around you, but have
come up to council of your own free will… Your Great Father believes that if all
his red children were removed beyond the Mississippi river, “the father of waters”beyond the vicious influence of intercourse with the white man, that there would be
fewer disasters among them and that they would be happier. (United States 1833a,
roll 3 [italics mine])
Governor Porter further characterized the settlers’ impact on Native communities as being “evil,”
“wicked,” “encroachment,” “molestation,” and having “surrounded” and “pressed too closely”
upon them (ibid). Having thus painted such a dire description of the state of affairs Native
communities faced, Governor Porter advised the UNCOPI to deliberate and consider ceding their
lands and moving west where they would be able to pursue their own “happiness” and “interests”
(ibid). Metawaa assured Governor Porter that his words would be considered, and the council
was adjourned.
The next day being Sunday, a day of prayer for the commissioners, the council did not
meet until the morning of September 16, 1833. After a brief exchange, Aptekezhick, the
designated spokesman for the UNCOPI, delivered their response to the commissioners, which,

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surprisingly, contradicted Governor Porter’s assessment of the situation. In response to Governor
Porter’s assumption that the tribes were eager to move west due to pressure from settlers,
Aptekezhick replied:
When our Great Father…heard that we wanted to sell our lands and remove from
our country,—your red children are afraid that he opened his ears to a bad
bird….Your red children are unfortunate—they are poor, and if we sell all our lands
and go where you advise us, some great evil might happen to us. Here the Great
Spirit allows us to live in peace amongst ourselves, with the white man and all. We
are happy….The Potawattamies, Ottowas & Chippeways and the whitemen are like
four brothers—all united.—They love each other. (Ibid. [italics mine])
The secretary’s journal records fourteen instances in the speeches of the commissioners
in which the interactions between settlers and Native communities are invoked. Of those fourteen
times, twelve describe the negative consequences of these interactions on Native communities.
The other two are references to “the great nation of the white people” (ibid.) who are about to
overtake the land. The same journal records six references to settlers in Native speeches, and
each refers to these interactions in terms of “love,” “peace,” or “brothers” (ibid.). Furthermore,
the United States commissioners criticized the leaders of the UNCOPI of listening to the advice
of “bad birds” (ibid.) who had the apparent purpose of discouraging the UNCOPI from signing a
treaty that would require them to move west and away from their homelands. In return, the
leaders of UNCOPI also accused the United States commissioners of listening to bad birds who
had advised the United States that the Potawatomi wanted to sell their land.
The records of the negotiations of the 1833 Treaty of Chicago are helpful in
understanding the influence of settlers upon the outcome of Potawatomi communities in southern
Michigan and northern Indiana. First of all, the discrepancy displayed in the description of settler
relations with Native communities between the United States commissioners and leaders of the
UNCOPI illustrate that settlers were thrown into the fray of negotiations whether they agreed to

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it or not. Both sides saw settlers as a way to gain an advantage in their respective arguments on
whether the Potawatomi should remain in the region or be removed. The commissioners seem to
have exaggerated the negative reputation of settlers in an attempt to persuade the leaders of the
UNCOPI that they would be better off if they were separated from the negative influence of
United States settlers. Meantime, it seems the UNCOPI may have selectively focused on
friendships and alliances which would have been in favor of their remaining in the region while
neglecting to recall those relations with settlers that were at times contentious. It is clear that the
swell of United States settlers during the 1830s forced the United States government to open
increasingly more land for settlement. In the end, after nine days of negotiations, the UNCOPI
ceded their lands not due to their fear of encroaching settlers; it was the prospect of treating at
“the Cannon’s mouth” (ibid), as the United States threatened. The survival of their people
became their primary concern.

The Nottawaseppi Prairie
A clue as to who these bad birds may have been is found in the tensions which arose on
the Nottawaseppi Prairie in southern Michigan as a result of the 1833 Treaty of Chicago. The
first permanent settlers arrived on the Nottawaseppi Prairie in 1830, and soon a number of
families had joined the settlement there (Silliman 1931). The Nottawaseppi Potawatomi came
under constant pressure from these settlers to relinquish their lands. Some were successful in
obtaining some of the best plots, often through “whiskey and trickery” (ibid., 6 ).
The Nottawaseppi Reservation was created as part of the 1821 Treaty of Chicago which
ceded southwestern Michigan to the United States government. The original reservation
consisted of four square miles along the St. Joseph River in southern Michigan (History of St.

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Joseph County, Michigan 1887). A subsequent treaty in 1827 arranged by Governor Cass was
intended to consolidate the “dispersed bands” (United States 1827a, 39) of Potawatomi in
southern and eastern Michigan onto one reservation. Governor Cass’s intentions were to limit the
Potawatomi’s contact with settlers in anticipation for a final removal west of the Mississippi
(Clifton 1977). However, the expanded reservation, a result of the 1827 treaty, included a large
portion of the Nottawaseppi Prairie, one of the richest farming areas in the Michigan Territory.
Consequently, settlers, eager to lay hold of the rich soil, converged on the area (History of St.
Joseph County, Michigan 1877).
James Sturgis, a newly arrived settler from Pennsylvania, was among those first settlers
to claim tracts on the southern edge of the Nottawaseppi Prairie, and represents the ambiguous
nature of interactions between settlers and the Potawatomi (ibid.). He eventually accumulated
fourteen hundred acres of this prime prairie for his farm (Silliman 1931). Initially, the
Nottawaseppi Potawatomi resented his presence (Champlain 1858b, No. 33). They feared his
cattle would trample their crops (ibid.). Furthermore, the Nottawaseppi band argued Sturgis had
settled on land that their reservation had been expanded to include in an 1827 treaty meant to
consolidate scattered pockets of the Potawatomi (History of St. Joseph County, Michigan 1877).
However, through a mutually respected mediator, Sturgis was able to convince the Nottawaseppi
that his land claim was south of the boundary line agreed to in the treaty. The Nottawaseppi
perceived Sturgis’ intentions as sociable, and the two parties soon established the “most
trustworthy friendship” (Champlain 1858b, No. 33). Sturgis soon sold his land on the
Nottawaseppi Prairie (Champlain 1858a, No. 32; Silliman 1931).
Reports claim that Sturgis moved away from the Nottawaseppi Prairie because of a lack
of water, but this is doubtful as the St. Joseph River and several other smaller rivers and creeks

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ran directly through the immediate area. It may be that Sturgis determined his presence on the
prairie was an infringement upon the Nottawaseppi band and chose to remove himself from the
circumstances. Most likely, Sturgis was involved in land speculation, as one person would not
have been able to farm fourteen hundred acres by himself. The sale of his land on the
Nottawaseppi Prairie was more likely connected to probable profits and losses than to the
undesirability of the land.
The Nottawaseppi Potawatomi’s fear of settlers’ livestock roaming freely and causing
significant crop damage were not completely unfounded. Apparently, those who came after
Sturgis did indeed let their livestock run free, and when the livestock trespassed on the
Potawatomi gardens, the Potawatomi would help themselves to them (Silliman 1931). Numerous
incidents regarding disputes over resources between settlers and the Nottawaseppi are on record
(History of St. Joseph County, Michigan 1877). This became one of the major bargaining chips
in the negotiations of the 1833 Treaty of Chicago, which ordered a repayment of stolen pigs
which were reportedly stolen by the Nottawaseppi band.
During the negotiations of the treaty, Governor George B. Porter, commissioner of the
treaty, accused the Potawatomi, saying,
There is one subject my children to which I invite our attention. Let my words
be remembered by you. On the reservation at Pou-ka-gon’s village and at Nottaway-sip-pe, we hear every day of complaints being made of depredations
committed by Indians on the property of the neighboring white men-claims in a
year or two for hogs allegedly to be killed by you will be credited against you which
will consume your annuities. This will produce bad blood between you and the
white man and the next thing we hear of murder & war have broken out among you.
(United States 1833a, roll 3)
The Black Hawk War of 1832 caused great concern for those settlers who were living on
the Nottawaseppi Prairie during that period. All accounts of the early history of St. Joseph
County retell how news from the west brought panic to the settlers, who feared they would come

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under attack from the Potawatomi community on the Nottawaseppi Prairie. However, several
settlers, including Sturgis and Col. Sherman, pleaded with the other settlers that the
Nottawaseppi Potawatomi were of a friendly disposition, and there was no cause for concern.
The men arranged a meeting with Cush-ee-wes, a leader of the Nottawaseppi Potawatomi, in
which the local settlers learned they were in no danger and that the village at Nottawaseppi was
equally fearful of the settlers during the uprising in the west. However, this incident led settlers
to increase their pressure on the United States government to request the Nottawaseppi band’s
removal. The result was the 1833 Treaty of Chicago (History of St. Joseph County, Michigan
1877; Silliman 1931).
As mentioned previously, the treaty allowed the Nottawaseppi Potawatomi to remain on
their land for two years in preparation for their move west. The Nottawaseppi Potawatomi
continued to resist removal, because as they saw it, a fraudulent representative had signed the
treaty which ceded their lands to the United States government (Silliman 1931). In the meantime,
settlers, anxious to claim the choicest parcels, began to take possession of these lands. As a
result, game was chased away and greatly reduced, trails were closed, and the settlers’
unconfined livestock became an increasing nuisance in the Nottawaseppi Potawatomi crops and
gardens. The Nottawaseppi Potawatomi persisted, remaining in the area in spite of the rising
tensions with the settlers (History of St. Joseph County, Michigan 1877).
In 1839, Isaac Ketchum, a Dutch Reformed minister, acting as Indian Agent for the
United States government, arranged a council with the Nottawaseppi Potawatomi. This was the
final attempt to persuade the band of the advantages of moving west of the Mississippi River. He
said, “[Your Great Father] knows you will be better off on your own lands than here” (Silliman
1931, 32). To this, Muchmote, a spokesperson for the Nottawaseppi Potawatomi, replied:

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We have held our consultation with the three nations, and what you said to us does
not please us at all. You told us that we must go west of the Mississippi. In our
councils we have said we will not go and our minds have not changed. At [the]
council at Niles [the] same question asked and we said we will not go. You wish to
know when we would be ready to go. We say again, we will not go. We wish to die
where our forefathers died. You say [the] government [will] protect [us]. We say
[the] government [will] protect [us] on our way west and leave us there to our
destruction. No one of us is daring to go. We are very poor. In the west there is no
bark to build lodges. We are not able to build houses like your white children. Many
white people want us to stay here. They hunt with us. We divide game. We stay here
among white people. Therefore we [will] not go. (Ibid., 32 [italics mine])
The council apparently included a number of settlers, because in response to Muchmote’s
comment that many of the Europeans wished for them to stay, Ketchum asked the settlers
directly if they wanted the Nottawaseppi to stay. All of the settlers raised their hands in support
of the Nottawaseppi band being moved from the reservation. Muchmote’s response was that the
settlers did so because of their fear of the United States government (Silliman, 1931). Memoirs
of the descendants of early settlers concur with the alliances Muchmote referred to in his speech.
In a community close by and closely associated with the Nottawaseppi Potawatomi, descendants
of settlers recall, “The Indians as a whole were friendly with the white men. They often hunted
and fished together” (Miller 1995, 6).
In the spring of 1840, United States troops under the direction of Alexis Coquillard and
General Hugh Brady were sent to the area to facilitate the removal of the Nottawaseppi band
from their homes (History of St. Joseph County, Michigan 1877; Silliman 1931; Edmunds 1978).
At this point, many of the remaining Potawatomi in southern Michigan and northern Indiana had
dispersed: some moved to Canada, others to northern Michigan or Wisconsin, while others went
into hiding in southern Michigan (Clifton 1975; Edmonds 1978). It took until late summer to
gather the remaining population together, although some were successful in their avoidance of

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removal, while others escaped on their journey west and returned to their homes (Silliman 1931;
Edmunds 1978).
Faced with removal, individual Native communities responded in different ways
depending on their own interests, regardless of what kinship relations or allegiances they may
have had with other communities (Schurr 2010). Within Potawatomi society in northern Indiana,
culturally conservative communities deemed removal a viable option as a way to create a buffer
between them and the encroaching settlers; others chose to adapt to European society as a way to
preserve their homeland (Schurr et al. 2006). However, the same strategy for different groups did
not always have the same outcome: some succeeded in preserving their interests through their
efforts while others seemingly failed (Secunda 2006).

Conclusion
The interactions between early United States settlers and Native communities varied
widely. Not only did they vary from community to community; they varied within communities.
The attitudes of individuals and families of both settlers and Natives also varied within
communities. Much of this variation depended on strategies of boundary maintenance. For the
Nottawaseppi Potawatomi intent on remaining on their land base, adaptation to the challenges of
living alongside the recent influx of settlers became a necessity. Therefore, when negotiating
with the United States government, leaders of the Nottawaseppi band emphasized the positive
relationships with settlers. However, when settlers threatened the boundaries of the Nottawaseppi
land base, they were quick to defend those boundaries and their resources. For those Potawatomi
communities who resisted acculturation, the approach of settlers may have been seen as a threat
to their social boundaries; therefore, they were much more willing to accept the United States

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government’s assessment that their prosperity would be realized across the Mississippi River.
For the United States government, intent on acquiring title to Native lands, essentializing the
United States settler in a negative image during the negotiation process was a strategy to
convince Native communities of the necessity to surrender their lands and move west. Neither
representation is fully accurate and must be understood as strategies of removal and resistance in
the negotiation process.
Potawatomi success in resistance and removal strategies based on interactions with
settlers varied greatly. Most Potawatomi communities who wished to remain on their own land
ended up moving either by force or voluntarily to locations they preferred, rather than places
specified by the United States government. Of the few who were successful in remaining on their
chosen land base, it is unclear what the deciding factors were. Except for the Pokagon
community, success did not occur at the community level; rather, it took place at an individual or
familial level. This is the case with the Nottawaseppi band. Whether this was a direct result of
settler intervention is unclear from my research thus far. However, as other sources are
discovered, answers to these questions may be brought to light. Such understandings are
important for the descendant communities of settlers and the Nottawaseppi band as they recall
their collective pasts.
While friendships with settlers were part of the Nottawaseppi band’s strategy for
avoiding removal, it should not be perceived that these relationships were merely an ostensible
component of the negotiations. While anthropologists are often eager to explain and illuminate
theories of social change and processes, it is clear that deliberate decisions were made by both
sides in the negotiating process in how they chose to represent Potawatomi interactions with

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settlers; it is also clear that a great deal of trust, friendship, and mutual reciprocity existed in the
everyday interactions of these two diverse communities.
The experience and encounter between Native communities and United States settlers
varied greatly in the Great Lakes region. This chapter is an example of the general influence
those relationships had upon the clash between the United States Indian removal policy and the
Indigenous tribes who strove to protect their own interests. The following chapters attend to the
specific experience of one group of settlers—the Amish—and their role in transforming the
Indigenous landscape of northern Indiana into a settled landscape based on European ideals.

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CHAPTER 4
“IT IS NOT AS IN EUROPE”:
ORIGINS, LITERACY, AND LIVELIHOOD
Introduction
Amish settlement in northern Indiana did not follow a direct or inevitable path from
Europe. The slow, steady movement westward from eastern Pennsylvania by the Amish which
occurred during the latter part of the eighteenth century was influenced by various forces exerted
upon the decisions made by the Amish on the kinds of places they chose for settlement. These
matters can be broken into two broad categories: 1) the residual effects of Europe the Amish
brought with them which informed their interactions in North America, and 2) the immediacy
and unfamiliarity of the social and economic conditions encountered by Amish settlers in the
North American context. While the Amish viewed their social and economic circumstances as
standing against their religious beliefs, the practices they had developed over time, informing
their way of life, may be described as “earthy” practices. The documents written and read by
eighteenth-century Amish settlers can also be described as “earthy” as they rose out of and
emplaced the Amish as they moved from place to place.
These documents provide valuable insights into Amish perceptions of personhood,
community, and livelihood. Each of these aspects had significant influence upon the way Amish
settlers interacted with the unfamiliar landscapes they encountered in North America. For the
Amish, their experience in Europe as an oppressed people defined ideas of personhood which
were represented and reinforced through commonly shared literary forms. Rigid language,
doctrine, and social forms and practices clearly defined the boundaries of community. Innovative
skills developed as an ostracized people in Europe equipped the Amish with methods of

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livelihood well suited to engage whatever type of environment they encountered. As Amish
settlers arrived from Europe and migrated throughout North America, their sensibilities of
personhood, community, and livelihood provided them with the ability to readily adapt and feel
at home in their new environments without attachment to any particular place. Amish settlers
needed a land base to sustain their identity, but any land would suffice.
The documents relied upon in this chapter demonstrate the connection Amish settlers
made between their new homes in North America and their former homes in Europe. This is
nowhere more clear than in a letter from Friedrich Hage written to his brother who had remained
in Europe, described the conditions in North America as, “it is not as in Europe” (Samuel Mast
Collection, file 7). As will be shown, the Amish were at times reluctant to leave their past behind
and attempted to recreate their former world in North America. At other times they were all too
eager to leave those elements of their past behind which they perceived as being restrictive to
their well-being. In his letter, Hage acknowledges the influences Europe pressed upon Amish
perceptions of settlement in the Great Lakes region, including their origins, religion, skills, and
practices as a rural people.
Hage’s letter also provides a glimpse into the production and dissemination of knowledge
of Amish settlers in the Great Lakes region during the first part of the nineteenth century. Their
understanding of the relations between the United States government and Indigenous peoples,
the impact of exploration, access to promotional literature, the circulation of letters, and routine
social gatherings all had a significant impact in where the Amish chose to settle. The letter also
demonstrates the way in which Amish immigration hinged upon connections between
community and kinship. While movement back and forth between communities for the Amish
could involve individuals or individual families, the establishment of new communities were

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nearly always the result of efforts and planning of multiple families moving together based on
community and kinship ties.
In this chapter, I will begin to show how the Amish understandings of personhood,
community, and livelihood infringed upon the well-being and rights of the Indigenous peoples
they encountered during settlement. The Amish settlers’ definitions and practices of personhood,
community, and livelihood which they perceived as being religious, peaceful, and inert brought
devastation upon Indigenous ways-of-being-well-in-the-world which depended upon the
landscapes they had lived in for generations. Competing perceptions and use of land usually
resulted in the more powerful succeeding in gaining control over contended lands. Amish settlers
were among the growing settler population who benefited from the United States government’s
efforts to satiate settlers’ demand for land by purchasing and displacing Indigenous peoples in
the Great Lakes region.

Origins
The Amish trace their roots to the European Protestant Reformation during the early part
of the sixteenth century. Although there had been previous attempts at reform in the Catholic
Church, the Protestant Reformation began when Martin Luther posted his Ninety-Five Theses on
the door of the castle church in Wittenberg, Germany, on October 31, 1517 (Snyder 2003).
Among other complaints, Luther’s Theses protested the practice of indulgences whereby
individuals could obtain forgiveness for their sins by purchasing penance from local priests.
Others, such as John Calvin and Ulrich Zwingli, joined Luther in protesting the hegemony of the
Catholic Church, but did not agree with Luther’s position that there should be a distinction
between the authority and power which lay in the state and that which lay in the church (Goertz

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2003). Rather, they promoted a unified authority of church and state so that whatever religious
institution happened to control a region, that institution would also have control of the state
government.
In Switzerland, there were those who held that reformers such as Luther, Zwingli, and
Calvin had not gone far enough in challenging the Catholic Church. Among them were Conrad
Grebel, Michael Sattler, and later, Melchior Hoffman, who came to be known as Anabaptists.
These Swiss reformers advocated for a distinct separation between politics and religion,
although, as the Mennonite historian James Urry (2006) points out, their beliefs and actions
continued to be political. They maintained that Christians—who belonged to a heavenly
kingdom rather than an earthly kingdom—should refrain from swearing oaths, refuse to take up
the sword in either aggression or self-defense, and allow only adults to be baptized by their
churches. In addition, the radical reformers adopted an authoritative approach to the Bible,
placing an emphasis on the teachings of Jesus Christ in the Christian scriptures of the New
Testament. It was this emphasis on adult baptism which drew the ire of the state authorities and
set up the ongoing conflict which resulted in the marginalization of Anabaptists.
The point of contention with adult baptism, according to the Anabaptists, was that an
individual should only be able to become a member of the church through an informed decision
as an adult rather than through mandatory baptism as an infant. Thus, they only baptized those
who professed faith, even those who had already been baptized as infants. In effect, the civil
authorities who also served as the religious authorities during this time considered the practice of
baptizing adults a political threat to their civil government, as it jeopardized their sphere of
political influence since infants were not automatically subjects of the state at birth.
Consequently, the government made the practice of re-baptism illegal, and designated those who

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did so as “re-baptizers,” or Anabaptists (Dyck 1993). However, during the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, Anabaptists in Switzerland simply referred to themselves as the Swiss
Brethren (Roth 2002).
Over time pacifism (although it was not called pacifism at this time) became a hallmark
of Anabaptist doctrine. This position was based on their understanding of the teachings of Christ
in the Gospels found in the New Testament scriptures. Such a view includes the refusal to
participate in state governments, loving one’s enemy, and refraining from the use of violence
against human life either in defense or in aggression. It is this distinctive quality of Anabaptist
doctrine which brings up the conundrum addressed in this research: How did Amish settlers in
North America reconcile their pacifist doctrine with the destruction their settlement brought upon
Indigenous communities and peoples?
While still in Europe, the Swiss Brethren became disenfranchised due to their
controversial doctrinal positions, and were often forced to move from their homelands onto
mountainous and marginal land. Consequently, the Swiss Brethren ended up in places where
their beliefs were tolerated, usually under the pretext that they would refrain from
proselytization. However, in their zeal those agreements were soon compromised, and their
welcome within a region would wear thin. By the latter part of the seventeenth century, the
movement which had begun in Switzerland spread into the surrounding regions with a
particularly large concentration in the regions of the Palatinate and Alsace in Germany and
France, where they found relative tolerance of their religious practices.
For the most part, the Swiss Brethren were very loosely organized. Though it had begun
as an intellectual movement, it soon expanded to include the peasant population. While leaders
did emerge from the movement, they maintained an equanimity within their communities which

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valued and recognized the contributions of the lay population, including to some extent the
contribution of women (Snyder and Huebert Hecht 1996). One leader who did become
prominent in the movement, however, was a man by the name of Menno Simons (1496-1561). A
former Catholic priest from the Netherlands, Simons converted to Anabaptism in 1535 and was
initiated into the faith in 1536. Trained as a priest, Simons wrote extensively in defense of
Anabaptism, emphasizing a peaceful Christianity. Though their teachings were similar, regional
differences influenced how they were referred to: those from the Dutch-speaking Low Countries
of Europe were known as Mennonites; those from the alpine regions of Switzerland continued to
be known as the Swiss Brethren (Roth 2002).
Some of the Swiss Brethren found relative refuge in the Alsace and Palatinate regions of
France and Germany. Others continued to the Low Countries, where they settled near
Mennonites. Others remained or returned to their homes in Switzerland. In 1693 Mennonites in
the Alsace region of France appointed several men, among them Jakob Ammann, to challenge
leaders of Mennonites in the Emmental region in the Canton of Bern in western Switzerland on
certain issues. Ammann and his group felt the Swiss Brethren had grown lax in their enforcement
of the Meidung. The Meidung was a practice in which those who refused to adhere to the
Ordnung, or “Order,”—unwritten rules of practice—were socially ostracized from other
members of the community, including their own family. As a result of this divisive
confrontation, Ammann’s followers came to be known as the “Amish.” Though the orthodoxy of
Mennonites, the Swiss Brethren, and the Amish remained closely aligned, their orthopraxy took
divergent paths in Europe. The institution of the Meidung and Ordnung became, and continues to
be the basis of Amish communities, defining who was a member of the local Amish community
and who was excluded. Those limits brought with them both costs and benefits: the costs of

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socially conservative restrictions, and the benefits which come from tightly knit community life
(Nolt 2015).

