Colonial Period
French fur traders from Canada were the first Europeans to enter Indiana, beginning in the 1670s. The quickest route connecting the New France districts of Canada and Louisiana ran along Indiana's Wabash River. The Terre Haute highlands were once considered the border between the two French districts. This made Indiana a vital part of French lines of communication and trade routes. The French established Vincennes as a permanent settlement in Indiana during European rule, but the population of the area remained primarily Native American. As French influence grew in the region, Great Britain, competing with France for control of North America, came to believe that control of Indiana was important to halt French expansion on the continent.
Read more about this topic: History Of Indiana
Famous quotes containing the words colonial and/or period:
“The North will at least preserve your flesh for you; Northerners are pale for good and all. There’s very little difference between a dead Swede and a young man who’s had a bad night. But the Colonial is full of maggots the day after he gets off the boat.”
—Louis-Ferdinand Céline (1894–1961)
“Of all the barbarous middle ages, that
Which is most barbarous is the middle age
Of man! it is—I really scarce know what;
But when we hover between fool and sage,
And don’t know justly what we would be at—
A period something like a printed page,
Black letter upon foolscap, while our hair
Grows grizzled, and we are not what we were.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)