Language
Linguistically, the Amish were at least bilingual, and in certain contexts trilingual. The
everyday language of the Amish was a dialect of German, which in North America came to be
known as Pennsylvania German, or Pennsylvania Dutch. For formal use and literary purposes,
such as in their religious services and in written communication, the Amish relied primarily on
High German. In addition, the Amish were apt to learn the local trade languages of the regions
where they lived (Frey 1945). The impact of language upon migration and settlement is profound
in that it aided the creation of an identity which persisted throughout settlement (Johnson-Weiner
1998), and provided the mobility and flexibility needed to learn about and adapt to new and
unfamiliar settings through such discourses and materials as written communication, shared
knowledge, sermons, and devotional material. For the Amish, language, combined with literacy,
contributed to a disposition in which migration and settlement were viewed as a way of living
out their moral obligations to their Christian beliefs.
As noted previously, the primary language of the Amish at the time of migration was a
dialect of German which in North America came to be known as Pennsylvania German, or
Pennsylvania Dutch. It was called Pennsylvania Dutch due to the high concentration of German
immigrants in southeastern Pennsylvania who spoke this particular dialect. Though shared with
other immigrants of German origin, Pennsylvania Dutch became the signature language of the
Amish and other Anabaptist groups such as the Mennonites (Fuller 1999). The dialect developed
in southern Germany along the Palatinate and Alsace regions of France where the first wave of

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Amish emigrants originated; Rhenish Bavaria, the region where Hage had lived and worked; and
German Switzerland, where slight variations developed in the dialect (Buffington 1939). The
dialect of Pennsylvania Dutch was the language of rural people used for everyday purposes, and
therefore was primarily a spoken language rather than a written language.
Though the everyday language of the Amish was Pennsylvania Dutch, they were quick to
adapt to and learn local trade languages to increase their economic opportunities. In Germany,
this would have been less of a factor since many individuals in the Amish community would
already have been fluent in High German. However, in places like France, to take full advantage
of the available economic opportunities, they quickly adapted to local languages. Evidence of
such adaptations can be seen in a collection of letters found in the MC USA Archives - Goshen
in Goshen, Indiana. The letters involve an exchange between two Amish brothers during the
1840s with the surname of Leichty: Jean, who remained in Europe, and his brother Jacob, who
had immigrated with his family to Iowa. The significance of these letters is that they are written
in French and were to keep the brothers informed of what was happening in their respective parts
of the world (Jacob Leichty Collection, 1840-1887).
A characteristic of Pennsylvania Dutch is its propensity to borrow words from other
languages. In North America, where Amish settlers intermingled with English-speaking settlers,
the German dialect borrowed heavily from the English language as a result of newly encountered
technology and environmental elements. Due to the heavy influence of English upon the
language, some have even suggested it should be considered a creolized language rather than a
German dialect. For example, the Pennsylvania Dutch word blendi is an aspirated form of the
English word “plenty,” both meaning “to have enough” (Frey 1942). Pennsylvania Dutch was
also influenced by the Indigenous languages of North America indirectly through the English

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language, particularly those parts of the physical environment that differed from Europe. Take,
for example, the Powhatan word arocoun, which means “he scratches with the hands.” The
English adopted the name, turning it into “raccoon.” In Pennsylvania Dutch, raccoon became
abbreviated and aspirated into the form of kuhn.
The third language in prevalent use among the Amish was that of High German, the
official language used by the Germanic states in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe.
High German was used in the formal practices of the Amish where sermons and the singing of
hymns in German dominated their religious services. Just as important as spoken German was
the use of German in literary practices by the Amish in such aspects as correspondence,
formularies, devotionals, Bibles, and hymns, all of which will be addressed in the following
section.

Literacy
Literacy was a skill held in high regard by the Amish and carried with it prestige and
power. While Pennsylvania Dutch was primarily a spoken language, High German was the
language of choice for most literary needs. However, a few examples, such as the Leichty letters,
demonstrate the willingness of the Amish to adapt to their social surroundings by acquiring local
literary skills. They carried this with them to North America, where they learned to speak and
write in the English language when necessary. However, the ability to read and write High
German remained highly valued among the Amish throughout the eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries, as indicated by the number of practice alphabets found in archival

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collections associated with the Amish.18 Several of these artifacts were kept in the Bible the
Hage family brought with them from Europe (Friedrich Hage Collection, 1819-1997).

Correspondence
For the Amish, written communication was an important means by which families and
communities maintained connections with each other, whether with those kin who chose to
remain in Europe or had settled in other places in North America. There are a number of
excellent examples of letters containing correspondence describing the conditions, opportunities,
and constraints afforded by the landscape to Amish settlers. In particular, two sets of collections
of letters provide a glimpse into the way knowledge about potential places for settlement
circulated among the Amish: the Friedrich Hage documents, which have been referenced
previously in this chapter and are located in the MC USA Archives - Goshen; and the Louis
Jüngerich letters, preserved in the Illinois Mennonite Historical and Genealogical Society.
The letter written by Friedrich Hage from Holmes County, Ohio, on May 25, 1839, was
directed to either relatives or close acquaintances who had remained in Europe. Its unassuming
appearance abetted by its tattered condition gives the impression the letter holds little potential as
a valuable source of information. However, the letter explains the conditions, experience, and
life in North America from Hage’s perspective. It is unclear whether Hage actually ever sent the
letter or how he regained possession of it, since it was found in his family’s possession in North
America. Though the letter is fragmented, a particularly significant passage containing a short
account of Hage’s life in North America during the 1830s remains intact. Of particular interest

18

See, for example, the Joash Yoder copybook from 1845 (Joash Yoder Copybook and
Correspondence, 1835-1861).

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are seven lines on the front side which are complete and legible. In them Hage describes the land
west of Holmes County, Ohio, as he understood it at that time. The following is a translation of
these important lines, including several pertinent lines leading up to the intact passage. 19
1) Afterward we moved to the State of Ohio because the land in Pennsylvania was
2) […] An acre costs from 200 to 250 florins
3) […] I bought 80 acres for 825 florins but the land is […] in this vicinity that I could
now sell it
4) […] reckoned according to this money. Two florins, 30 kroners are reckoned as a
5) […] in America. But whoever goes farther back into the country
6) can buy land cheaply from the government,
7) a dollar and a quarter or two florins, fifty-seven kroner for an acre. However, it is
nothing except woods
8) as it was purchased from the Indians or wild people.
9) For the government purchased the land from them two to three hundred hours
10) distance in one piece. So, if a man has youngsters or his own
11) people, he soon has a nice farm. For the income from the land is very slight. For it
is not as in
12) Europe, but men servants and hired girls are expensive.
(Samuel Mast Collection, file 7)
Although the Hage letters are perhaps the most relevant to northern Indiana due to Hage’s
direct connection with the settlers who eventually moved there, the Jüngerich letters demonstrate
the breadth of knowledge Amish settlers had access to in deciding where to settle. These letters
were written by a young man born into an Amish family in Germany who immigrated to
Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 1821. Many of Jüngerich’s letters were addressed to his uncle
Christian Iutzi, and contained advice on likely places for settlement. These letters have been
translated and their contents summarized and published in part or their entirety in the
Pennsylvania Mennonite Heritage magazine by Neil Ann Stuckey Levine (1996; 1997a; 1997b;
1998; 2004).

19

Missing sections are indicated by bracketed ellipses.

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These letters also indicate the kind of land the Amish deemed suitable for settlement.
Jüngerich’s letters were explicit on where to and not to settle. For example, in a letter written to
his uncle in 1832, Jüngerich describes land in Michigan, Illinois, and Missouri as being less
desirable for settlement than land in Ohio (Levine et al. 1999). This letter coincides with the
negotiation of an addendum to the 1833 Treaty of Chicago which wrested the desirable lands of
the Nottawaseppi Prairie from the Potawatomi in southern Michigan, making it accessible to
United States settlers. The connection between Jüngerich and the Nottawaseppi Prairie is
Jüngerich’s failed purchase of George B. Porter’s home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 1834.
Porter, who served as the governor of the Michigan Territory under President Andrew Jackson
from 1832 to 1834, also served as the commissioner for the United States government during the
negotiations of the 1833 Treaty of Chicago (United States 1833b). This suggests that the Amish
may have had connections with political figures who were able to provide them with firsthand
information about events and places in the Great Lakes region which held political, economic,
and social significance. Jüngerich’s uncle Christian Iutzi ended up settling in Butler County,
Ohio, in 1832.
Though the potential for crop and livestock production mattered a great deal, the way in
which available land was situated mattered also. Hage noted that in land west of Ohio “a man
could soon [have] his own farm” if he “[had] youngsters or his own people” (Samuel Mast
Collection, file 7). The availability of land in close proximity to other Amish families may have
been a determining factor in choosing locations for settlement (see Chapter 5).

Literature
Besides correspondence, being literate in High German meant the Amish had access to

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various literary resources. As mentioned before, High German was the predominate language
used during religious practices and ceremonies, such as in the reading of scripture, preaching
sermons, and singing hymns. It was also valued in personal use, as demonstrated by the small
library the Hage family brought with them from Europe. The focal point of the library was a
1744 Froschauer Bible Friedrich Hage had purchased from his father-in-law, Hannes Esch, in
1820 for fifteen florins. Esch had owned this Bible for thirty-four years before passing it along to
his daughter’s family.20 The Esch/Hage Bible also contained important family records, including
birth, marriage, and death records, along with numerous other manuscripts documenting the
business dealings and whereabouts of the Hage family. The library also contained other practical
and devotional titles the Hage family must have valued enough to bring with them.
One of these books which continues to be used in Amish religious ceremonies is a
German hymnal known as the Ausbund (Ausbund 1742; Songs of the Ausbund 1988). The
Ausbund is made up of two groups of hymns, the first being published together in 1583. A core
group of fifty-one songs were composed from 1535-1540 by Anabaptists who were imprisoned
for their faith in the dungeon at Passau Castle in Germany. In 1583 a subsequent edition added
eighty songs to the original fifty-one. Since then, the songs have been continuously sung by the
Amish in their worship services. A particularly important hymn found in the first American
edition21 of the Ausbund is a ballad commemorating the life and execution of Hans Haslibacher,
who was an early Anabaptist preacher (Ausbund 1742, 806-12).22 Places and events associated

20

The Esch/Hage Bible remains in the Mennonite Historical Library on the campus of
Goshen College in Goshen, Indiana.
21
The dates, compilation, and details of the Ausbund included here benefit from the
personal research of and correspondence with Joe Springer, curator at the Mennonite Historical
Library in Goshen, Indiana.
22
The Haslibacher hymn is No. 140 in the 1742 edition used in this research.

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with Haslibacher’s life and death became pilgrimage destinations, and in some cases were visited
by Amish emigrants immediately before immigration to North America (Séguy 1973). These
hymns were one way in which the Amish maintained identity and connections with their
European past.
Another German book with seventeenth-century European origins and commonly found
in Amish homes was Die Ernsthafte Christenpflicht (1937), or A Devoted Christian Duty
(Friedman 1953b). The Christenpflicht is a collection of prayers assigned to various occasions. It
was read for personal use, around the family dinner table, and by leaders in church services.
Prayers from the Christenpflicht contain passages which reaffirm the Amish people’s perception
of their wandering status in the world as seen in this excerpt from “Eine anderes schönes Gebet”
(“Another Beautiful Prayer”): “We thank you, O Holy Father, for all our members, our beloved
brothers and sisters, throughout the world; they are scattered and gathered in the cross and in
affliction, in bondage and in prison because of your holy name” (Christenpflicht 1937, 22-23[my
translation]). These prayers also represent the ambiguous relationship the Amish held with the
places they inhabited, one which vacillated between the abstract kingdom of God and the
physical places and people around them as in the following passage: “… Help us also to not veer
off the course of your Word, either to the right or to the left, but always guide us in the ways and
places of peace in view of all our enemies” (ibid., 39-40 [my translation]). Prayers such as these
inculcated over generations reinforced Amish attitudes of what constituted personhood and who
was allowed to be a member of Amish communities.
Although not mentioned as being among the list of books belonging to Hage’s library,
another volume commonly held in high regard and found in many Amish libraries was and

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continues to be the Martyrs’ Mirror (Bracht 1837).23 Written by Theilem J. van Bracht, the
original edition contains over twelve hundred pages which give the accounts of individuals who
suffered physical violence because of their Christian faith, from Jesus Christ’s crucifixion
through the oppression endured by individuals during the Protestant Reformation in Europe.
Later editions were expanded to include etchings by Jans Luiken depicting scenes described in
the text, as well as additional accounts of oppression suffered by the Swiss Brethren in Germany
and Switzerland. The last individual whose death is described in this volume is Hans Haslibacher
mentioned earlier in regard to the Ausbund above. The account includes a stanza from that
hymnal (ibid. 1025), demonstrating the interconnectivity of much of the literature to which the
Amish had access.
One of the most widely known accounts in the Martyrs’ Mirror among Anabaptists is
that of a man by the name of Dirk Willems. According to the account given in the Martyrs’
Mirror, Willems had been captured and imprisoned by the civil authorities in 1569 in his
hometown of Asperen, Holland. Willems was accused of having been rebaptized in his youth
and influencing others to do likewise in his own home in subsequent years. Willems escaped
from the prison tower in Asperen, and it being wintertime, fled across the frozen castle moat and
pond. He was spotted by a prison guard who gave an alert and pursued Willems across the frozen
water. Willems made it across the frozen body of water, but when he looked back, he saw the

The complete title of the Martyrs’ Mirror is The Bloody Theatre, or Martyrs’ Mirror,
of the Defenceless Christians, Who Suffered and Were Put to Death for their Testimony of Jesus,
Their Savior, from the Time of Christ, Until the Year A.D. 1660. It was originally written in the
Dutch language by Theilem Jans van Bracht, an elder among Mennonites in the Netherlands. It
was first translated into German in Ephrata, Pennsylvania, in 1749 by a group led by Peter Miller
to strengthen identity among Mennonites facing the prospect of war. The German translation
found its way to Europe where it became a favorite devotional reading among the Amish. The
English translation used in this research was translated in 1837 by J. D. Rupp in Lampeter
Square, Pennsylvania (Bracht 1837).
23

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prison guard had broken through and was about to succumb to the cold water. Returning,
Willems helped the struggling guard to safety, whereupon the guard wished to let the prisonerturned-rescuer go free. However, by this time the prison warden had arrived at the scene and
ordered the guard to take Willems back into captivity or surrender his own life. The guard
returned the prisoner and, condemned by the earl of Holland, it was decreed that Willems
“remaining obstinately in his opinion … shall be executed by fire” (Bracht 1837, 660).
The Willems account contributed to a mindset which sees civil authorities as adversaries.
In his account of Willems’s recapture and execution, Bracht describes the jailor and authorities
who oversaw the execution as “blood-thirsty and ravenous wolves” (ibid., 659). The term
“ravenous wolves” was part of a larger body of analogies, including “all ravenous beasts,
dragons, serpents, and all the gates of hell, which use great subtlety in order to seize, deceive,
ruin, and mislead our souls” (ibid., 441) found throughout Bracht’s work. The connection
between “beasts” and “men” is made clear in another passage when Bracht writes of the
protection of God “from venomous serpents and wicked men” (ibid., 610). The ambiguous use of
such terms to dehumanize their oppressors is amplified by their presence in the prominent tale of
Dirk Willems. Furthermore, such terms invoke a wilderness trope as in the following passage:
“We may, therefore, with propriety, call on the Lord without ceasing, to preserve us, poor
pilgrims in the wilderness of this world, where the serpents emit fire, and the wolves howl till the
evening, whose feet are swift to shed innocent blood” (ibid., 777, italics mine). The Amish who
identified themselves as the “poor pilgrims” saw the inhumane behavior of their adversaries in
terms of “serpents” and “wolves,” questioning not only their entrée to heaven but also their very
personhood. The Amish carried both these literary works and attitudes with them to North

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America, where they informed the way the Amish related to the inhabitants they encountered in
their new environment (Brook 2003; Tuan and Straun 2010).
Another publication Hage brought with him to North America was a book widely
distributed among the Amish, The Wandering Soul (Schabaelie 1859). The book was authored
by Jan Philipsz Schabale, a Dutch Anabaptist, and written in Holland Dutch, a language closely
related to Pennsylvania Dutch. Later the book was translated into German under the title
Wandlende Seele, and became a favorite book for Anabaptists to read. The book influenced
Amish thought about immigration and settlement. The story is about a soul, the hero of the story,
who periodically returns to earth to ask biblical characters what has happened since the soul last
visited the earth. A particularly salient account is a conversation the Wandering Soul has with
Simon Cleophas regarding the exile of the children of Israel. The Wandering Soul asks Simon
Cleophas, “As you have told me all about [Jerusalem], in chronological order, what befell it till
the first destruction thereof, and the leading away of the children of Israel into captivity, I would
therefore entreat you to tell me further what befell this people in a foreign land” (ibid., 225-6).
To this Simon Cleophas replies:
There we left off the dialogue, but you may imagine how I felt, being one hundred
and seventy miles from home, and among a strange nation. Every thing was
different from their own country, the mountains, the rivers, the forests, the fields,
the animals, also the customs and manners of the people differed from theirs; they
were glumly looked upon, their laws despised, their custom rejected; they were
laughed and mocked at as fools, serving a God who could not protect them. (Ibid.,
226)
Imaginative stories such as this, intermingled with the biblical text, informed Amish perceptions
of the world. As Séguy (1982) observes, the idea of being separate had theological and
sociological connotations. In his book The Land is Mine, Norman Habel characterizes this
method as “the perennial problem of taking a biblical reference out of its ideological context and

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assuming a simple correspondence of meaning between the ancient world of the biblical texts
and contemporary theological or social situations” (Habel 1995, 4). The Amish read their own
situation back into the biblical text as a way of propping up their own identity.

Formularies
Another aspect of literacy the Amish brought with them from Europe is the production of
formularies used in religious ceremonies. Formularies specified which scripture passages were to
be used in communion, baptisms, burials, and other ritual performances. Weddings were another
ritual in which formularies were produced and circulated.
The connection between Amish marriage practices in Europe and North America during
the nineteenth century is seen in a document held in Hage’s possession. On Sunday, April 17,
1841, Friedrich Hage sat down to copy the instructions for a wedding ceremony (Samuel Mast
Collection, file 12). He apparently held in his possession a wedding formulary copied by Joseph
Brandt, an early Amish bishop in Ohio, as it follows the text nearly word for word with little
variation. Such documents were copied and circulated among Amish communities as a formulary
for religious purposes.
Of particular note in the wedding formulary is the recounting of a love story found in
Tobit, an apocryphal book in the German scripture used by the Amish. This story continues to be
a central part of Old Order Amish wedding ceremonies today. However, practices surrounding
marriage retained other features which accompanied Amish emigrants from Europe and still
linger in contemporary Old Order Amish communities (Umble,1941a; Umble 1941b).
Another example of the way in which the formal and folk religious traditions
intermingled in Amish culture are the practices associated with the marriage ceremony. The

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Amish author David Kline (2000) verifies that the wedding practices of the Amish have largely
remained unaltered over time based on his experience and traditions passed on from one
generation to the next.24 As in most cultures, marriage was a much anticipated and momentous
occasion among the Amish, a day filled with ceremony, celebration, and folklore anchored in
time. By observing wedding practices of the Amish today, it is possible to catch a glimpse of the
practices brought with them from Europe.
Amish weddings were commonly—and still are—held on Thursdays. William Schreiber
points out that in German Thursday is Donnerstag, named after the mythological figure Donner,
who is the god of marriage, agriculture, and fertile growth. Schreiber notes that the saying,
“‘Donnerstagsheirat–Glücksheirat’ (‘Thursday’s wedding–lucky wedding’),” is still in
circulation in Germany today. He goes on to say, “The Amish have here preserved for modern
society the clear traces of ancient pagan cults which pre-date the Christian era, cults based on the
worship of the pre-Christian Germanic gods, Zui and Donar” (Schrieber 1962, 186).
Another practice related to the marriage practices originating in Europe is the practice of
bundling. The courtship practice of bundling involved a young man and women sleeping
together in a bed, sometimes with obstacles to keep them separate.25 As we will see in Chapter 6,
the practice was a highly divisive issue among the Amish communities in Pennsylvania and Ohio
in the period leading up to the settlement of northern Indiana.
Although the reasoning behind these marriage and courtship practices has been lost, they

24

Conversations with my ninety-year-old mother, who grew up as an Amish girl in
northern Indiana, agree with Kline’s claim. According to her, the practices she witnessed as a
little girl align with those described by Kline and the documents in this research. These practices
continue today with very little change to their basic structure.
25
For a fuller discussion of these practices, see Schlabach (2007, 35, 76-77, 80,168, and
211) and Aurand (1938).

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serve to structure the events of everyday life. In addition to Amish marriage ceremonies
traditionally being held on Thursday, they are also ideally held after the fall harvest when there is
an abundance of resources available from which to draw in throwing a grand celebration for the
entire community. However, there are other less obvious benefits to fall weddings. Life slows
down for a farmer with the onset of winter, and a young couple has time to get to know each
other in the quiet of their new home. This often results in the couple conceiving early on in their
marriage with the young mother carrying the fetus as she passes through the rhythms of planting
and harvesting so that when the child is born, it is a “born farmer” (Schreiber 1962, 186).
However, the Amish were more than willing to leave some aspects of marriage behind in
Europe. This includes the restrictions placed on marriage by local governments in Germany. This
is evident in Hage’s letter to his brother Jacob, noting that in America “to each one there is
freedom to marry as he wishes and when he wishes without paying something to the
government” (Samuel Mast Collection, file 7). During the latter part of the eighteenth century
and the early part of the nineteenth century, the German government enacted legislation
restricting marriage based on the couple’s moral and financial capabilities of raising a family
(Walker 1971). In some instances, marriage was restricted to those who could demonstrate that
they were landowners. There were also age restrictions in an attempt to quell the expanding
population that seemed to be growing out of control. Children born to parents circumventing
these restrictions were regarded as illegitimate by the European government. There were also
fines levied upon those who failed to comply with the restrictions. These restrictions must have
been viewed as a hardship by the Amish, who valued children not only as human beings, but also
for their economic and social benefit. According to birth and marriage records located in their
family Bible, Friedrich Hage and Veronica Esch were married around the ages of twenty-five

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and twenty-one respectively. At one point, the age restrictions for marriage in Bavaria were
twenty-five for a man and twenty-two for a woman. Whether the Hages adhered to the local
restrictions is unclear. It is clear, however, that freedom from these restrictions in North America
was a motivation for emigration from Europe.
The impact of written or printed materials such as formularies, devotionals, and Bibles
extended beyond the significance of their content. As Margaret Bender notes, the analysis of
writing has the ability to “reveal the nature of sociopolitical relationships and inequalities”
(Bender 2010, 178). It was not only the ability to write that elevated one in their social position,
as Claude Lévi-Strauss suggested, but also simply having written or printed documents in one’s
possession that brought increased social status. This parallels what Philip Round (2010) argues
was happening among the Native American population in the nineteenth century. Literacy and
literature itself had become something more than reading and writing among Indigenous
communities in North America; books had value independent of their printed content. They
obtained cultural value as a trading object when circulated throughout Indigenous communities,
much the same as wampum had in earlier times. These exchanges solidified existing allegiances
and also forged new ones.
Literacy held similar meaning throughout Amish communities. Documents, such as the
marriage formulas mentioned above, circulated and were copied not only for the ideology that
they represented, but also the prestige they carried with them for those who could copy and own
them. One such collections of documents are the letters surrounding the controversy involving
Jacob Ammann which gave rise to the Amish movement. Copies of this set of letters are found in
numerous collections in the MC USA Archives - Goshen, including the collection of documents
associated with Friedrich Hage. The value of these documents for the Amish is the link to their

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collective past more than the content of the documents. Having a copy of these documents
validated the person’s position in his own community as well as in other communities. One can
only speculate why there are no written records linked directly to the original four families that
migrated to northern Indiana. However, it may be that the absence of such documents may say
more about these families’ place in the social order of the broader national Amish community
than about their lack of concern for recordkeeping, since most prominent Amish leaders of that
era held representative collections of the above-mentioned literature and documents in their
possession.

Livelihood
Letters such as those found in the Hage and Iutzi collections also provide insight into the
kinds of opportunities and livelihoods that were available to the Amish in North America.
Occupations such as craftsmen (Séguy 1973); tailors (Samuel Mast Collection; Levine 1997b);
confectioners (Levine 1997b); distillers (Séguy 1973; Levine 1997b; Levine 2004; Urry 2006);
hydraulic engineers (D.B. Swartzentruber Papers); medical practitioners (Séguy 1973); and
farmhands and gardeners (Samuel Mast Collection; Levine 1997b) were all considered as having
promising potential to earn an adequate living in North America. These skills, accompanied by a
strong communal impulse, aided the ability of the Amish to quickly adapt to their surroundings.
However, their innovative agricultural skills which they had developed in Europe benefited them
the most in their survival in North America.
The earthy practices included in marriage rituals as described by Kline can be extended to
include the agricultural practices of the Amish as well. For example, crops were planted, fences

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were built, and even hair was cut according to the signs of the lunar zodiac.26 The importance of
the lunar zodiac is evident in its widespread association with birth records kept in family Bibles,
which included the child’s astrological sign (Friedrich Hage Collection).27 Other related practices
predating Christianity that were brought to North America by the Amish and continue into the
present include such things as conversing with the cows and horses in the barn at midnight on
New Year’s Eve, the display of hex signs on barns, and dousing.
There was more to the agricultural practices of the Amish than the rhythmic activities of
everyday life. There was an intentional and calculated aspect to Amish agricultural practices as
well. As mentioned earlier, by the end of the eighteenth century the Amish had dispersed
throughout parts of Germany, eastern France, and into the Netherlands. However, their migration
throughout Europe was more complicated than simply forced removal. As Steven Reschley
(2000) points out, constant movement of Mennonites and Amish can be explained by several
factors. First of all, they voluntarily sought out places which would isolate them from the civil
society they held in suspicion. Secondly, they sought to establish their own autonomous
communities. Finally, they sought out places which offered new and better economic
opportunities. During their dispersal throughout Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, Anabaptists developed innovative agricultural practices involving drainage,
fertilization, and crop rotation, which resulted in increased economic status. Their presence in a
region could be recognized by observing their cultivated fields. However, Anabaptists were
prevented from owning land in some jurisdictions (Reschley 2000).
The association between Anabaptists and agriculture stemming back to their experience

26

For the Amish from the Alsace region, the signs of the zodiac were arranged
counterclockwise rather than in the more common clockwise arrangement (see Keyser 1981).
27
See also Christian Yoder Family Tree (1849).

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in Europe has been well documented. In particular, three principal sources have provided
significant contributions to the understanding of the relationship between Anabaptists and
agriculture. The first contribution comes from the Anabaptist historian Ernst Correll (1991) and
his work on Mennonites in the Palatinate region of Germany, in which he develops what he
terms the “Mennonite Agricultural Model.” The model outlines the technological innovations
developed by Anabaptist famers during the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries. These
innovations included hydraulic engineering feats of drainage and irrigation, timber clearing,
meadow management, forage legume production, intensive livestock production, and the
application of manure, which allowed Anabaptists to transform marginal and fallow land into
productive agricultural ground.
The second contribution comes from the French sociologist Jean Séguy (1973), who built
on the work of Correll. Séguy documents the social aspects of agriculture from which the
innovative agricultural practices of French and Palatinate Anabaptist farmers developed. First of
all, because of their sectarian status, the Anabaptists were marginalized and prohibited from
participating in the commons and three-field rotation system of agriculture practiced by
mainstream society. This enabled them to experiment with innovative agricultural practices
centered on the production of forage legumes.
Second, their sectarian status prevented Anabaptists from owning any land. Therefore,
they were forced to work as tenants for large landholders who came to prefer the Anabaptists
because of their superior skill. Séguy notes the distinctive practices obvious to the observer:
It is a remarkable fact that the observers' amazement at the agricultural efficiency
of the Brethren is coupled with an admiration for their competence in cultivating
large areas. Thus in 1780, the subdelegate of Wissembourg wrote: "There is no lord
over large possessions who does not wish to have Anabaptists as his farmers, to
whom he would give preference even in return for less rent." His colleague from
Belfort added some insight to this remark: "They manage the estates of lords and

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nobles who prefer them above all others because they profit more from them and
because they pay their fees more precisely." And he notes the difficulty which the
owners of large domains experience in finding "among the inhabitants of the
country" people capable of "managing farms of a certain importance." One can only
entrust them, he says, to the Anabaptists. (Séguy 1973, 184)
Whereas families in mainstream society normally possessed minimal livestock due to the fact
that they needed to share the common pasture, Anabaptists who were the tenants for landlords
with large landholdings were able to develop intensive livestock management systems.
However, even after the French Revolution when land ownership was made available to
Anabaptists, many of them found it beneficial to continue operating as tenants, even though they
could have afforded to purchase land. There were several reasons for this. One, inheritance laws
required land to be equally divided between the estate owner’s heirs, thus fragmenting land in
such a way that made farming prohibitive of being profitable (Cole 1977; Séguy 1982). This led
to the second benefit of remaining tenants as they were allowed to sell excess crops and livestock
for a profit, whereby they were able to accumulate wealth without the burdens of landownership.
This, however, led Anabaptists to adopt a political posture whereby they came to view
themselves as subjects of wealthy lords, clergy, nobles, and bourgeois who coveted their skills
and talents as farmers to care for their estates (Séguy 1973; Séguy 1982; Nolt 2015).
Third, Séguy emphasizes the way in which family structures of Anabaptists contributed
to their agricultural success. The large families which were common among Anabaptists resulted
in an efficient labor force, giving them an advantage over other tenants by reducing reliance on
hired hands and keeping income within the family. Furthermore, this structure was strengthened
by extended family households where everyone from grandparent to child contributed to the
farming operation. At times these relations included cooperation between in-laws, strengthening
the labor force even further.

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A final contribution to the agricultural practices of the Amish is the work of the biologists
Stinner et al. (1992), who emphasize the symbiotic relationship between legume production and
the cultural sustainability of the Amish. The reintroduction of nitrogen-fixating alfalfa into crop
rotation allowed for intensive livestock production, resulting in excess manure, which became a
valuable source of fertilizer to improve soil conditions for the production of crops. Stinner et al.
suggest that the sustainable agricultural methods of Anabaptists became a form of cultural
sustainability which they carried with them to North America. According to Stinner et al., these
innovative agricultural practices shaped the collective and individual world view of the Amish,
meaning “those deep lying assumptions and norms of belief about the nature of the external (and
internal) world, existence and humanity that govern what is socially acceptable and unacceptable
behavior” (ibid., 245). They proceed to say that world views color every area of a culture’s life,
even their “selection and rejection of agricultural management practices” (ibid., 245). The Amish
were not identified solely by their religious beliefs; they were also identified by their agricultural
practices.
The documents associated with Friedrich Hage demonstrate his familiarity and
participation in these agricultural practices. Between their marriage in 1818 and their departure
for North America in 1826, Friedrich and Veronica Hage worked and lived as tenants and/or
leaseholders on several different estates in Bavaria. As he was considering immigration to Brazil,
Hage collected recommendations from the estate owners attesting to his good work, probably to
document his trustworthiness for the Brazilian chargé de’ affaires, Georg Anton de Schaeffer
(Friedrich Hage Collection). Hage explains the potential awaiting the Amish agriculturalist in
North America when he writes, “If a man has youngsters or his own people, he soon has a nice
farm. For the income of the land is very slight. For it is not as in Europe, but menservants and

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hired girls are expensive” (Samuel Mast Collection, file 7). This demonstrates the ongoing
dependence of the Amish on their families and community for the success of their agricultural
practices in North America. This is particularly important because it was very expensive to hire
help to do the work on the farm, and the ability to keep the labor in-house gave them an
advantage over their neighbors who were more apt to have settled in an area independently rather
than as a community. Furthermore, Hage’s comment shows the advantage hard work in North
America had over Europe in that the work resulted in a man owning his own farm, rather than
the profit ending up in the hands of the landowner.
These studies demonstrate the continuity of agricultural practices the Amish brought with
them from the Swiss, Palatinate, and Alsace regions of Europe which aided them in their ability
to establish new homes on the North American continent (Kollmorgen 1943; Stinner et al. 1992).
These practices included a mixture of traditional lore and innovative technology. For the Amish,
it was the particularity of agricultural practices that rooted them in the world, not the particularity
of place. They could set up shop anywhere and still be at home. This is significant because the
Amish also identify themselves as a religious diaspora in which the meaning of place is found in
the vicissitude and ephemerality of placelessness. The agricultural practices described above
sustained diaspora, but diaspora also sustained agriculture. For the Amish, agriculture and
diasporic religion had become dovetailed to the extent that it had become difficult to distinguish
where one ended and the other began. Neither one depended on the particularity of place. Thus,
the same skills and abilities Amish farmers had employed in their endeavors of land reclamation
in France and Germany—a result in line with what the United States commissioner had in mind
in the Great Lakes region—when applied to such places as northern Indiana resulted in landscape
transformation.

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Health considerations were also taken into account in decisions on where to settle
(Levine 1997b), along with available food sources. Letters of correspondence provide
information held by the Amish in North America and communicated to those who remained in
Europe. In one letter in which a mother writes to her two sons, Daniel and Christian
Swartzentruber in Pennsylvania, thanking them for the offer of the roast bear, she “thinks that
roast goose would taste better to you, too, than your disgusting bear, where you have to risk
being eaten” (Schmidt-Lange 2002, 9).
More importantly, Anabaptists were known throughout Europe for their skill and
knowledge in human medicine and veterinary practices. These practices drew from a mixture of
herbal remedies, book training, and methods passed down from one generation to the next. In his
essay “God’s Spirit and a Theology for Living,” David Kline (2000), an Old Order Amish author
and organic farmer from Holmes County, Ohio—the same community in which Friedrich Hage
had lived and written one hundred and sixty years previously—writes reflexively: “When pagan
Europe was Christianized, great efforts were made to eradicate every practice of pagan or earth
worship to create a distinct division between Christian and pagan practices. Since Anabaptist
forbears were so rural and so closely tied to the land that gave them sustenance, some ‘earthy’
practices survived in their lives and rituals” (ibid., 63-64). Kline links the role of the Amish
Braucher, or healer, to pre-Christian religion in Europe. The Braucher’s methods and formulas,
sometimes called powwowing, were used in cures for both humans and animals.28 Already in
Europe these practices were seen as being devious and associated with sorcery; perhaps, as the
French sociologist Jean Séguy (1973) suggests, because of their marginalized position in society.

28

My maternal grandfather, a well-known Braucher in the Amish community in northern
Indiana, used such common items as eggs and strings, along with chants passed down through
the generations, to cure common sicknesses and pains.

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These practices continue in contemporary Amish communities; however, because the origin and
details of these practices are shrouded with ambiguity, some culturally progressive Amish and
Anabaptist groups view these practices with suspicion, much as they were viewed in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Europe.
If one considers the limits of medical knowledge available at the time these practices
emerged, it becomes possible to understand how the role of the Braucher developed. Before the
advance of Western medicine, parents no doubt cared for their children as any parent would
today. An ill or suffering child moves a parent to seek the assistance of those who hold the
knowledge to alleviate the pain or suffering of the child. Because the role of the Braucher was
passed on to subsequent generations through the eldest child—man or woman—the intimate
knowledge of these healing practices were ensured to continue through parent-child
apprenticeships.
In his work on Mennonites and Amish in the Alsace region of France and the Palatinate
region of Germany, Séguy records the skepticism of a French priest regarding a local Anabaptist
Braucher in the nineteenth century:
Even today many Anabaptists of the Montbéliard area use abracadabra
practices to heal man or beast. This is the way one of them operated for a sprained
ankle some eight years ago. Between eleven and twelve o'clock at night he came to
the patient's bed, opened a book of spells from which he read a few cabalistic
formulas, while touching the injured foot from time to time with the tip of his
outstretched hand, so as to form a cross; then in a grave and cavernous voice, he
continued his reading beside the kitchen fireplace. In this manner he operated for
one half-hour, sometimes near the patient, sometimes at the fireside. The healing
was not supposed to take place until a second, similar operation was concluded,
after which the fee would have been 50 francs, but he was told not to come back.
This same fellow, to cure a horse in Mignavillers, had hung around the
horse's neck a small bag with a cloth lining which he had prepared. The owner, who
did not dare to go out with such a contraption around his courser, had enough
curiosity to examine the composition of the remedy. He found a kernel of oats
wrapped in sawdust. (Tournier, as quoted in Séguy 1973, 213-21)

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Whether Hage was considered a Braucher is unclear. However, he did have in his possession a
number of healing formulas and recipes for healing. For example, one recipe specifies how to
cure gangrene:29
A plaster to remove mortification
1) take 6 hen eggs an boil them in hot ashes until they/are right
2) hard then take the yellow of the eggs and fry them in a gill of lard
3) untill they are quite black then put a handful of ----______ with it and
4) afterwards filten it through a cloth when this is done add a gill
To remove bruises and pains
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)

Bruse thou shalt not _____
Bruse thou shalt not Sweat
Bruse thus shalt not run
No more than vergin Mary shall
fring forth another Son
3 times

For infants who were teething:
1) For children cutting teeth without pain
2) Boil the brains of a rabbit and rub the gums of children with it
3) For bleeding count backward from 50 till you get to 3.
(Samuel Mast Collection, file 5)
Over two dozen of these recipes and formulas are found in the Hage file. Additional
healing formulas can be found throughout MC USA Archives - Goshen, indicating the
prominence of these “earthy practices” among the Amish. Another indication of their
significance is the fact that the original manuscripts containing the formulas do not accompany
the translations in the collection as do most of the other manuscripts.30 In the original letter
written by Warren Miller in 1961, inquiring whether the archive had an interest in the collection

29

The spelling is left as it is found in the archival collection since the originals are no
longer associated with the collection and therefore could not be translated by the author.
30
It may be that some of these formulas originated with and were borrowed from Native
peoples as those found in the Yost Miller Collection (box 2, file 72; box 2, file 73) in which
castor oil is the primary active ingredient used in a remedy to alleviate birth pains and
rheumatism.

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of documents, Miller expresses his interest in retaining or borrowing some of the letters for a
local history event. It may be that these healing formulas had retained enough importance, or at
least interest, over time that they were withheld by the family.
It is also apparent that Hage had an interest in experimental Western medicine. Hage held
in his possession at least one book on medical and surgical procedures, although its identity has
been lost. Séguy notes the methodical approach taken by Anabaptist practitioners of medicine,
even though they were not founded on Western methods of medicine. The methodology may
have been influenced by such books as were in the possession of Nicholas Augsburger, a
member of an Anabaptist family noted for their healing skills.31 Apparently, provisions were
made for official titles such as “surgeon” or “health officer” by the French government during
the French Revolution for those who did not have formal university training in medicine and yet
demonstrated an ability to practice medicine effectively. In the case of one such Anabaptist,
Jacob Augsburger, in the Vosges region of France, Séguy notes that he carried the title
“indifferently” (Séguy 1973, 210). This may help explain why Hage was given the title of
assistant surgeon: the Bavarian government may have authorized him to practice medicine in his
residence without any formal training.
The intermingling of medicinal knowledge passed down through generations and
knowledge from Western medicine was not viewed as being incompatible by the Amish. The

31

The long title of these German books were: The prompt and sure physician, or new
book of medicine in which all the sicknesses of the human body are clearly and exactly described
in alphabetical order as well as the sure and rapid way of curing them with the help of God,
including the personal observations of the author as well as the long experience of several
doctors famous throughout the world, explained in a new way for people who live in the country,
far from physicians, and for the amateurs of the noble art of medicine, who will find in it
numerous advantages, and a related book, Theatrum botanicum, or new book of plants, in which
all the plants produced by the four parts of the earth are exactly and completely described, with
the indication of their curative properties, etc. (Séguy 1973, 211).

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hybridization of medical knowledge grounded in herbal and folk remedies developed in Europe
accompanied Anabaptists to North America. Furthermore, medical knowledge and expertise
were not held exclusively by men, but were found among women as well and became an
influence in migration, as will be shown in Chapter 7. Though the Amish continued these
practices, they would need to develop and adapt their practices in their new environments.

Conclusion
The historiography of the migration and settlement of Anabaptist groups such the Amish
has most often focused on the development and flow of differing doctrinal positions. However,
as demonstrated in this chapter, the experience of the Amish in Europe prior to their immigration
to North America was multifaceted in these respects. The lives of the Amish were filled with
ambiguity. On the one hand, the Amish were innovative, progressive, and modern in their
approach to such areas as language use, medicine, agriculture, and religion. On the other hand,
these seemingly progressive practices were conditioned by practices passed down through the
generations which predated, if not Christianity, at least the emergence of Anabaptism.
In addition, Amish settlement was fraught with ambiguities of personhood and
community. Doctrinally, the Amish saw themselves as a peaceful people who valued and
respected human life. Yet their construction of personhood and boundaries of community proved
otherwise. Practice such as the Meidung which ostracized members of their own community
which had transgressed the Ordnung defined clear boundaries of who was a part of and who was
not a part of the community. Devotional literature helped justify and reiterate Amish attitudes
held towards those in conflict with their own beliefs or interests. This, combined with living on
the margins of society, created a world in which the Amish viewed places as being temporary,

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yet laden with meaning; new, yet invoking the old; unfamiliar, yet filled with potential. The
opportunity to create geographic separation was accompanied by the promise of economic
success. These uncertainties faced by the Amish in North America were brought on by a
combination of their pacifist ideologies, their value of literary skills, and their earthy experience
in Europe. Together, these factors would have a direct influence on how the Amish perceived
and interacted with the inhabitants of the new environments they encountered in North America.

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CHAPTER 5
“WHOEVER GOES FARTHER BACK”:
MIGRATION, CULTURE CONTACT, AND KNOWLEDGE
Introduction
From their beginning, Anabaptists were a people who were on the move. At times their
migration had been propelled by oppression related to their religious beliefs, and at other times it
was motivated by economic opportunity. Anabaptist scholarship on migration is exhaustive in
regard to locations, dates, and individuals, and for the most part, there has been an awareness of
the larger political contexts in which these migrations have taken place. In retrospect, some
Anabaptist scholars have reflected upon their past in terms of diaspora, comparing their
experience to that of the Jewish exile from the land of Israel to Assyria and Babylon during the
sixth and fifth centuries BCE (Weaver 2008; Loewen 2006). It was not until Anabaptists began
to settle places in North America that they began to develop a sense of long-term relationship
with the lands they inhabited. Germany, Switzerland, France, and Holland were looked upon
longingly as the Alt Landt, or Old Land, not to be returned to on a permanent basis, but simply
with nostalgia.
In North America, the Amish would encounter a new and unfamiliar environment,
including the presence of an Indigenous population. The interaction between Anabaptists and
Indigenous groups during the settlement period remains an area largely unexplored outside of
oral tradition, folklore, and legend. This is true both in Europe, where Anabaptist transplants
encountered and interacted with the Nogais on the Russian Steppes, as well as in North America,

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where they have lived alongside Native communities since their arrival on the continent. 32 Why
these relationships have remained unexplored is as important a question as what actually
happened during these periods of continuous silence.
The answer to such questions can often be explained in the misinterpretations of both the
historical figures involved in these interactions and the historian attempting to write such
histories. One example of such a misinterpretation is the Anabaptists’ view of land tenure, which
created tension as they encountered the Indigenous understandings of land tenure. While
Anabaptists viewed land as personal property that could be owned, purchased, and sold, Native
people saw themselves as belonging to the land, being obligated to remain upon it and care for it
as their ancestors had before them. In his contribution to “The Mennonite Experience in
America” series Land, Piety and Peoplehood, the Anabaptist historian Richard MacMaster notes
that the first Mennonite colony in America, the Germantown settlement, was merely following
the “normal lines of trade, empire, and migration” in their immigration to America (MacMaster
1985, 31-32). Furthermore, Theron Schlabach notes that Mennonites and Amish were near
enough behind the removal of Indigenous peoples from their lands to reap the benefits of the
cheap land left behind (Schlabach 1988). Their attraction and pursuit of cheap land coincided
with the displacement of Native Americans.
The Hage letter introduced in Chapter 4 gives us a sense of these misunderstandings
which had developed around differing views of land tenure. In his letter, Hage states, “I bought
80 acres for 825 florins … that I could now sell it [ … ]33 But whoever goes farther back into the

32

For notable exceptions to this, see Staples (2000), Good (1998; 2001), and Reimer

(2002).
33

The context would suggest that the missing text indicates that land bought earlier could
be sold for a profit later.

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country can buy land cheaply from the government, a dollar and a quarter or two florins, fiftyseven kroner for an acre” (Samuel Mast Collection, file 7). Hage’s comments illustrate the
concept of private land ownership which did not require the consent of other members of his
group and differed significantly from Indigenous understandings of land tenure as exemplified
by Awbenawben’s speech highlighted in Chapter 3. In this chapter I trace the migration and
movement of the Amish which led to their settlement in northern Indiana. The final portion of
this chapter sketches out the varying views of land tenure competing for control in the Great
Lakes region during the settlement period.

Migration
Though the movement of the Amish in Europe was unpredictable, they remained largely
within the regions in and around Germany. Although there were concentrations of Amish in the
Palatinate and Alsace regions as well as the Canton of Bern in Switzerland, there were no large
Amish communities as eventually would develop in North America. There were those Amish
who relocated in Volynia in Russia; Holland; and Austria. Eventually, members from each of
these groups would find their way to America. Amish migration within Europe occurred for
various reasons. A primary factor had to do with the oppression they endured due to their
religious beliefs. Due to their socio-religious stance which prohibited them from participating in
the economic and political processes of the broader society, few Amish owned the land they
lived and worked on. Yet, their reputation as skilled and innovative agricultural workers, as
discussed in Chapter 4, led many nobles to seek out Amish families to manage the agricultural
affairs and operations on their estates (Séguy 1973; Crowley 1978). The appeal of landownership
in North America became a leading factor in the decision for many Amish families to immigrate

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to America.
It is worth mentioning here that there were Mennonites who took a path of immigration
to North America unrelated to that of the Amish and Mennonites from Germany, France, and
Switzerland. This alternate path of immigration involved Mennonites who had settled in Prussia,
where they were privilege to certain economic and social freedoms contingent on their
willingness to contribute to the general welfare of society and also refrain from proselytizing.
However, by the latter part of the eighteenth century, the Mennonites in Prussia grew uneasy
regarding their terms of freedom under the rule of Friedrich II. In 1785 Catherine the Great of the
newly formed Russian kingdom drew up an agreement that allowed the Mennonites controlled
autonomy, and by 1789, the first Mennonites had settled on the steppes in New Russia. In
Russia, Mennonites enjoyed relative prosperity until the latter half of the nineteenth century
when the Russian government abolished their privileged status, threatening their control of local
affairs. During the 1870s, Mennonites in Russia explored the possibility and began settling on
the Manitoba prairies of Canada. The migration of Mennonites out of Russia to the Canadian and
United States prairies continued throughout the twentieth century (Urry 2006).
Initially, Europeans were drawn to North America by the economic appeal of the fur
trade. There were rich fisheries along the Atlantic coastal regions as well, but for the most part,
the struggle between European political forces for control over resources in northeastern North
America was related to the fur trade. Although various European powers grappled for control, by
the middle of the seventeenth century England had gained control of the region south of the St.
Lawrence River, while the French controlled the fur trade north of the St. Lawrence River. The
fur trade was built on a reciprocity between European traders and Native peoples who could
supply them with peltries (White 1991). In return, the Native populations came to rely on the

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trade items they received as payment. In this way the Indigenous peoples in North America were
able to maintain a certain degree of cultural autonomy, even though it cost them their economic
independence (Richter 1990).
However, there were differences between the territory that the French controlled and the
territory that the British controlled tied directly to the land. Except for a few areas in southern
Quebec, the coastal areas in the Maritimes, and southern Ontario (Jones 1942; Wynn 1979;
Winson 1985; Desbarats 1992; Acheson 1993), the land and climate north of the St. Lawrence
Seaway, controlled by the French, was dominated by long and harsh winters, and soil for the
most part was deemed unsuitable for cultivation. To the south, the British soon learned that the
land under their control was prime for cultivation. This difference translated into variations in
relations between European empires and Indigenous peoples in their respective regions in North
America. The French continued to rely on alliances with Indigenous peoples to control the vast
geography needed to support the fur trade. However, what the British needed most for their
economic success from Native peoples was their land, not their furs. The British also needed
settlers to cultivate those lands, a situation which resulted in the ongoing dispossession of the
Native peoples’ land.
In 1680 William Penn received Pennsylvania from Charles II, King of England, as
payment for a debt owed to Penn’s father. Penn, an adherent to Quakerism, which shared a
pacifist ideology with Anabaptism, set about to establish a peaceable kingdom in Pennsylvania
which would attempt to regard the Indigenous peoples’ rights in a more equitable way than that
of the British government. Penn had crossed paths with Anabaptists in the Rhinelands of
Germany in 1678 during a preaching tour with George Fox, the founder of Quakerism, and
reasoned Anabaptists would make a valuable contribution to his political experiment in

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Pennsylvania (Bronner 1962; Barbour 1964). Upon Penn’s invitation, Anabaptists began a
community that was concentrated in southeastern Pennsylvania. The first recorded immigration
by an Anabaptist to North America was a Mennonite in 1683. At the invitation of one of William
Penn’s land agents, Jan Lensen, a Mennonite from Krefeld, Germany, arrived on the Concord in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on October 6, 1683. Lensen’s migration led to the first Mennonite
community in North America which sprang up in Germantown, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania (MacMaster 1985).
Lensen’s emigration from Europe to North America occurred nearly thirteen years before
the Amish division in Europe took place. It was not until the early part of the eighteenth century
that the first Amish families began to migrate to North America. Using William Crowley’s
(1978) model of Amish migration, the Amish would immigrate to North America in two separate
time periods. The first wave of Amish immigration, involving approximately five hundred
individuals, began during the second decade of the eighteenth century and continued until around
1750. With the onset of the Seven Years’ War, the flow of Amish immigration would stall and
slow to a trickle between 1750 and 1817 before it resumed again after the conclusion of the War
of 1812. From 1817 to 1861, nearly fifteen hundred Amish came to North America from
different parts of Europe (ibid.). The people from the last migration did not always settle in
previously established Amish settlements, but often chose to find new places to begin their own
communities.
While the exact date of the first Amish emigrants to North America is unknown,34 it is
fairly certain that the first Amish immigrants were among those responding to the prosperity and
peace promised by Penn to those who would settle in his Quaker colony of Pennsylvania. The

34

See Beachy (1954), and Stoltzfus (1954).

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first documented arrival of the Amish is connected with the ship the Charming Nancy in 1737,
when a settlement was established in Berks County, Pennsylvania (Gingerich and Kreider 2007).
Although researchers disagree on the identity of the first Amish immigrants to North America,
by 1749 many Amish names begin to appear on tax and land records (Stoltzfus 1954). Among
the names included in the county records are family names such as Hochstetter, Byler, Yoder,
Kauffman, Mast, Naffziger, Hertzler, and Zuck. These names came to define the Amish
communities in North America heading into the nineteenth century.
Penn’s experiment lasted until the mid-eighteenth century, when the rest of the British
colonies felt Pennsylvania was a threat to their security because of Pennsylvania’s unwillingness
to participate in defending its borders against the French and their allies. As the Quaker
experiment in Pennsylvania began to disintegrate in the mid-eighteenth century, Mennonites and
Amish began to spread into Virginia and western Pennsylvania (Frantz 1998; Stievermann
2011). The move westward was driven by two factors. First, after the Seven Years’ War,
pressure from Euro-american settlers prompted the British to open up land through the Treaty of
Stanwix (1768), in which the Iroquois ceded the land in western Pennsylvania to the Penn
family. In exchange, the Iroquois received assurance that their lands in western New York would
be left alone. However, the land in Pennsylvania ceded by the Iroquois was inhabited by the
Lenape, Mingo, and Shawnee tribes, and not by the Iroquois.
Second, because of their high regard for Penn and the king of England resulting from
their joint efforts in the settlement of Pennsylvania, many Anabaptists, including some Amish,
remained Loyalists during the Revolutionary War and attempted to isolate themselves
geographically from the influence of the United States government in its rebellion against the
King of England. The land made available through the Treaty of Stanwix offered the Amish an

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opportunity to demonstrate their allegiance to the Penn family and distance themselves
geographically from the ascendancy of the United States government (Fair 2006).
However, even before the Treaty of Stanwix had been concluded, the Amish had joined
other settlers in the push westward. By 1767 an Amish settlement had begun in what would later
become Somerset County, Pennsylvania (Beachy 1954). This move predated land being open for
settlement in this region by two years. The push into western Pennsylvania by the Amish had
begun, and by 1800 the United States Census listed fifty-one families in Somerset County,
Pennsylvania (ibid.). Three distinct, though interrelated, Amish communities formed in Somerset
County. They included the “River Church” in the southern part of the county along the Maryland
border; the “Glades” community in the central part of the county around Berlin, Pennsylvania;
and the “Conemaugh” community in the northern part of the county near Johnstown,
Pennsylvania (Miller 2014).
In 1809, a number of Amish families from the Somerset region began to migrate into
eastern Ohio. The initial families came from the River Church, but they were soon followed by
families from the Glades and Conemaugh communities as well. Initially, these new settlements
were confined to the counties of Holmes and Tuscarawas. Except for a brief lull in 1813 due to
uncertainties related to the War of 1812, there was a steady flow of immigration by the Amish
back and forth between the communities in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, and the newly
established communities in Ohio (ibid.).
According to Crowley’s model of immigration, the second wave of Amish immigrants
began around 1817 and continued on until 1861. This migration was made up primarily of Amish
from the Alsatian and Palatinate regions of France and Germany, but also included those who
came from the regions of Bavaria and Austria. Many of the Amish from this second immigration

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chose to start their own settlements rather than join existing communities, so that by end of the
1830s there were Amish communities throughout western Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and
southern Ontario (Gingerich and Kreider 2007). Up until 1840, settlements established by
descendants from the initial migration of Amish extended only into the eastern portions of Ohio.
It was not until the latter part of the 1830s that this group gave serious consideration to settling
deeper into the Great Lakes region.
Friedrich Hage, the author of the letters previously introduced, his wife Veronica (Esch)
Hage, and their two daughters were part of the second migration of Amish to North America.
Much of what we know about the Hage family prior to their emigration is contained in
documents which were kept in a family Bible the Hages brought with them from Europe. These
documents include birth, marriage, and death records; records documenting places Hage worked
and lived; passports; and correspondence detailing the period between the time Friedrich and
Veronica were married and their migration to North America.
Friedrich Hage’s plan to immigrate to North America developed over the course of
several years. In May of 1824 the congregational leaders at Forsthoff, an estate in Bavaria on
which Hage and his family worked and lived, wrote a letter of recommendation for Hage, age
thirty; his wife Veronica Esch,35 age twenty-six; and their two daughters: Elisabeth, age six, and
Barbara, age four. Hage’s passport, dated June 16, 1825, describes him as “not very tall, blond
hair, high forehead, light eyebrows, blue eyes, large nose, red beard, pointed chin, long face, and
healthy complexion” (Friedrich Hage Collection 1819-1997). Upon arriving in Hamburg,
Germany, where they anticipated to set out for North America, they were met with unexpected

35

The original spelling in Holland, where the family came from, was Oesch. For this
research, the later spelling of Esch will be used.

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setbacks, delays, and, perhaps, distractions, and did not immigrate until two years later. During
this two-year period, Hage explored and seriously considered the possibility of immigrating to
Brazil with a group of people in consultation with Georg Anton de Schaeffer, the Brazilian
chargé de’ affaires. Even though Hage nor other Anabaptists ended up immigrating to Brazil
during this period, it demonstrates that some Amish did consider other places for settlement
besides North America. During this period, Hage and Veronica also experienced the birth and
death of two sons. Finally, on June 29, 1826, Hage and his family boarded a brig, the Hibernia,
headed for the United States, where nearly two months later on August 18, 1826, they landed in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (ibid.).
Upon arrival in North America, the Hage family settled in Germantown, Pennsylvania
(Correll 1960). However, by 1830 the price of land in Germantown had inflated to between
eighty and one hundred dollars per acre, a price Hage deemed unaffordable, causing him to look
farther west for more affordable land on which to settle (Samuel Mast Papers, file 7). In 1831,
Hage purchased a piece of land in Holmes County, Ohio, for four dollars and thirty cents an acre.
However, as indicated in Hage’s letter, he was aware that land “two to three hundred hours
distance” west of Ohio, which includes Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Iowa, could be purchased
“cheaply from the [United States] government” for “a dollar and twenty-five cents an acre”
(ibid.).
Before immigrating to North America, Hage had served as a tenant on various estates in
Bavaria and Germany. Upon his arrival in Ohio, Hage took up the vocation of farming.
However, Hage’s interests were not confined to agriculture. According to some sources, Hage
may have served as an assistant surgeon in Napoleon’s army while in Europe (Hagey and Hagey
1951). Whether he did so as an alternative to serving on the front lines—as inscription was in

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effect during that period—or if he simply viewed himself as possessing valuable medical
knowledge which benefited his community, one thing is certain: Hage did have more than a
passing interest in medical practices, as shown in Chapter 4. In Europe, Hage had also been a
“minister of the word” (Jeschke 1965, 7). After arriving in Ohio, he served as a bishop in the
Amish church, and over time his influence as an Amish bishop spread beyond Ohio to include
communities scattered throughout the southern Great Lakes region, including southern Canada,
Pennsylvania, Illinois, Iowa, and Indiana.
In Europe, the distinction between the Amish and Mennonites had evidently subsided by
the time the Hage family emigrated. In a letter from Hage to his brother Jacob in Germany, Hage
wrote: “There are also many large congregations of our kind of people here. They are called
Amish here” (Samuel Mast Collection, file 7). Apparently, in Germany the distinctions between
the two groups had diminished over time to such an extent that in Bavaria where Hage came
from, they no longer referred to themselves as Amish, but had reverted to identify with the larger
Mennonite population. Even in the United States, these differences may not have been as
pronounced as they once were, as the Amish and Mennonites often settled in close proximity to
each other.

Culture Contact
Even as Hage’s letter, introduced in the previous chapter, provided a glimpse into the
influence Europe had on the Amish emigration, it also provides a glimpse into the kinds of
resources the Amish had access to in helping them build a knowledge of potential places for
settlement in North America. This includes the kind of land being sought after for settlement,
where to find that land, and the potential risks and benefits associated with settling these

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unfamiliar places. For example, in his letter Hage makes mention that the land was purchased by
the United States government from Indians. A literal translation of this passage reads: “But
whoever goes farther back into the country can buy land cheaply from the government, a dollar
and a quarter or two florins, fifty-seven kroner for an acre. But it is nothing except forest as it
was purchased from the Indians or wild people” (Samuel Mast Collection, file 7). This seems to
be a clear indication that the Amish were aware of the treaty processes taking place between the
United States government and the various Indigenous groups. However, a more accurate
translation of the last phrase reveals Amish attitudes toward the Indigenous peoples they were
encountering. The term “wild people” is translated from the German Wilden Menschen which
Hage used in the original manuscript. Although “wild men” is the literal translation of Wilden
Menschen a more accurate rendering of the term in English is “savage.” In German, the term
Wilden is normally reserved to describe non-human behavior of undomesticated animals. The
term Wilden Menschen Hage uses in his letter dehumanizes the Indigenous population, much as
the terms used in the Martyrs’ Mirror (Bracht 1837) dehumanized those who oppressed
Anabaptists in Europe. The Amish were not averse to employing language that would devalue
the personhood of those who opposed them or were not a part of their community.
Both the Hage letters and the Jüngerich letters introduced in Chapter 4 corroborate that
the Amish had some sense of the processes involving the United States government
dispossessing Indigenous groups of their land. As previously mentioned, Hage’s letter notes that
the United States government had purchased the land from the Indians. In a letter written in 1822
to his mother, brother, and sister in Europe, the young Jüngerich writes concerning the status of
the land available for sale in North America: “Not long ago the sovereign nation of Indians sold
a large tract of land. At first they are willing to sell, only if they receive immediate payment. If

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paid in full, they never return to reclaim the land. But if the land is forcefully taken, they try at
every opportunity to resort to shameful atrocities. If not provoked, Indians are careful to abide by
their laws and are honest people” (Levine et al. 1996, 6). Jüngerich’s comments on the
“sovereign nation of Indians” as though there were only one overarching political entity which
governed Indigenous peoples indicates the limited knowledge the Amish had of Indigenous
culture. As pointed out earlier, there were many Indigenous communities who viewed
themselves as autonomous political entities. The view that there was only one sovereign nation
of Indians was certainly a sentiment that was influenced by the United States government, who
favored to view the Indigenous population in this way. This sentiment led directly to the
“atrocities” committed by Indians mentioned by Jüngerich, which he acknowledges were
provoked by land being “forcefully taken” from them. This passage is a clear indication that the
Amish were aware of the injustices being endured by Indigenous peoples. Whether or not they
felt any remorse or empathy in regard to the situation, or simply assumed and accepted their
demise as an inevitable consequence of European advance upon the land, is not clear in
Jüngerich’s letter (ibid.).
Amish interactions with Indigenous peoples began to take shape as far back as the Seven
Years’ War. These interactions were shrouded by a lack of understanding during this initial
phase of immigration and migration. Official removal of Indigenous peoples from their lands by
European governments did not mean complete removal. At the very least, remnants of displaced
groups remained behind to carry on a way of life that had been in place for centuries, and in
some instances, millenniums. Furthermore, these lifeways had left an indelible impact on the
land to which Indigenous identity was closely tied. For the complete removal and erasure of
Native presence from the land, Native landscapes needed to be transformed into settled places.

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Otherwise, the former Indigenous world would persist, reminding Europeans of the land’s
rightful owners. In spite of these efforts, the Indigenous world was never completely erased.
Archival data suggests that the Amish were at the forefront of these efforts of erasure.
Being enticed by cheap land which had only recently become available due to Indian removal,
the Amish were often involved in ongoing interactions between Native communities for an
extended period of time after official removal in many of the places they settled (Schlabach
2007). Although the Amish may not have viewed themselves at the forefront of forced removal
of Indigenous peoples from their lands, the “land grabber” (MacMaster 1985, 30-31) tendencies
of the Amish did invoke irritation and anger in Native communities against the Amish.
Take for instance the situation during the Seven Years’ War in southeastern Pennsylvania
where widespread fear broke out among European settlers. In 1757 Colonel Weisser, the
commander of several forts in southeastern Pennsylvania, received a report that a number of
settlers had been killed or taken as prisoners by the Lenni Lenape in the region. Among those
listed are a “Highstealers wife and one Child Killed and scalped[,] himself and 4 Children taken
Captivity} in Sept ͬ 1757 in Barn [sic] Township” (“List of Pennsylvania Settlers” 1908, 312). In
a similar report to Colonel Weisser, mention is made that on “Sept ͬ 20 ͭ ͪ 1757 Jacob Houghstetter
and Family} 5 Killed—1Wounded" (ibid., 317). Five years later, in a petition to James
Hamilton, governor of Pennsylvania, to gain the freedom of his two sons, Jacob Hockstetter36
pleaded:
That about five years ago your Petitioner with 2 children were taken prisoners and
his wife and two children were killed by Indians, that one of the said Children who
is still Prisoner is named Joseph, is about 18 years old, and Christian is about 16
years and a half old. That his House and Improvements were totally ruined and
destroyed. That your Petitioner understands that neither of his Children are brought
down, but the Embassador of King Kastaleacola, who has one of his Children is
36

Hockstetter is the spelling as recorded in the petition.

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now here. (Quoted in Stoltzfus 1954, 241)
Though the dates, names, and report of casualties of these accounts vary, it is clear that they refer
to the same incident and Amish family: the family of Jacob Hochstetler. As will be shown later,
this account is well known even among most contemporary Amish families, reaching near
legendary status, and in spite of the ambiguity in the details, is a major source of Amish identity
in North America.
There were other similar reports of Anabaptists who were the target of attacks by Native
peoples, including a Mennonite pastor by the name of John Roads, his wife, and three sons in
1764 (MacMaster 1985). When these events are recounted, they are often framed by historians
and storytellers in terms of Indigenous groups being incited by competing European
governments to strike fear into settlers in hopes that settlers would remove from a particular area
for the right to claim territory (Hochstetler 1912). Such an account leaves no room on the part of
Indigenous groups involved for any concern regarding their own interests. As MacMaster (1985)
points out, land, rather than personal hostility, was at the source of Indigenous irritation toward
settlers. Relations between the Amish and Indigenous groups were more complicated than they
appear to have been, and were fraught with misunderstanding.
The issue of land tenure was a major source of irritation affecting relations between
settlers and Indigenous peoples. The vast, forested landscapes interspersed with Indigenous
villages may have appeared to be unoccupied, or at least unclaimed, by Euro-american settler
standards which adhered to clearly demarcated boundaries of land ownership. This in turn was
linked to a lack of understanding on the part of settlers and European powers of how political
units functioned among various Indigenous groups. While there were ethnic associations based
on shared culture and language, these ethnic groups were not organized as a tribe or nation led by

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a single chief, as often portrayed in history textbooks. The notion of Indian tribes or nations was
a matter of convenience for the European powers in treating with Native groups. The political
unit of Indigenous peoples whereby decisions were made, particularly in the agricultural area of
the Northeast, often lay at the village level. European authorities considered it too much bother
to find resonance among these diverse groups; it was much more convenient for European
governments to appoint an outspoken individual to represent the larger groups which may or may
not have held political ties. By offering these spokesmen personal benefits, officials could then
sway them in their favor.
Land tenure, which was attached to political will, was centered at the village level as
well. Using evidence collected from the journals and memoirs of explorers, fur traders,
missionaries, and military men, Anthony Wallace (1957) demonstrates that Indigenous land did
indeed belong to politically defined groups with fixed boundaries. The land within these
boundaries typically included a central village with adjacent fields for agriculture, surrounded by
hunting and fishing grounds that were exclusive to the political unit they belonged to.
Furthermore, there was very little land if any that did not belong to a particular political unit.
After William Penn’s death in 1717, land matters in Pennsylvania were administrated by
James Logan, the Penn family’s representative in North America. Logan’s dealings with Native
tribes were unscrupulous, mixing his own interests with those of the distant Penn family. For
instance, concerning the land in southeastern Pennsylvania, Logan dealt with the politically
motivated Iroquois rather than the Lenni Lenape, whose traditional homeland it really was. This
resulted in the Lenni Lenape being displaced into the Ohio country of western Pennsylvania,

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leaving them with much resentment toward those who now inhabited their homeland. 37
Logan’s methods of recording land sales in southeastern Pennsylvania were imprecise as
well. It was not unusual for German settlers to mark, or step off, land as was their custom, and
never pay for it. Typically, the method used to mark a claim involved an individual finding a
desirable plot of land, marking it with stones or on trees, and then filing an application with the
land office. In the case of the Jacob Hochstetler homestead on the Northkill Creek in Bern
Township in southeastern Pennsylvania, Hochstetler entered an application but never paid or
obtained a deed for it. Squatters such as the Hochstetler family, along with Logan’s impertinent
dealings with the Iroquois, were a source of the Lenni Lenape’s grievances—now refugees in
western Pennsylvania—against the German settlers in southeastern Pennsylvania, more than any
influence a political alliance with the French might have had on them.
For example, the political structure of the Lenni Lenape at the time southeastern
Pennsylvania was being settled by the Amish did not consist of a single political unit. It was
comprised of at least thirty, and possibly as many as forty, autonomous political units centering
on individual or small groups of villages (Kroeber 1955; Manners 1957; Wallace 1957; Trigger
1978). The designation of Delaware was applied to this group of politically independent units by
people such as Penn, the British empire, and the United States government as a matter of
convenience in the treaty-making process. By the beginning of the Seven Years’ War, most of
these politically autonomous units had been pushed westward under pressure from European
settlers, made to relocate as refuges on Iroquoian land in the Ohio country of western
Pennsylvania, and remade into one political identity. It was here in western Pennsylvania that

37

For a fuller explanation of the relationship between Native peoples and newcomers to
the Ohio country, see the edited volume by Daniel P. Barr (2006).

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these independent political groups united themselves politically under the common nomenclature
of Lenni Lenape.
Conflicts such as the War of 1812 played a further role on Amish migration and their
relations with Indigenous peoples. For one, as word of the war reached Europe, it halted any
thought of immigration, even though new land was becoming available through the frenzy of
treaties the United States government had ratified (Crowley 1978). Second, rumors surrounding
the War of 1812, including Tecumseh’s efforts to unite the various Indigenous political entities
into one confederacy and the Fort Dearborn incident in Chicago, caused some Amish families
who had already settled in eastern Ohio to retreat to their former homes in western Pennsylvania
(Beachy 1954; Erb 2014). The distrust between Amish settlers and Indigenous groups was not
simply one-sided; it teetered both ways. Nor was it founded in one single source, but rather in
layers of misunderstanding often bred and fueled by European aspirations for economic
dominance.
The Hochstetler story was eventually recorded in two separate, yet related, genealogical
volumes compiled by Harvey Hochstetler and William Hostetler, and are often simply referred to
as the “Hochstetler books.”38 Every Amish family in North America, even today, is familiar with
this story. If they do not have one of the Hochstetler books in their library, they would have
heard the tale from some other member of their community. The significance this incident
commands in Amish communities can be understood in the fact that most Amish trace their
ancestry back to the Hochstetler family in some way, either biologically or through marriage.

38

The story is recorded in two parallel genealogical volumes: one (Hochstetler 1912)
follows the genealogical line of Jacob Hochstetler, the father in the story; the second
(Hochstetler 1938) traces the lineage of the mother, Barbara Hochstetler, who died in the
incident. There is a debate on which Barbara Hochstetler was the wife in the story.

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The effects the Hochstetler story had upon Amish settlement can be broken into three
distinct shades of meaning. First of all, the story, which grew to legendary status, was a way for
the Amish to transfer knowledge and values from one generation to the next. Due to its similarity
with the Willems story, the Hochstetler story had a way of holding the community together in
such a way that the past was brought forward into their present circumstances. Second, in regards
to Indigenous encounters within European culture, James Spady suggests that the semiotics of
these encounters were incorporated by Indigenous peoples into existing meaning as a way to
mediate social relations. I contend there was a similar process at work in the telling of the
Hochstetler and Willems stories. The representation of Amish/Indigenous relations embedded in
the Hochstetler story helped the Amish make sense of their new surroundings in terms of their
previous experience. It mediated their social relations with Indigenous peoples by portraying the
Lenni Lenape as the aggressors and the Hochstetler family, and hence the Amish, as the victims,
or martyrs, in this new land, perpetuating their posture of martyrdom. Third, any affinity the
Amish felt towards Indigenous peoples in their collective memory was tied to the recounting of
this particular story in which a member of the Hochstetler family was taken in by the Lenni
Lenape as one of their own. The young Hochstetler’s return and reentry into Amish society
infuses a sense of Indigeneity into the Amish community to the extent that subsequent
generations view themselves as being related to the Indigenous population.
As mentioned earlier, the details surrounding the incident are ambiguous. As in any oral
tradition, the story is told in such a way that it emphasizes moments which reinforce identity.
One of those moments depicts the family holed up in the basement of their house which has been
set on fire. An opportunity presents itself for the sons to defend the family with their guns.
However, Jacob, the father, admonishes his sons to put down their guns as “it was not right to

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take the life of another even to save one’s own” (Hochstetler 1912, 30). In many ways the
Hochstetler story resonates with Dirk Willems’s story as depicted in the Martyr’s Mirror
(Bracht, 1837) and discussed in Chapter 4.
Both the Willems story and the Hochstetler story are laced with themes of martyriology.
In both incidents, the heroes have an opportunity to spare their own life at the expense of another
person’s life. Both choose to risk their own life to spare the life of the other person, who is their
tormentor. The story ends with captivity and loss of life on the part of the hero. The Willems
story, which the Amish carried with them from Europe, rooted them in their identity and position
in society back in die alt Landt, or “the old land.” The Hochstetler story did not replace the
Willems story, as both stories continue to be prevalent among the Amish today. Rather, the
meaning and symbolism of the latter was transferred to the former, reinforcing and rooting the
imagination of their identity and social position as martyrs in a new land.39
For the Amish, this story gave credence to their experience in North America as their
settlements began to expand and disperse. For example, in the Hochstetler books it is reported
that the mother was treated particularly harshly by the Lenni Lenape, as previously she had
refused to provide these men with food upon their request. In Holmes County, Ohio, there is a
similar tradition which has parallels to the Hochstetler story. It is told that there was an old
Indian by the name of Tom Lions who would frequently show up at Amish houses. Lions, it was
thought, was one of the men involved in the Hochstetler incident. At one point, Lions asked an
Amish woman for food, and she refused to give him any. In response, Lions threatened he would
return to kill her (Erb 2014). The similarities between these accounts are startling and suggest
that the two stories had either merged or been transferred into new contexts as the Amish settled

39

See Stieverman (2011).

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in new places. The discursive processes made way for Amish settlers justify their presence in
each new place they settled by reinforcing their martyriological psyche. Martyriology had
become a vital component of how they viewed themselves in relation to those who remained
outside the strict boundaries their communities relied on.

Knowledge
In looking at the places where Amish settlements sprang up during the two separate
migrations, it becomes evident that they were each influenced by different kinds of knowledge in
choosing those places. The initial expansion of Amish communities was not nearly as
adventurous as it may appear from a distant vantage point. That is not to say that there was no
risk involved; rather, that those Amish who first settled in North America were not simply
heading out into an expanse of uncharted forest as might be imagined. The Amish immigrated to
North America in direct response to the invitation, and they knew they were going to help
establish the experiment in southeastern Pennsylvania which the Penn family had begun. As
Penn’s experiment began to unravel, the Amish began to look for other places to settle. Even
then, their movement westward was not without purpose or direction; it was constrained by the
major routes of travel, which, up until the early part of the nineteenth century when they reached
the Ohio River, was limited primarily to land travel.
The Hochstetler story is one example of how knowledge of the New World was produced
in Amish communities. Amish kinship networks extend beyond biological connections to include
fictive connections such as in the Hochstetler incident. As with most captive stories,40 many

40

Whitman (2005) identifies three common elements in American captive stories.
Although her focus is on women, these elements are similar in the captive stories of men and
both work to construct the identities of a people, whether of nationhood or ethnicity. They are: 1)

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Amish see themselves as having kinship connections with Indigenous peoples as a result of one
of their ancestors being taken captive and integrated into a local Indigenous community. Here
again the details are not clear, as indicated from the reports given to Colonel Weisser, as to who
(if any) of the Hochstetler family were taken captive by the Lenni Lenape during the incident.
Reportedly, at least one of the Hochstetler sons was taken captive and adopted by an elder
among the Lenni Lenape whom the Hochstetler man cared for. During one of Hochstetler’s
hunting trips, he escaped and returned to his family, though it is unclear who remained of his
family since most of them had been killed or taken captive during the incident.
Fictive relations included their connections with other Anabaptist settlers in North
America as well. The knowledge shared by the Amish in the late 1830s regarding the
opportunities and conditions of land and settlement in North America had been accumulating for
nearly one and a half centuries. Beginning with the immigration of the German Mennonite Jans
Lensen to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1683, the emigration of Anabaptists from Germany,
France, Holland, and Switzerland maintained a steady flow through the eighteenth century and
into the nineteenth century. In spite of their manifested social differences, Anabaptists were able
to find commonality in their ideology, and often found themselves settling adjacent to each other.
This created a situation where knowledge regarding the unfamiliar landscapes they encountered
had the ability to spread rapidly from one community to another. That the Amish were
participants and benefited from these networks is evident from the sources which show how
knowledge flowed between communities throughout North America. I will return to this point
later.

The whiteness of the captive in contrast to the person of color, 2) The contradictory role of the
captive as both victim and hero, and 3) The promotion of good versus evil, Christianity versus
non-Christianity, or other ideologies.

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Knowledge of the new world was produced in other ways as well. Land routes the Amish
had available for travel often followed well-established Indian trails that had been utilized by
European military forces and had become well-worn arteries providing movement back and forth
between the coastal regions and Great Lakes. All of the Amish settlements up until the period
when the second immigration began lay along these major arteries of travel. The initial
settlement pattern of the first migration of the Amish could be characterized as lineal, since they
simply followed previously established routes of travel (MacMaster 1985).
The Amish had access to firsthand reports of lands to the west of eastern Ohio. In
northern Indiana, settlers with Anabaptist connections had been actively involved for nearly two
decades. For instance, there were reports that a Joseph Noffsinger, known as somewhat of a
recluse, squatted at the junction of Christiana Creek and the Elkhart River possibly as early as
1821, coinciding with the 1821 Treaty of Chicago (Weaver 1916). However, as more settlers
began to arrive, Noffsinger deserted his claim and disappeared around 1828. Whether these
reports are accurate or not is unclear. What is clear is that around 1828 an Andrew (1757-1843)
Noffsinger, along with his wife Catherine “Granny” (1761-c.1830) Noffsinger, squatted on a
piece of property on the St. Joseph River within the present-day city limits of Elkhart
(Bartholomew 1830).
Andrew was a second-generation immigrant. His father, Rudolph, had immigrated with
his two brothers, Peter and Mathias, arriving in Philadelphia on September 15, 1749, on the ship
Phoenix. The Noffsingers had been associated with Swiss Anabaptists in Europe and fled due to
hardships related to their religious beliefs. Mathias remained in eastern Pennsylvania where he
owned land nearby the Hochstetler farm where the aforementioned incidents between the Lennie
Lenape and the Hochstetler family had occurred. Peter and Rudolf Noffsinger moved to the

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western Pennsylvania county of Washington where there was an active Quaker, Mennonite, and
Brethren community (Richer 1939). When land in Ohio opened up as a result of the 1795 Treaty
of Greeneville, Andrew and his family moved to Darke County, Ohio. Andrew, Granny, and
Joseph all show up in the 1820 census as residing in Greeneville, Darke County, Ohio. Andrew
and Granny appear in the 1830 census as residents of Elkhart County, Indiana (Boyd 2010).
Their son Joseph’s whereabouts are unknown at the time of the 1830 census. However, on March
1, 1831, Joseph purchased a parcel of land in the northeast corner of Elkhart County from the
United States land office in Fort Wayne (Elkhart County Record of Deeds, vol. 1).
In 1829 Benjamin and Magdalena (Miller) Cripe41 moved onto the Elkhart Prairie south
of Goshen, Indiana, and the following spring purchased two hundred acres of the prairie land.
Cripe was a minister in the Dunkard Brethren Church. The Cripes moved to Indiana from
Montgomery County in east-central Ohio. Cripe returned to Montgomery County and persuaded
other German Baptist families to join them on the Elkhart Prairie, and by 1830 a church was
established in the county (Bartholomew 1930).
An interesting account involves a young man with the surname of Bechtel who took a
journey to visit his uncle. In March of 1834, Bechtel left Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, to visit his
uncle John Bertow, who had recently purchased property near Crawfordsville, Indiana. Bechtel
kept a simple journal of his travels, noting each town in which they stopped (Ina Plank Papers,
box 1, file 7). Bechtel’s journal mentions a stop in Somerset, Pennsylvania, but gives no detailed
information of the stop, nor any other stop for that matter. The journal simply states, “To Betfort
from B. 8 To Sommerset from S 38 To Denigaul” and so forth (ibid.). He arrived in

41

Benjamin was born to Jacob and Barbara (Shidler) Cripe in Altoona, Pennsylvania, in the
vicinity of Somerset County, Pennsylvania.

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Crawfordsville, Indiana, early in May of 1834, an indication that he may have traveled by coach
or some other form of transportation, rather than by foot. After arriving in Crawfordsville,
Bechtel continued on to Chicago, Illinois, and on his return trip to Crawfordsville, traveled
through South Bend, Indiana, located in the county immediately to the west of Elkhart County.
In 1839 four Amish brothers by the name of Stahly moved from Wayne County, Ohio—
the county immediately north of Holmes County—to what would become Nappanee, Indiana
(Rechlin 1976). The brothers were the sons of a widow by the name of Barbara Stahly who, in
1835, had emigrated from Bavaria, the same region of Germany from which Hage had
emigrated. The Amish community in Nappanee, though concentrated in Kosciusko County,
Indiana, extends into the southern part of Elkhart County.
The same year the Stahlys settled in Kosciusko County, Indiana, another explorer, this
time from Holmes County, Ohio, traveled west to visit relatives. In his letter to Europe, Friedrich
Hage reports: “This spring (1839) my son-in-law42 was 700 miles farther back in the country in
the state of Illinois and Iowa and stayed overnight with Andrew Birkey” 43 (Samuel Mast
Collection, file 7). Hage does not clarify how Mast traveled, whether by boat, coach, or on foot.
However, Hage’s sense of how far the land extends to the west of his home in Ohio may have
been based on Mast’s journey if he had taken it on foot.
In his earlier description of the land, Hage writes, “The government purchased the land
from [the Indians] two to three hundred hours distance in one piece” (Samuel Mast Collection,
file 7). If Mast traveled on foot to these areas—and it seems likely that he did based on

42

Although Hage omits the name of his son-in-law, it is evident from genealogical
records that he is referring to Samuel Mast, who was married to Hage’s daughter Elisabeth, the
only one of Hage’s daughters who was married at that time (See Gingerich and Kreider 2007).
43
The connection between Mast and Birkey is not made clear in Hage’s letter or other
records consulted on this matter.

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calculations Hage uses to measure the expanse of the land—he very likely would have followed
the main route of travel to the west. To avoid the thick swamplands of western Ohio, travel
followed the Great Trail (Mills 1914) which ran from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, through Wayne
County—the county immediately north of Holmes County—up along the Sandusky Bay of Lake
Erie, and on to Detroit, Michigan. At some point in southeastern Michigan, the trail connected
with the Chicago Road and headed west. The Chicago Road ran through the southern tier of
counties in Michigan, passing within three miles of the northern edge of LaGrange and Elkhart
counties in Indiana. As the trail reached Lake Michigan in southwestern Michigan, it ran below
its southern shoreline into Indiana and proceeded on to Chicago. From here, Mast would have
been able to continue on to Putnam, Illinois, where Birkey would have been living at the time of
his visit, and then on to Iowa.
One year later in the spring of 1840, the Amish community in Somerset County began to
consider the establishment of a new settlement and appointed four men to search for an
appropriate location. The four men appointed for this task were Daniel S. Miller; his brother
Joseph Miller; Nathan Smiley; and Joseph Speicher. According to the Borntreger (1992) account,
the four men set out from Johnstown, Pennsylvania, and traveled to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,
where they boarded a riverboat headed down the Ohio River. Upon arriving at the confluence of
the Ohio and Mississippi rivers near Cairo, Illinois, they headed up the Mississippi River and
disembarked in Burlington, Iowa. Traveling by foot from Burlington, the men examined lands in
the counties of Henry, Washington, and Johnson in Iowa. Though somewhat pleased with the
land in Iowa, they turned back toward Pennsylvania, traveling by foot to Chicago, Illinois, which
was only a small settlement at that time. From there they traveled across Lake Michigan to the
St. Joseph River, which they followed until they left it along its southernmost reaches in the state

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of Indiana. Traveling to the southeast on foot again, they arrived on the Elkhart Prairie near
Goshen, Indiana. They were impressed with the land and the reports of existing settlers, and with
their mission complete, the scouts returned to report back to the community in Somerset.
Equipped with the information brought back by the explorers, the Glades community of
Somerset County determined northern Indiana to be the location best suited for their new
settlement.
The Amish also relied on promotional literature in their decision regarding where to
settle. Promotional literature was published and distributed in countries throughout Europe in
their respective language in the form of emigrant guides and newspaper advertisements. These
guides and advertisements provided glowing reports of lands available for settlement in North
America, often comparing them with the attributes of the emigrants’ own country. Passenger
ships provided resources as well for immigrants to study during their passage as they prepared to
settle upon their arrival in North America. Once in North America, there were additional
resources available such as newspaper advertisements and published journals of surveyors
working for the United States government. It is unclear to what extent the Amish made use of
these resources; what is clear is that they did have access to them and relied on them in some
instances.
One example is a surveyor’s journal published in 1832 belonging to a man by the name
of Jacob Plank who ran a flour mill near Wooster, Ohio, located immediately north of Holmes
County, Ohio. The pamphlet titled Description of Land, In The Seneca And Big Spring
Reservations contains the original field notes of C. W. Christmas, who surveyed Seneca County,
Ohio, several counties east of Wooster, Ohio (Ina Plank Papers, box 1, file 10). At the conclusion
of the pamphlet, Christmas makes these remarks as to the quality of land in this region: “The best

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lands in the Seneca reserve lie in the S E East and also on the West side, along the Sandusky
River—as well as a narro [sic] strip on each side of the Portland road, which is located on a
narrow ridge of land, running diagonally through the reserve” (ibid.). The same year this
pamphlet was published, Plank set up a flour mill in Wooster, Ohio (ibid.). Whether Plank took
advantage of this information is not clear. That Plank held such material in his possession
demonstrates the Amish had access to these types of literature regarding potential places for
settlement.
By the spring of 1841, the community of the Glades church in Somerset County,
Pennsylvania, had determined that northern Indiana would be the site of their new settlement.
The group of four families who decided to move included the two Miller brothers who had been
on the expedition the previous summer: Daniel, his wife Barbara, and their family; and Joseph,
his wife, Elizabeth, and their family. They were accompanied by the families of two other
brothers: Joseph Borntreger, his wife Barbara, and their family; and Christian Bontrager, his wife
Elizabeth, and their family. 44
Apparently, one of the members of the group must have kept a travel journal of the
journey, as Borntreger gives very specific dates regarding departures and arrivals. Since
Borntreger (1992) was only three years old at the time of the journey, he would have had to rely
on information passed down through either word of mouth or written documents. According to
Borntreger, the group set out from Somerset County, Pennsylvania, on June 3, 1841. Traveling
west by horse and wagon, they arrived in Holmes County, Ohio, where they would have been
welcomed by kin and acquaintances. During their week-long visit they would have had

44

It should be noted that even though these two men were brothers, they utilized different
spellings of their surname. See Gingerich and Kreider 2007, 45-46.

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opportunity to reinforce their travel strategies and spread the contagion of the prospective new
settlement. From Holmes County, they traveled north to Michigan and along the southern tier of
Michigan counties on the Chicago Trail, a similar route taken by previous Amish people such as
Mast and the exploratory group on their return trip (ibid.).
The group arrived on the Elkhart Prairie on June 29, 1841, a trip that took only a little
over three weeks, including their one-week layover in Holmes County, Ohio. Upon their arrival
they apparently took up residence in abandoned cabins on the Elkhart Prairie. It has been
speculated that these cabins had belonged to trappers or fur traders who had relocated since the
furbearing population had been decimated by the fur trade. It is also possible that these cabins
had belonged to Potawatomi families who had been removed by the federal government only
three years earlier. Regardless, according to Borntreger’s account, by the time these families had
arrived on the prairie in the summer of 1841, the price of land on the prairie had risen to such
extent that it was no longer feasible for the families to purchase the land they had desired.
Subsequently, they purchased marginal land in the surrounding areas. Daniel Miller and
Christian Bontrager traveled fifteen miles northeast of the Elkhart Prairie in the adjoining
LaGrange County. Joseph Miller and Joseph Borntreger both remained near the prairie in Elkhart
County with their families. Although the two startup settlements were separated by nearly fifteen
miles, the two families in each location had managed to purchase properties within the same
surveyed sections, placing them in close proximity with each other. In the fall of 1841, five other
Amish families from Holmes County, Ohio, joined the original settlers in northern Indiana. The
following spring more Amish families joined those already in the area and from then on there
was a steady stream joining the community.

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Kinship, in all its forms, influenced the production and dissemination of knowledge for
settlers more than any other factor. Take, for example, the case of Friedrich Hage and the settlers
from Somerset County who moved to northern Indiana. What may at first appear to be a
disjointed connection was actually founded upon close kinship ties. The families of Joseph and
Christian Bontrager, who were brothers, were among the first four families to settle in northern
Indiana. It is significant to note that according to the Borntreger account of the northern Indiana
settlement, the four families from Somerset stopped for one week in Holmes County before
continuing on to northern Indiana. This suggests a probable connection with the Hage family at
the time Hage wrote his letter. Thus it can be inferred that these families would have had access
to the same kind of knowledge represented in Hage’s letter in addition to their firsthand
knowledge gained by their own journey in the previous year.

Conclusion
The consequences of Amish migration upon Indigenous communities was fueled by
misunderstandings grounded in the European experience of the Amish. Foremost among these,
creating repercussions throughout their relations with the people around them, was their view—
which they shared with other European settlers and powers—of land tenure. The prospect of land
ownership in North America was an influencing factor of Amish immigration, since
opportunities for ownership were limited in Europe. As discussed in Chapter 4, the tenuous
relationship the Amish had developed with the land in Europe led them to value their modes of
production more than the means of production. In other words, they placed more value on the
organization of their social relations, skills, and knowledge needed to profitably wrest resources
from the land than they placed on the land. Their approach to subsistence was in direct conflict

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with Indigenous subsistence patterns which valued the land due to their deep historical
connections in which they viewed themselves as obligatory caretakers of their heritage.
For the most part, the Amish followed the lead of the United States government in
determining when land was available for settlement. The Amish seem to have carried with them
to North America the political posture they had adopted in Europe whereby they saw themselves
as subjects of the government, and the land the Amish had worked on had belonged to the elite.
Thus, the Amish came to rely on the government’s notification and approval to know which land
was open for settlement. Their ambiguous allegiance to the government they held at arm’s length
held sway over the impact their settlement had on the Indigenous population.
Amish perceptions of Indigenous groups were skewed by their past in Europe,
ideological persuasion, and insatiable desire for profitable gain. So, although the Amish may
have had no reference to go by when considering the impact their arrival would have on the
people who lived on the land before them, it seems their own experience in Europe as refugees
would have alerted them to the distress caused by their intrusion on previously occupied lands.
These concerns may have been disregarded for reasons such as their continued martyriological
posture whereby their new adversaries were dehumanized and robbed of their dignity,
perpetuated through accounts such as the Hochstetler story passed on from one generation to the
next.
Knowledge regarding settlement among the Amish was produced in a variety of ways
including their own experience, promotional literature, and exploration. This knowledge
circulated between individuals and communities in North America and Europe through
handwritten letters, face-to-face interactions at religious gatherings, and oral traditions which
transferred knowledge and values about their new homes from one generation to the next.

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Kinship networks, including biological, affinal, and fictive relations, served as a conduit in
which this knowledge was broadly dispersed throughout North America and Europe. From the
letters and oral traditions discussed above, it is evident that the Amish had access to a wide array
of knowledge that led them to particular kinds of places which accommodated the agricultural
practices they brought with them from Europe and continued in North America. It is also evident
the Amish were fully aware of the situation of the Indigenous peoples they encountered during
settlement, and assumed attitudes influenced by land policies promoted by the United States
government, wherein settlers became an integral part in resolving the “Indian problem.” Amish
settlers were well informed about the places they were settling.

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CHAPTER 6
“HE LIVED TO SEE THE WILDERNESS BLOSSOM AS THE ROSE”:
LAND, POWER, AND TRANSFORMATION

Introduction
Valentine T. Yoder of Eden Township, LaGrange County, Indiana, passed away on April
10, 1913. On April 28, 1914, the LaGrange News Democrat (1914) reported that Tobias V.
Yoder, the administrator of Yoder’s estate, had filed a report with the county clerk settling the
estate.45 The article lauded Yoder’s sons and daughters as being “among the most prosperous
farmers of the county” (ibid.). The Democrat observed that Yoder had “lived to see the
wilderness blossom as the rose” (ibid.), describing the transformation the landscape had
undergone under Yoder’s watch. The phrase is taken from a familiar biblical passage which
predicted the return of the Jewish people to their homeland, which would once again “blossom as
the rose” (Isaiah 35:1).
Although Yoder’s own accomplishments as a farmer in LaGrange County commenced
nearly twenty years following the initial settlement in the area, his connections to the early
settlement of northern Indiana by the Amish ran deep. Yoder moved with his father, Tobias C.
Yoder, and mother, Mary (Swartzentruber) Yoder, from Somerset County, Pennsylvania, to Eden
Township, LaGrange County, Indiana, as a three-year-old child in 1845. In October of 1846,
Yoder’s father purchased 80 acres in Eden Township, LaGrange County, Indiana, for $300, or
$3.75 an acre (LaGrange County, Indiana 1846, Newhouse to Yoder). Upon marrying Catherine
(Schrock) Yoder, the young couple purchased land in Eden Township where, according to the

45

A clipping of this article can be found at the Northern Indiana Amish Library in
Topeka, Indiana.

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Democrat, “for the first three years on the farm the only team was a yoke of oxen and they
endured all the hardships and privations of pioneer life while clearing the land of heavy timber
and getting it ready for the plow” (LaGrange News Democrat 1914).
The article reporting the settlement of the estate is important as it announces the
culmination of a long and deliberate transformation of the Indigenous landscape in northern
Indiana. The report that the inhospitable “wilderness” had been tamed and turned into a
flowering garden was intended to ease the mind of settlers, implying that it was now suitable for
habitation by properly civilized human beings. However, when the consequences of such drastic
terraforming upon the Potawatomi are taken into consideration, the statement that the
interactions between the Amish and Indigenous communities were nearly always of “goodwill”
as Nolt (2015) would have us believe, carries little credibility. Such a statement could only be
viable if violence which inflicts bodily harm is bracketed from other forms of violence. Even
then, the negative long-term effects of colonialism upon Native health outcomes has been well
established. Though it is not a topic I intend to pursue in any depth here, the historical basis of
contemporary health concerns is an area of research which needs to be given attention, and
indeed there are those who have turned their attention towards this need.
When one looks at the societal costs levied upon Indigenous communities by settler
colonialism, the extent of the harm comes into sharper focus. These costs filtered into every
aspect of Indigenous society: political, economic, social, psychological, religious, emotional, and
physical. It is important to remember that when one of these is affected, the whole system a
society is built on suffers consequences. The political system does not operate in complete
detachment from the religious, economic, or other aspects of society. Nor do changes brought to
one aspect of society come about without having an undulating affect throughout the rest of

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society. In this chapter the focus will be upon the breakdown of the political, economic, and
social aspects of Potawatomi society spawned by Amish settlement in northern Indiana,
recognizing the work is limited due to space.
I return to the idea of settlerscapes as a way of conceptualizing the colonial process at this
particular period of time. Whereas in Chapter 3 I generalized the settler experience, in this
chapter I focus specifically on the way Amish settlers perceived and experienced the outcome of
settlement in northern Indiana in contrast to the experience of the Potawatomi. This will be
pursued in two ways:
1. It will demonstrate the way in which the interests and settlement practices of the Amish,
in establishment of tightly contingent communities, dovetailed with the geo-political
interests of United States government. It will demonstrate the way the establishment of
Amish communities directly affected the breakdown of Potawatomi social systems in
northern Indiana.
2. It will outline the devastating outcome Amish settlement and agricultural practices had
upon the well-being of Potawatomi society.
Data collected from land records testify to the spatialized world Amish settlers
participated in. Whether they were aware of it or not, the interests and actions of Amish settlers
coincided precisely with those of the United States government, so as to drain the land of its
social significance. The coinciding interests are clearly seen by bringing together four separate,
yet interconnected, sets of documents which demonstrate the process by which the land was
parceled into progressively smaller spatial units which allowed for the extinguishment and
erosion of Native control in the region. These documents include:

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1. Records regarding select treaties and acts which directly affected Elkhart and LaGrange
counties in northern Indiana.
2. Documents pertaining to the surveys which were commissioned by the United States
government to divide the land into saleable and administrative units.
3. The Record of Deeds of Elkhart and LaGrange counties, where the actual sale price and
description of properties purchased and sold in those counties between 1830 and 1860
can be found.
4. The descriptions of improvements to land found in the receipts of property taxes.
These documents are important for more than just the factual details they provide. The
tax receipts, transfer of deeds, and surveyor notes and plats are important for this research in that
they contain the place where the interests of the United States government and Amish settlers in
the early part of the nineteenth century meet. Nowhere else do the interests of these two
ideologically distant groups come together as they do in these land records. While the United
States government depended on political and military might to extinguish Native title of the
land—a position the Amish were unwilling to participate in—the Amish relied on their financial
and kinship ties to gain advantage in transforming the land into a community which reflected
their values. The quantitative data found in these records dispel the myths that have been
propped up over time through oral traditions and local histories, portraying the early Amish
settlers of northern Indiana as poor immigrants looking for cheap land.

Political Deterioration
The incremental process which wrested Native title from the land relied on, took
advantage of, and supported power disparities in the region. Initially, the United States

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government gained control of the region by claiming large tracts of land with complete disregard
for its social geography. After obtaining control of an area, surveyors commissioned by the
United States government began to partition the land into geographically uniform units of
saleable real estate, destabilizing former geopolitical boundaries. Once assigned economic value,
land was sold to land speculators or private landowners, driving geographical and social wedges
into existing Native power structures that had developed in the region over time. While the front
end of this transfomative process relied on the threat of violence and annihilation by the United
States, the weight of the back end of the process was carried upon the shoulders of the everexpanding population of individual settlers to physically alter the landscape to erase the memory
of its former inhabitants.
The Amish were well suited for this final stage in the transformative process of the Great
Lakes region. In addition to appropriating the numerous agricultural fields established previously
by Native peoples, the Amish relied on their skills to convert wooded and swamp lands into
agricultural lands using their agricultural, pastoral, and hydraulic engineering skills. Though
farming was a private enterprise for the Amish, it relied heavily upon the support of tightly
bound networks of kinship and community. These networks, reinforced by religious ideals,
emphasized the importance of community over the importance of place, as outlined in the
previous chapters. Unlike other settlers who sought to build their own personal estates, the
quantitative data found in the transfer of deeds and tax records suggests that the Amish, equipped
with ready cash, aligned personal interests with the larger project of building and sustaining the
larger Amish community. This blended with the United States government’s desire to create
cohesive pockets of settlement to drive wedges into Native networks and erase their memory
from the landscape.

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Amish settlers were rarely the first settlers to arrive in new territory that had been made
available by the United States government. Many of the original patents were purchased by land
speculators. There is no evidence that any Amish or Mennonites were involved in speculation,
although the land records indicate they readily purchased land from speculators. There were a
number of speculators in northern Indiana, most prominent being the East Coast shipping
company of Howland and Aspinwall (LaGrange County, Indiana, Transfer of Deeds Index, vol.
1), though others may have purchased greater amounts of land. Most of the other speculators
appear to have been private individuals who acted to purchase land at the low price of $1.25 per
acre and then sell it a few years later for double or triple what they had paid for it. For example,
the land purchased by Daniel Miller and Christian Bontrager in LaGrange County had belonged
to George Walker, who had purchased nearly 500 acres from the United States government in
1836 and then sold it in smaller plots to individuals such as Miller and Bontrager for a profit.
There is evidence that the Amish settlers were attracted to northern Indiana by lands
made available by speculators. The previous summer four scouts had visited the area and found
the Elkhart Prairie was in the middle of a selling frenzy involving the sale of land. Land which
had earlier been purchased at low prices was now being sold at a profit. Among those selling
their lands were the Dunkard Brethren who had moved onto the prairie ten years earlier. Between
1837 and the summer of 1840, members of the Dunkard Brethren sold a total of 300 acres
beginning at $3 per acre for an 80-acre parcel up to $11 an acre for a 172-acre parcel. Other
settlers were selling their land on the prairie at this time as well, some as high as $20 an acre
(Elkhart County, Indiana, Transfer of Deeds Index, vol. 1). In his brief account of the early
settlement in northern Indiana, which has been referred to several times already, Borntreger
suggests that the four scouts were drawn to northern Indiana by the availability of land on the

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Elkhart Prairie south of present-day Goshen, Indiana. Moreover, Borntreger claims that when the
original four Amish families moved to northern Indiana in 1841, “the nice prairie-land was then
already too expensive for them, since they had little money” (Borntreger 1992, 6). Oral tradition
perpetuates the notion that these settlers were cash-strapped.
However, there is no actual evidence in the land records that Amish settlers were
constrained by a lack of money in their decisions on where to settle when they arrived in
northern Indiana. By the end of their first full month in northern Indiana, each of the four
families had purchased land for their new homes. The Joseph Miller family paid $2,626 for 280
acres near the Elkhart Prairie, the fifth-highest total paid for a single parcel up until that point
(Elkhart County, Indiana, 1841, Boyles to Miller). One other individual had paid $4,000 for 200
acres, and three others had each paid $3,000 for tracts of various size. The other three Amish
families each purchased parcels of land at the average price of $5 an acre (Elkhart County,
Indiana, Transfer of Deeds Index, vol. 1).
In the summer of 1842, a year after the Amish settlers arrived, sale of land on the prairie
resumed. Prices remained comparable to those of prior years, ranging from a high of $20 an acre
all the way down to the original sale price of $1.25 an acre. In 1839 five parcels of prairie land
were sold for an average of $13.50. The following year, thirteen more parcels were sold at an
average of $13 an acre. In these two years, twenty parcels totaling 1,300 acres of land were sold
on the prairie. The year following the settlers’ arrival, only seven parcels totaling 360 acres of
prairie land were sold at the average price of $14 an acre.46 Records indicate that there was little

46

This average includes the anomaly of one 20-acre parcel being sold for $1,200, or $60
dollars an acre.

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land available when they arrived, and they had missed out on the opportunity to buy the land
they had come to purchase.
That same year, when Nathan Smiley, one of the men who had been a part of the original
scouting party, arrived in northern Indiana, the sale of land had once again resumed. On June 6,
1842, the Smileys purchased a total of 340 acres of the Elkhart Prairie for $5,800, or a little over
$15 an acre (Elkhart County, Indiana, 1842 Rainbow to Smiley, and Purl to Smiley). This was by
far the most one individual had paid for a piece of the prairie up until this point. Smiley would
later purchase more prairie land and became a prominent member of the agricultural society in
Elkhart County.47
The records reveal similar tendencies in the following years wherein the Amish paid
inflated prices for land. Take for example the year 1850 in LaGrange County. There were fiftyfive land transactions in the townships of Eden and Newbury, the townships with the highest
concentration of Amish settlers at the time. Of those fifty-five transactions, only fourteen, or 22
percent, involved members of the Amish as the grantee. Of the transactions above the mean price
of $2.50 per acre, nine, or 40 percent, involved an Amish person as the grantee. Of the eight
highest purchase prices which ranged from $10 per acre to $37.50 per acre, four involved an
Amish member as the grantee. The transaction with the highest cost per acre involved an Amish
person by the name of Moses Kaufman who purchased land from George Howland, a land
speculator, for the price of $37.50 per acre (LaGrange County, Indiana, 1850, Howland to
Kaufman). This is $35 above the mean price and $36.25 above the lowest price of purchase.
Another cluster of land purchases by Amish hovered around the $3-per-acre mark, still above the

47

Smiley served as secretary of the inaugural Elkhart County Agricultural Society
organized in 1851. See The First Annual Report of the Indiana Agricultural Society, 1852.

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mean. Only five land transactions involving Amish members, or 18 percent of all transactions,
were conducted at or below the mean price of $2.50 per acre. Of the five, one came in at the
mean price and another at $1.88 per acre, or $.62 below the mean price. Both of these
transactions were between members of the Amish community, whereas in those above the mean,
only one transaction was conducted between Amish individuals. The three remaining
transactions were certificates issued by the state of Indiana for swamplands as a result of the
Swamp Land Act of 1850. The price for these lands was set at $1.25 per acre, or half the mean
price. These are the only three federal land patents to be purchased by Amish members in
LaGrange or Elkhart counties (Elkhart County, Indiana, Transfer of Deeds Index, vol. 1;
LaGrange County, Indiana, Transfer of Deeds Index, vol. 1).
The willingness to pay inflated prices for land dispels the notion Amish settlers were cash
strapped, leaving one to look elsewhere for explanations of how decisions were made regarding
the purchase of land. Again, the land records provide some clues to this end. Seemingly, the type
of land—whether it was wooded, prairie, or swamp land—had little to do with where the Amish
chose to settle. Land records appear to show that the ability of Amish settlers to locate in close
proximity to other Amish families was perhaps the most significant factor in where they chose to
purchase land and settle.
After arriving in northern Indiana and finding the prairie land available which had drawn
them was unavailable, Daniel Miller and Christian Bontrager traveled fifteen miles northeast of
the Elkhart Prairie to the adjoining LaGrange County. There they both purchased land in section
30 of Newberry Township in LaGrange County from George H. Walker: Miller, 160 acres for
$825 (Lagrange County, Indiana, Transfer of Deeds Index, vol. 1); Bontrager, 80 acres for $375
(ibid.). Joseph Miller and Joseph Bontrager both remained near the prairie in Elkhart County

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with their families. On the same day that their counterparts purchased land in LaGrange County,
Joseph Miller purchased 280 acres from Martin and Martha Boyles for a consideration of $2,626
(Elkhart County, Indiana, Transfer of Deeds Index, vol. 1). Eleven days later on July 20, 1841,
Joseph Bontrager purchased an 80-acre tract adjoining Joseph Miller’s land. Bontrager purchased
the 80 acres from Jefferson and Lavinia Muntz for a sum of $500 (ibid.). Although the two
startup settlements were now separated by nearly fifteen miles, the two families in each location
had managed to purchase properties within the same surveyed sections, placing them in close
proximity with each other. As other Amish families joined their kin in northern Indiana, they
followed these same practices, expanding the geographical boundaries of their community while
maintaining nearly impenetrable social boundaries. The creation of such communities in northern
Indiana contributed the social and geographical fracture to Indigenous political structures the
United States had hoped for.
Over the previous two decades, the Potawatomi had repeatedly treated with the United
States government regarding the formation of the southern portions of Indiana and the eastern
portions of Michigan Territory. Indiana had become a territory in 1800 and achieved statehood in
1816. However, it was not until 1821 during a treaty negotiated in Chicago, Illinois, (United
States 1821), that the land which would later become Elkhart and LaGrange counties would be
directly affected by the terms of a treaty. As a result of the 1821 Treaty of Chicago, the Ottawa,
Chippewa, and Potawatomi ceded much of their remaining territory in Michigan and northern
Indiana to the United States.
In his report to President Monroe regarding the details of the negotiation and terms of the
treaty, commissioner Solomon Sibley (United States 1822) made it clear that the treaty affected
more than just the transfer of ownership of a large piece of prime real estate; it had strategically

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laid the groundwork to fracture the social geography of the Great Lakes. First of all, the land
ceded by the Potawatomi, Ottawa, and Chippewa was meant to create a geographical wedge
which would narrow the political options of the tribes. According to Governor Sibley:
This purchase unites together the several tracts of land lying within the Peninsula,
and heretofore purchased from the Indians, and which once settled will effectually
divide the northern Indians from those who inhabit the country to the south and
west, and will also interpose a barrier to all foreign influence in that quarter. (Ibid.)
However, the full impact of the treaty would not take effect until settlers had sufficiently
populated the area, creating the social buffer needed to separate the northern bands from the
southern bands. For the buffer to be viable, the land had to be made saleable, and so the final
terms of the treaty were to be delayed “until the public surveys are completed” (ibid.), assuring
that the boundaries of the reservations made for the Potawatomi “shall be in conformity with the
principles of the public surveys” (ibid.).
The public surveys would be the mechanism whereby the United States government
would prepare the land for sale to private citizens. In northern Indiana, the surveys did nt begin
until 1827, and with them came a cloud of ambiguity surrounding the terms of the treaty,
allowing for settlers like young Noffsinger (mentioned previously in Chapter 5) to settle
preemptively on lands that had not yet been circumscribed. Reservations made in former treaties
were “attended with inconvenience” (ibid.), as they were scattered about relevant to the places
where the signatories of treaties lived. Later treaties assured that the reservations would fall in
line with the public surveys, without disrupting the uniformity of their lines.
The Public Land Survey System (PLSS) was the result of a series of actions meant to deal
efficiently and systematically with the increasing land mass coming under United States control.
After the Revolutionary War, Congress, with the help of the Ohio Company, redrew the
boundary lines which had made up the Quebec territory. The result was the Northwest Ordinance

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of 1787 (Continental Congress 1787) which set apart what would become Ohio, Illinois, Indiana,
Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota to await adequate populations to warrant statehood. While
the earlier 1763 Proclamation Line set in place by the British had prohibited immigrants from
settling lands west of the Appalachian Mountains, the Northwest Ordinance pushed that line to
the Ohio River so that settlers were prohibited from entering lands north and west of that river.
However, the United States clearly never intended the land to be a permanent refuge for Native
peoples, as stated in Article 4: “The said territory, and the States which may be formed therein,
shall forever remain a part of this Confederacy of the United States of America” (ibid., 341).
Article 5 was quick to clarify the formation of the states which would eventually emerge from
the territory, specifying that there should not be “less than three nor more than five states” (ibid.,
342).
In 1785, the Continental Congress enacted the Land Ordinance (Continental Congress 1785)
which set in place a survey system designed to divide the land north and west of the Ohio River
into geographically uniform political and economic units. There were several reasons that the
United States took this approach. First, the means of surveying land east of the Appalachians had
been inconsistent and erratic, leading to many boundary disputes. To avoid this in the vast
territory the United States had gained, the early United States legislators set in place a
sophisticated survey and recordkeeping system known as the rectangle system, or the Public
Land Survey System (PLSS) as it came to be known (Rohrbough 1978). Second, the PLSS
divided the land into townships which were six miles square based off of predetermined
meridians running north and south, and base lines running east and west. The townships in turn
were to be parceled into thirty-six, mile-square sections, each section containing 640 acres.

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Public notices were to be given when portions of land had been surveyed and put up for public
auction (Continental Congress 1785).
In 1796, the United States Congress made provisions for a national surveyor general to
oversee the project dividing up the land acquired in treaties (United States 1796). The surveyor
general would be in charge of regional surveyor generals, who in turn would employ deputy
surveyors to carry out the actual work of measuring and recording the imaginary grid laid upon
the land. The deputy surveyors were to provide detailed descriptions in notes and plats of the
“remarkable and permanent things” they noticed, as well as descriptions regarding the “quality of
the land” (ibid., 466). Deputy surveyors were paid $2 for each mile surveyed, along with
expenses incurred from employing the necessary axemen, cooks, and hunters to facilitate the
work (Rohrbough 1978). In addition, the government set up land offices in each territory or state
where the public could come to purchase their title to a parcel of land. Originally, land was to be
sold at $2 per acre (United States 1796). However, in 1820, Congress enacted a law which
lowered the sale price for federal land patents to $1.25 per acre (United States 1820). Each land
office employed a recorder, who would keep detailed record of the plats in their district; a
receiver, who was in charge of handling the financial transactions; and, depending on the volume
of sales in these offices, clerks to aid the recorder and receiver.
The intentions of the United States government are expressed in documents related to the
Treaty of Mississinewa (United States 1826a, roll 1; 1826, roll1). In this treaty, the Potawatomi
ceded the remainder of northern Indiana, which the Chicago treaty had left in the hands of the
Potawatomi, to the United States. The land affected by the Treaty of Mississinewa (United States
1826b) included the southern portion of Elkhart County and all of LaGrange County. This treaty
considered one of the last stretches of land separating the land in Michigan territory from the

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land in the southern portion of Indiana which had been previously ceded and was being
populated by settlers. As Lewis Cass, territorial governor of Michigan at the time, expressed to
the representatives of the Potawatomi, “When you divide our settlements, we cannot have roads
and taverns and ferries, nor can we communicate together, as you know it is necessary we should
do” (United States 1826a, roll 1). This treaty and the 1832 Treaty of Tippecanoe (United States
1832a; 1832b) were the final acts by the United State in creating a contiguous land mass north of
the Ohio River except for tracts of isolated reservations provided for certain individuals or bands
of the Potawatomi. The United States government was simultaneously assembling a large land
mass while systematically breaking it down into an arbitrary grid of politically motivated
geographical units. This would give the United States both the economic and political strength it
needed to control the Great Lakes region.
In spite of the reservations set aside by the treaties during the 1820s and 1830s, their
boundaries did not slow down the work of the surveyors. As Sibley had indicated in the wake of
the 1821 Treaty of Chicago (United States 1833b), the reservations were not to impede, but
rather fall within the lines drawn by the surveyors. The reservations were never meant to be a
permanent fixture in the land, but, rather, temporary staging grounds for later removal. Even
while not at the negotiating table, the dignitaries were conspiring ways to spatialize the land to
gain control over it. For example, in a letter written from Washington in the spring of 1829,
General Surveyor George Graham instructed Edward Tiffin, the surveyor general in Chillicothe,
Ohio:
Certain tracts in Michigan formerly reserved for these Indians you are requested to
have these tracts surveyed into Sections, by continuing through them the lines of
the adjacent public Surveys….The strip of land of ten miles in width between the
Northern boundary of Indiana, and the line run East from the Southern extremity of
Lake Michigan, 1817, having been ceded to the United States by the Chicago
Treaty, and the Treaty of 1826 with the Potawatomie Indians, you will be pleased

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to enter into Contracts for the Survey of the whole strip during the present year.
(United States 1829, 28-29)
The public surveys were well underway, and neither the Potawatomi nor their reservations would
stand in their way. The land was being given new political and economic boundaries based on
the arbitrary lines drawn in the surveyors’ maps. These arbitrary lines anticipated the sale of
discrete tracts of land to settlers who were eager to reconfigure the land in conjunction with the
lines marked out by the surveyors. The propensity of the Amish to select places clustered close
together neatly fell into the intentions of the United States government.

Economic Disintegration
The effects of settlerscapes had economic implications as well. The fragmentation of land
not only fractured Native political structures, it eroded age-old economic systems Indigenous
peoples had come to depend upon. By impeding individuals from treating directly with Native
peoples in the purchase of land, the United States government would be able to control the
purchase and then the sale of land from the newly gained territories. Indiana became the test lab
for the PLSS experiment and the focal point of immigration in the early decades of the 1800s
(Rohrbough 1976). Beginning in the southern third of the state, an agricultural society swept
north, following the surveyors and their chains, transforming the Indigenous landscape as a tide
reshapes and replaces the features of a beach it sweeps over.
Commercially, the land considered in the treaty was strategic in that it offered access to
extensive waterways. The waterways would provide transportation, industry, and communication
links between the east and the west. For the United States, the land was valued as a commodity
to be bargained for, divided into arbitrary units, and sold. The only meaning attached to it was in

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relation to its economic value which could be calculated, conquered, and controlled. For settlers,
this gave them several advantages.
One way settlers were involved in the erasure of the Potawatomi from the landscape is
through direct replacement. When land that had been cared for and tended by the Potawatomi in
northern Indiana had succumbed to the chains and links of the surveyors, settlers became the
benefactors of these previously cultivated lands. The Harmon Yoder homestead is one such
example. Located in the southern half of the northwest quarter of section 16 in Newbury
Township in LaGrange County, the Yoder homestead contains a field of approximately 20 acres
which has never been tilled by United States settlers. This field has always been considered by
the Yoder family as too “hilly” for the plow and referred to as neu Landt, or new land, meaning
it has never been tilled. Until a few years ago the field had a pawpaw patch in the middle of it
and was surrounded by a number of apple trees and raspberry thickets which suggests human
activity prior to possession by settlers (see Plate 1). When the deputy surveyor A. St. C. Vance
conducted his original survey of this section of land, he simply recorded the area as “wet prairie”
and “prairie” (Vance 1830, 57-58). As section 16 of Newbury Township, it was designated as
land to be sold in the interest of education in the township. The property was purchased by the
Yoder family in 1854 from Joseph Plank (LaGrange County, Indiana, 1854, Plank to Yoder). In
1850, the assessed value of the property, which was only an 80-acre plot, was $30. In 1860, six
years after the Yoder family took over the property, the value of the land was assessed at $644
with $253 of improvements for a total property value of $897 (LaGrange County, Indiana, Tax
Duplicates 1850; 1854; 1860). The difference between the assessed value in 1850, when no
improvements had been shown in the tax records, and the value of the same property in 1860
suggests that no improvements had been made as of 1850, and that their knowledge and stories

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of the field never having been tilled by Europeans are reliable. The numerous, abrupt bumps on
an otherwise flat “prairie” suggest that this may have been a cornfield that had been tilled by the
Potawatomi prior to population by United States settlers. It also suggests that the Amish were
willing to take advantage of fields that had previously been tilled by Potawatomi farmers.
Another way in which settler activity disrupted Potawatomi economic systems is through
direct erasure of the landscape through terraforming. This is the case of Valentine Yoder
described in the opening of this chapter. The last federal patents remaining in LaGrange and
Elkhart counties were those lands designated as swamplands. These lands would eventually be
dealt with through the Swamp Land Act (United States 1850). A short flurry of purchase activity
followed in which these lands were quickly sold under the agreement that they would be drained
for agricultural purposes. In LaGrange County alone, the years of 1853 and 1854 saw the State of
Indiana grant 77 certificates for 40-acre parcels of swampland, bringing to conclusion the sale of
public lands in LaGrange County. Yoder purchased 400 acres of these marshlands for $10 per
acre, which he then “cleared and ditched” (LaGrange News Democrat 1914) At the time of the
settlement of the estate these lands were valued at $150 an acre, “being some of the most fertile
land in the county” (ibid.). It was reported that “Mr. Yoder’s fortune was made by farming and
by the natural increase in value of his lands” (ibid.). This account fails to mention the havoc
draining and clearing created upon existing economic systems that had operated in the region for
generations, which relied on the many flora and fauna species supported by the wooded and
swamp lands. This destruction would have far-reaching consequences beyond the immediate
subsistence needs of the Potawatomi, touching every facet of Potawatomi society.
Yoder’s actions cannot be detached from what else was going on around them. His
actions were the culmination of a series of actions already begun by the British in the eighteenth-

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century. The first of these legal actions related to the sovereign use of the land in the Great
Lakes region came at the conclusion of the Seven Years’ War in the form of the 1763 Treaty of
Paris (Great Britain 1763). In the treaty, the British gained colonial rule in North America from
the French as far west as the Mississippi River. In response to the 1763 Treaty of Paris, King
George issued a proclamation (King George R. 1763) to set up the territory taken from France
and outside of the thirteen colonies into four distinct districts: 1) the Government of Quebec, 2)
the Government of East Florida, 3) the Government of West Florida, and 4) the Government of
Grenada. Present-day northern Indiana fell within the boundaries of the Government of Quebec.
Among other things, the Proclamation was meant “to strictly forbid” (ibid.) settlers from
purchasing or settling in the newly established territories by creating a boundary that ran roughly
along the Appalachian divide. Anyone who had “either willfully or inadvertently seated
themselves upon any Lands within the Countries” (ibid.) was required “forthwith to remove
themselves from such settlements” (ibid.). The line was intended to constrain settlers from
interfering with the Native population in the Quebec territory, reserving it “as their Hunting
grounds” (ibid.). Though these aspects of the Proclamation are well known, scholars differ
widely on what it was intended to accomplish. 48 Was it intended to appease disgruntled Native
groups who had been severed from their favorable French connections? Were the British simply
waiting until their “further Pleasure be known, to grant Warrants and Surveys, or pass Patents for
any Lands” (ibid.) at a time they reasoned would be suitable to their ability to govern the
territory effectively?

48

For differing perspectives on the Proclamation, see Holton (1994), Borrows (1997), and Evans
(1976).

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Though it may have appeared the British were granting Native peoples their sovereignty,
at best it was a limited sovereignty which established an ideological basis for lands to be
extricated through future legal actions. The United States, after gaining control of the territory
ruled by the British, set in place similar structures to regulate relations with Native peoples.
Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution of the United States, states, “The United States shall have
Power … To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with
the Indian Tribes” (United States 1787). At first glance this article appears to set Native tribes on
the same plane as foreign and domestic governments. However, the concern demonstrated by the
United States government was not that Native tribes should have a say in their own affairs;
rather, it was that the United States would be able to control and exploit potential resources
outside their current control. By limiting who could deal directly with Native tribes, the United
States could control how and when coveted resources could be accessed or extracted. It meant
they would be able to levy taxes on land and resources that would otherwise have been outside of
their domain. This was a vital strategy in funding the fiscally struggling young country.
What had been portrayed to the public as a smooth transaction of land from Native title to
United States property through the treaty process, masked the distaste of local Native
communities for these treaties. For example, according to Patrick Marantette, the trader at the
Nottawaseppi reservation at the time of the 1833 Treaty of Chicago, resentment arose among the
Nottawaseppi Potawatomi toward those Potawatomi who had signed the treaty (Coffinberry
1878). Many from the Nottawaseppi reservation felt they had been misrepresented in the treaty
by Sauauquette, the son of Pierre Moran, a French man who had married a Potawatomi woman
and usurped the leadership on the Nottawaseppi reservation. In December of 1833, while
gathering to receive their annuities, Sauauquette boasted of his feat of selling the reservation,

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vowing “that for two quarts of whiskey he would sell the same again should the opportunity
occur” (Marantette as quoted in Sillman 1931, 14). Sauaquette was threatened at gunpoint by
Quicet, but the pistol failed to fire. Several months later the two men met again, and this time
Sauauquette avenged himself by having Quicet killed. This, however, did not bring an end to the
ill sentiments which festered among those who did not wish to relinquish their land on the
Nottawaseppi Prairie.
In 1836 there was a similar and somewhat related incident in Logansport, Indiana,
spurred by the disputed Treaty of Chippewanaung (United States 1836). While the majority of
the lands under consideration in the Treaty of Chicago (United States 1833b)—many of which
had been held by individuals who had received them as part of the treaties made at Tippecanoe
(United States 1832a; 1832b; 1832c)—were ceded to the United States by the representatives of
the tribes, a few individuals were able to retain possession of lands they had obtained in the
Treaty of Tippecanoe a year earlier. Colonel Abel C. Peppers had been given the commission of
securing these lands from these remaining individuals, including lands held by Ashkum and
Chechowkose. When they refused to cede their land, Peppers bypassed them and held a treaty
with the tribal representatives who were willing to sign and settle for the land. According to a
report filed by J. W. Edmonds (1837) of the occasion, a protest broke out led by a young “war
Chief” (ibid., 36) by the name of Shipshewano from the northern Indians who claimed that those
who signed the treaty were “boys and hog-thieves…[who] should all be killed” (ibid.).
Shipshewano further asserted that Peppers had stolen their land, and they refused to submit to the
terms of the treaty. Shipshewano had known ties with the Nottawaseppi reservation, where the
earlier disputes had erupted over allegations of forged signatures. Such reactions are similar to
those exhibited by the Lenni Lenape in southeastern Pennsylvania during the Seven Years’ War

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and may reinforce the idea that such actions were triggered by the loss of land rather than by a
general dislike of settlers.

Social Degeneration
The transformative nature of settlerscapes also has implications upon the social and moral
well-being of Potawatomi society. Though the devastating impact of liquor, specifically whiskey,
upon Indigenous societies is a matter that is well known, the source of this erosive concoction
has been given less attention. Stories along these lines often portray the Indian as someone who
is unable to control his impulses and falls prey to the dire consequences of whiskey’s addictive
properties. However, very little attention is given to the fact that stills run by settlers, Mennonite
and Amish settlers included, were a source of great income in the Great Lakes region.
As noted in Chapter 4, the Amish were known for their distillery skills while still in
Europe. Numerous documents in the archives indicate that these skills were put into practice
throughout the states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana well into the nineteenth century. One
instance involving Christian Greider is particularly telling. Writing from Indiana to kin in
Pennsylvania, Greider explained his danger of losing his property due to a crooked business deal
involving his landlord. Greider pled to kin in Pennsylvania for help in saving his farm, including
a request to send his son Johan who was “learning the distiller trade” to “bring the distillery
kettle with him” so they could “make money to pay our debts” as the “price for a dram [of
whiskey] is 40 cents” (Martin Greider Letter to Christian Greider, 1840). It is clear from the
records that Mennonites and Amish were profiting from the whiskey trade, though at this time it
is unclear at whose expense.

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Though the whiskey trade figured heavily in the treaty negotiations on the part of both
the United States government and Indigenous groups, at this point there is no evidence that
Amish or Mennonites were involved in selling whiskey directly to Indigenous peoples. However,
their involvement contributed to the displeasure of both the United States government and the
Potawatomi who considered the individuals who ran whiskey stills and sold their product as “bad
men” (United States 1826a, roll 1), even though—and perhaps because—both were taken in by
their wares. For instance, in the 1826 Treaty of Mississinewa, United States dignitaries explained
the necessity of creating a spatial buffer between the Potawatomi and the “mad water” sold by
their “bad men” which was poisoning them, causing them to “destroy one another” (ibid.).
A similar sentiment was expressed in the Treaty of St. Joseph (United States 1827b)
which was meant to “consolidate some of the dispersed bands of the Potawatomie Tribe in the
Territory of Michigan at a point removed … as far as practicable from the settlements of the
Whites” (ibid.). However, in his transmittal of the treaty to the War Department, Lewis Cass
explains that in the terms of the treaty the Potawatomi “have accepted a tract of equal extent,
remote from the progress of our settlements, and in a situation whence it will not be again
necessary for them to remove till they are prepared to leave the Peninsula” (United States 1827a,
roll 2). As Clifton (1977) explains, the treaty set aside the reservation on the Nottawaseppi
prairie, intending it to serve as the initial gathering place for the Potawatomi throughout
Michigan and Indiana as the United States government prepared for their removal west of the
Mississippi River.

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Conclusion
According to the description of the article describing the flowering of Yoder’s estate, the
Amish had succeeded in turning what they considered inhospitable land into a flourishing
agricultural landscape. Yet in some cases they settled directly upon lands previously cultivated
by the Potawatomi. By using aggresive agricultural practices such as clearing timber and
draining swamp land, the Amish transformed land which had provided the Potawatomi a means
of subsistence for generations. Whether wittingly or unwittingly, the terraforming practices of
the Amish, along with their project of establishing geographically and socially bounded
communities, aligned precisely with the intentions of the United States government. While the
Amish perceived these results as progress, for the Potawatomi it meant the termination of a way
of life that had taken place upon this land for generations.
If, as Ingold’s dwelling perspective suggests, the well-being of people is connected to
their way of life in a particular place, then I would argue that the consequences of Amish
agricultural practices and community building extended beyond their effect upon the physical
environment. These practices not only destroyed the existing landscape familiar to the
Potawatomi, it destroyed their way of being-in-the-world and would have ongoing dire
consequences upon their social, political, economic, physical, psychological, and spiritual
welfare which are still being felt today. Affecting one aspect of a society cannot occur without
having lasting affects upon other aspects of that society.
That does not mean that communities never change; all communities are constantly
changing. However, when changes are forced upon a society or they occur to abruptly or rapidly,
mechanisms built into society to mediate change no longer obtain. A sudden disruption in one
area may affect the very means a society normally relies on to handle change. Settlerscapes

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acknowledge these kinds of injustices which occurred in places like northern Indiana. Settlers
perceived their actions as benefiting their own way of being-in-the-world without acknowledging
or caring about long-lasting consequences those same actions would have upon the well-being of
the Potawatomi who had lived upon these lands before them.

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CHAPTER 7
ON THE ROAD WITH SHIPSHEWANO:
A CONCLUSION

Introduction
In keeping with both Tim Ingold (2000) and Ed Casey (1996), the story of northern
Indiana is an ongoing saga. Both landscapes and the places they envelope are never static nor
monolithic. Landscapes are imbued with multiple layers of meaning which are constantly in the
process of being altered, reappropriated, and given new meaning. The story did not begin when
the Amish arrived, nor has it remained in stasis since then. The Amish were preceded by various
scales of interactions between Indigenous communities, European colonial structures, and Euroamerican settlers. Since then the story and the landscape have undergone constant change. The
people and the stories intermingled with each other over time so that the voice of settlers has
tended to drown out that of the Potawatomi storytellers who had lived there before them.
This research is an ethnohistorical account intended to bring narrative change to the
events which have shaped present-day northern Indiana. It is clear from the evidence in this
research that when Amish settlers arrived in northern Indiana they understood the land had been
and continued to be inhabited by Indigenous communities. The guiding question of this research
has been, “How did Anabaptists—in this case Amish settlers—reconcile their pacifist viewpoints
with their settlement practices which had an adverse impact on Native communities?” This
question led me to ask two related questions which grew out of my concept of settlerscapes,
outlined in Chapter 2.
1. How did the European past of the Amish influence their perception of the land?
2. How did the Amish view Indigenous peoples who lived on the land?

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In my concluding marks in this chapter, I will pursue three tasks.
1. I will begin by synthesizing the ethnohistorical findings discussed in Chapters 3-6.
2. I will discuss several questions which remain unattended due to the lack of time and
space in this study.
3. I will present directions for future research growing out of this study.
I will conclude by pointing out the importance this study holds within the broader context of
settler colonialism studies.

A Synthesis
The nature and benefit of the term “settlerscapes” demands both a microscopic and a
macroscopic view of the place, people, and ideas involved. Chapter 3 is a broad sweep of the
ecological and historical background leading up to the arrival of Amish settlers in northern
Indiana. The land, consisting of fertile prairies, swamplands, wooded areas, lakes, and river
systems, lay within the St. Joseph River Watershed. The land had been tended by Indigenous
peoples for generations, and, in the last several hundred years leading up to settlement, by the
Potawatomi. Initially, European colonial powers coveted the region for its value to the fur trade.
Once the region was under the influence of the United States government, they sought to gain
control the land because of its economic and commercial value. This was accomplished through
a series of treaties which were heavily influenced by United States settlers. Not only did settlers
pressure the government to open lands for settlement, but leaders of both the Potawatomi and the
United States interjected their concerns and relations with settlers as bargaining chips in the
negotiations of these treaties.

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Chapters 4 and 5 explore the past the Amish brought with them to northern Indiana.
Chapter 4 deals with their European experience while Chapter 5covers their early experience in
North America. In short, these chapters demonstrate the way in which the experience of the
Amish in Europe was re-imagined in North America. The meaning found in stories of
martyrdom which happened in Europe were grounded in such literary works as the Ausbund and
Martyrs’ Mirror, were transferred to events which occurred in North America such as the
Hochstetler incident. Formative stories such as these aided Amish perceptions of their new
environment which commonly dehumanized the Indigenous peoples of North America. In
addition, the Amish brought agricultural skills with them that they had developed as an
ostracized community in Europe. These skills were highly capable of transforming the
Indigenous landscape, which for generations had provided abundant resources, into settled
agricultural spaces.
In Chapter 6 the collision of cultures in northern Indiana is addressed. Whether wittingly
or unwittingly, none of the actors in northern Indiana during the settlement period acted
independently. As has been shown in this research, the relationship between settlers, such as the
Amish, and the United States government are best understood in terms of synergism. In a
synergistic relationship, the combined actions of individual agents produce a greater overall
effect than their individual actions would have accomplished on their own. In this case, the
United States government had the military might needed to coerce the Potawatomi to cede their
lands to United States control. However, the United States government did not possess the means
needed on their own to transform that land into the commercial and economic system it
envisioned. It relied on the mass of United States settlers who were willing to till the land,
undertake entrepreneurial endeavors, mine the minerals, and build the cities. Settlers such as the

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Amish who had polished their skills and crafts in Europe and the eastern United States were
eager to take possession of the land and refurbish it to suit their own economic, social, and
ideological needs. The United States government and the Amish settlers depended on each other
to fulfill their independent interests; the processes and the ends were inseparable.
Any assertion by United States settlers that the interests of the United States government
lay outside of their own interests denies the evidence set forth in this research. The same holds
true for Anabaptist settlers. There is no basis for those being forthright with the history of the
Amish to claim that the feelings toward or relations with Indigenous peoples during the
settlement period were nearly always of “good-will”. Nor is there room to distance the actions of
the Amish or other Anabaptist groups from the violent actions of the United States government.
It is unsatisfactory to say that Anabaptist settlement had indirect implications upon the
displacement of Indigenous communities. This makes it appear as though their own actions had
few if any direct consequences upon Indigenous communities, since these communities had
already been removed from the land, and settlers only moved in after the void had been created.
Claims such as these disregard the long-term repercussions of unsolicited economic, political,
and cultural disruptions inflicted upon a society’s physiological, spiritual, and psychological
well-being. Herein lies the criticism of settler colonialism research.

Further Questions
There are still questions which remain, if answered, that would provide a greater
understanding of the different influences affecting Amish migration during the settlement period.
These questions can be broken into two broad categories. The first involves the role of individual

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agency in the way Amish settlers went about determining when and where to settle. The second
question involves the role of institutional power structures in that same decision-making process.
The significance of the first question is perhaps best seen in the influence and perspective
of gender upon settlement. Though the influence of women during the settlement period is not
well preserved,m it should not be assumed that their voices were not heard at that time. Their
voices do come out in the documents, though not directly, and one must pay attention to hear
them. There are clear indications that gender figured significantly in the settlement process. One
such case involves the Smiley family mentioned in this study. 49 Genealogical records indicate a
baby girl was born into the Smiley family at exactly the same time period the other families left
for Indiana; the Smiley family waited until a year later to make their move to Indiana. It appears
the birth of their daughter delayed their decision to move to Indiana.
Women were not only influential in the decision-making process; they were also
influential after arriving in their new homes. Take for example Catherine “Granny” Nofsinger,
mentioned in Chapter 5. She, along with her husband Andrew Nofsinger, were among the
earliest permanent settlers of European origin in Elkhart County. She was widely known
throughout northern Indiana and southern Michigan for her medical expertise. Her devotion to
her patients made her “one of the most interesting and perhaps one of the most useful characters”
(Bartholomew 1930, 209) in Elkhart County. Comparing the accounts of women such as these
with the work of those who take into account the strategies (Kandiyoti 1988; Specht 2003;
Whitaker 2005) and emotions (Allen 1992; Million 2009) of women living in the midst of
patriarchal societies (St. Denis 2007) may enrich our understanding of the complexity in which

49

The father, Nathan Smiley, was one of the original four explorers who had reported back that
northern Indiana would make a desirable place for a new settlement.

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decisions such as when and where to immigrate were made. Better theoretical frameworks and
more complete data would enable a richer analysis of the gender issues affecting settlement.
Similar questions arise in relation to the influence of institutional power structures upon
settlement choices. Though Amish society may appear to lack institutional structure, tight
community boundaries are maintained through unwritten rules of the Ordnung and the Meidung.
If the continuity which exists in other aspects of Amish society as described in this research also
exists in migration practices, then it may be possible to extrapolate that similar influences which
exist today also existed during the settlement period. One of those influences is the divisions
which occur as a result of internal tensions. Today when disagreements arise within Amish
communities, those with more culturally conservative values often seek geographical isolation
from those who they feel are succumbing to acculturation (see Johnson-Weiner 2012).
There is clear evidence in the archival documents that contentions did exist within the
Amish community during the settlement period. The issue facing the Amish communities of
Somerset County, Pennsylvania, and Holmes County, Ohio, involved the courtship practice of
bundling. Some felt that it was a tradition brought from Europe that should be maintained, while
others felt it was morally wrong and should be abandoned. A series of correspondence and
meetings were held, and disciplinary actions were threatened against those who were unwilling
to let go of the practice. It is unclear whether this issue had any direct impact on the decision of
the first Amish settlers to migrate to northern Indiana, but it may help explain the “feeling” that
arose among the Amish group in Somerset County which prompted them to find a new home far
removed from any other Amish.

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Future Research
There were times during this study when it seemed as though the historical past was far
removed from the world today. It is that very lapse of time that opens up the way for ongoing
research. As I mentioned before, much of what is covered in this research is not necessarily new
territory. Though the account of official removal and settlement are familiar, what occurs beyond
settlement is not understood particularly well or accurately. As Jeanie O’Brien (2010) has
shown, local histories typically make the last Indian and first settler a point of emphasis in
demarcating when Native people no longer inhabited a place and settlers took over. Yet these
lines are never as clearly or completely drawn as settler histories would like them to be. This is
the case of the Amish in northern Indiana as well. Embedded in government, genealogical, and
court records; oral traditions; and even in the local histories themselves, there remain clear
reminders that the Potawatomi were never completely removed from northern Indiana as we
have been led to believe. Memory projects which recognize the presence of Indigenous peoples
during the lapse of time between official removal and our contemporary world remind us of why
and how we have arrived at our current circumstances.
One example of this is the way in which the name Shipshewana has been commemorated
and commodified in northern Indiana. Shipshewana, Indiana, is named in honor of a Potawatomi
leader who is said to have been among those removed during the official removal of the
Potawatomi from northern Indiana in 1838, even though his name does not appear on the muster
roll. Dissatisfied west of the Mississippi, Shipshewano is said to have returned to his home in
northern Indiana where he died near the present-day town of Shipshewana in 1841, the same year
the Amish arrived in northern Indiana. The town of Shipshewana has become synonymous with
the Amish and is known globally for its large craft, food, and gift fair. This past spring I

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experienced the irony of walking into the traveling version of this show, called “Shipshewana on
the Road,” held at the Soaring Eagle Casino in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan owned by the Saginaw
Chippewa Indian Tribe. It seems as though Shipshewano had come full circle. A top priority on
my to-do list is to unravel the journey of Shipshewano and the Potawatomi of northern Indiana
which led them from removal to the casino in Mount Pleasant.
Even though the stories of settlers came to dominate the region, there is no reason to
believe that the Potawatomi no longer had any influence or were no longer affected by
settlement. Settler colonialism relied on a synergistic relationship whose effect has continued
into the present. While settlers were busy building a social and economic system that supported
their own interests, the Potawatomi have demonstrated their resiliency by taking advantage of
their rights as sovereign nations.
Another avenue of research is the way in which the geographical spread of settler
colonialism gave way to its partner—Anabaptist missions directed toward Native communities.
Though early Anabaptist settlers were primarily self-interested, by the end of the nineteenth
century the progression of Anabaptist expansionism turned to proselytizing. This shift in position
corresponded with the United States’ shift from removal to assimilation policies. Thus,
Anabaptists became involved in the education system set up by the United States government,
establishing numerous day and residential schools for Native and First Nations children
throughout the United States and Canada during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The story
of Anabaptist education among Native communities is a story that remains untold but needs to be
told in today’s climate regarding the ongoing struggle against settler colonialism.

172

Conclusion
The importance of this research is its contribution to a fuller understanding of settler
colonialism and the world of Amish settlers. Anabaptist studies have often focused primarily on
the influences and nuances of religious beliefs which differentiated various Anabaptist groups
and their particular paths of migration to and within North America. Any account of the
settlement period which fails to recognize the direct impact settlers had upon the Indigenous
communities they replaced must be considered less than equitable. At a minimum, for Native
peoples this meant the loss of any hope of returning to their ancestral homelands. Heaped upon
this is the prospect of their inability to control access to the resources needed to sustain a way of
being-in-the-world woven together with the places in which they lived. The consequences of
settler actions continue to be felt by Indigenous communities in the contemporary world we live
in through such things as their struggle over their right to land, food, political, and resource
sovereignty.

173

APPENDICES

174

APPENDIX A
THOMAS’S LIST OF FLORA
Table 1: Thomas’s List of Flora
Latin Name
Common Name
Acer Saccharinum
sugar maple
Acer glaucum
river maple
Acer negundo
ash leaved maple
Acer Rubum________________________________soft or red flowering maple
Ascelepias decumbens
butterfly weed
Ascelepias syriaca
silk weed, Indian hemp
Ascelepias
milk weed and others
Anonna triloba
papaw
Arum Dracontium
many leaved Indian turnip
Asarum canadense
wild ginger
Aralia spinose
angelica tree
Aralia racemose
spikenard
Ambrosia trifida
Ambrosia artimisifolia
hog or bitter weed
Adiantum pedatum
maiden hair
Bignonia radicans
red trumpet flower
Corylus Americana
common hazel
Corylus cornuta
horned
Celtis occidentalis
nettle tree or hackberry
Cercis Canadensis
fish blossom, or Judas tree
Carex, many species
sedge
Cassia marylandica
wild senna
Ceanothus americanus
Jersey tea plant
Cephalanthus accidentalis
button flower
Convallaria multifloral
Solomon’s seal
Convolvulus pandauratus
wild potatoe
Carduus, several species
thistle
Carpinus Americana
horn beam
Circea lutiana?
Enchanter’s night shade
Collinsonia Canadensis
horse weed
Dyospyros virginiana
persimmon
Dirca palustris
leather wood
Æsculus flava *
stinking buckeye

175

Table 1 (cont’d)
Evonymus americanus
Monosperma?
Galium, several species
Helianthus, several species
Hedera quinquefolia
Hydrangea arborescens
Impatiens
Iris virginica
Juglans pecan
Juglans squamosal
Juglans ovata
Juglans
Juglans cinera
Juglans nigra
Jeffersonia dipylla
Laurus sassafras
Laurus benzoin
Liquidambar styraciflua
Liriodendron tulipifera
Lobelia inflate
Monardo
Morus rubra
Nyssa iutegrifolia
Platanus occidentalis
Populous anguluta
Pyrus coronaria
Potentilla, two species
Podophyllum peltatum
Polygonum, various species
Panax quinquefolium
Prunus
Quercus nigra
Quercus alba
Quercus rubra
Quercus prinos v. palustris
Quercus triloba
Fagus ferruginea
Quercus

spindle tree
(almost without spines)
goose grass
sunflower
poison ivy
touch-me-not
blue flag
pecan
shell bark
bitter nut
upland pig nut
black walnut
butter nut, or white walnut
two leaved Jeffersonia
sassafras
spice wood
sweet gum
tulip popular, white wood
wild mint
mulberry
gum-tree—pepperidge
button wood
cotton wood
crab apple
cinquefoil
mandrake, May apple
ginseng
wild plumb
black oak
white oak
red oak
swamp chestnut oak
true black jack
beech
Spanish oak

176

Table 1 (cont’d)
Robinia
(in the swamp east of Vincennes)
+
Rubus villosus
black berry
Rubus occidentalis
black raspberry
Rhus glabrum
smooth sumach
Rhus typhinum
stag’s horn
Rhus radicans
poison vine
Rhus
another
Smilax rotundifolia
green briar
Smilax
herbaceous
Spirea salicafolia
willow leaved spirea
Spirea herbaceous
meadow sweet
Salix conifera
cone bearing willow
Sali nigra
black
Salix trislis
shrub
Salix?
(linear leaves near fort Harrison)
Scandix, two species
cicely
Solanum carolinense ǂ
horse nettle, or Irish plumb
Tilia Americana
basswood, or linden
Ulmus
red elm
Ulmus
white elm
Urtica divartica
common nettle
Urtica pumila
stingless
Urtica
another
Vitis, two species
grape vine
Vitis vulpina
fox grape not observed
Verbena, several species
vervain
* This is not abundant. The wood is of small value. Cattle have been poisoned by the
fruit.
+
One of these shrubs had grown up near the branches of a crab tree, which prevented the
stalk from bending until it had attained the height of twelve feet. When I observed it, it
was finely loaded with ripe fruit.
ǂ This vegetable grows in the clayey prairies east of Shakertown. Whether a native or
not it is uncertain. It is scantily armed with spines, and when it takes possession of a
piece of ground, on account of its deep penetrating roots, is removed with difficulty.

177

APPENDIX B
TREATIES BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES AND THE POTAWATOMI, 1789-1837
Table 2: Treaties between the United States and the Potawatomi, 1789-1837
Date
Location
January 9, 1789
Fort Harmar
August 3, 1795
Greenville
June 7, 1803
Fort Wayne
July 4, 1805
Fort Industry
August 21, 1805
Grouseland
November 17, 1807
Detroit
November 25, 1808
Brownstown
September 30, 1809
Fort Wayne
July 22, 1814
Greenville
July 10, 1815
Portage des Sioux
September 8, 1815
Spring Wells
August 24, 1816
St. Louis
September 29, 1817
Rapids of the Maumee
October 2, 1818
St. Mary’s
August 29, 1821
Chicago
August 19, 1825
Prairie du Chiens
October 16, 1826
Mississinewa
September 19, 1827
St. Joseph
August 25, 1828
Green Bay
September 20, 1828
Carey Mission
July 29, 1829
Prairie du Chiens
October 20, 1832
Tippecanoe
October 26, 1832
Tippecanoe
October 27, 1832
Tippecanoe
September 26, 1833
Chicago
September 26, 1833
Chicago (Supplementary Articles)
December 4, 1834
Lake Max-ee-nie-kue-kee
December 10, 1834
Tippecanoe
December 16, 1834
Potawatomi Mills
December 17, 1834
Logansport
March 26, 1836
Turkey Creek Prairie
March 29, 1836
Tippecanoe
April 11, 1836
Tippecanoe
April 22, 1836
Tippecanoe (First Treaty)
April 22, 1836
Tippecanoe (Second Treaty)
August 5, 1836
Yellow River
September 20, 1836
Chippewanaung
September 22, 1836
Chippewanaung
September 23, 1836
Chippewanaung

178

Table 2 (cont’d)
February 11, 1837

Washington

179

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