Meet George Winter
by Kitty Dye

Foregoing a fine arts career in the cultural centers of the early 19th century, George Winter chose, instead, to become an Indian painter along the frontier communities of northern Indiana. Once he met, and became friends of, the Potawatomi and Miami Indians just before they left for reservations in Kansas, he never looked back. His perseverance left Americans a valuable collection of Indian paintings and writings, as well as the inspiring story of a remarkable man.

Genre: fictionalized history -- ISBN: 0-9702501-1-8, Price: $18, 230 pages
This book can be ordered through the Fulton County Museum Book Store.

Excerpt from the book:
George Winter was a well educated, artistically talented and very personable young man---and in love with Mary---when he made the fateful decision to go west to Indiana to see the last of the Indians, who were on the verge of being evicted from their homeland. Once George Winter met the Indians and the frontier in Indiana, he never left.

In 1837 George arrived in Logansport, Indiana, to witness a trial in which the Potawatomis challenged the government’s actions in taking their land illegally. The Indians lost, of course, but it gave George Winter the opportunity to actually meet and talk with them—and without the need of an interpreter.

George had learned French from home studies in his native England, and the Indians learned it from their friends, the French priests and traders, with whom they had close contact for many generations. Without the need of interpreters and with George’s genuine interest in them, the Indians gradually warmed to this friendly white person who wanted to sketch them.

Most Indian tribes, including the Potawatomis, had superstitious fears about being sketched, so George contrived a ruse to show them that their fears were unfounded.

George sought out Chief Iowa, with his proposition. “If I can prove to you that I will not acquire any sort of control by merely sketching a subject, will you agree to sit to me?”

After a brief consultation to see if anyone could find a trick to this suggestion. Iowa reluctantly agreed to George’s plan—which was to sketch Iowa’s horse.

Word of this unusual happening spread quickly throughout Logansport, so there was a crowd of onlookers, both white and Indian, by the time Iowa’s horse was tethered to a post.

Thoroughly enjoying himself, George took up his sketchpad, and with a dramatic flourish started the preliminary sketches of Iowa’s horse. Sketching rapidly and confidently, George added amusing comments, and little lively tunes until his audience was laughing and having a delightful time by the time George completed the sketch. Everyone there agreed, it surely was Iowa’s horse.

“Now, we’ll see if that horse will obey me. Chief Iowa, please unhitch your horse and drop the reins.”

Once done, everyone watched breathlessly as George called to the horse in the same manner that Iowa usually did. The horse eyed him momentarily, wondering what this was all about, but remained rooted to his place.

After several moments it was clear the horse was not going to obey George. Smiling, he addressed Chief Iowa, “Now, good chief will you please call your horse?”

This time the horse obeyed, to the wild cheering and whooping of the onlookers.

Chief Iowa got the message. From then on, George found most of the Indians willing to sit “to” him, whether in work or play.

Shortly after that episode, George joined the government and Potawatomis for an important meeting at Lake Keewaunay, now Bruce Lake in Fulton County, Indiana, to establish the time for the Indians’ removal. One of George Winter’s most famous paintings, Council at Lake Keewaunay, is of that council meeting. It can be seen in the lobby of the Glenn Black Laboratory on the campus of Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana.

While the officials conferred, George joined the Indians around their campfires, listening to their stories and grievances, while getting to know them as individuals. By the time the council ended, George had made up his mind to forego his original intentions of a big city career, to remain in Indiana and do his best to perpetuate his knowledge of the Indians he had come to love in his paintings..

Cementing that affirmation was when he witnessed the forced removal of the Potawatomi the following year. George visited the Indian camp when they camped for the night at Horney’s Creek, near Logansport, and was shocked to find the entire group of 850 Indians sick and closely guarded. The government arrested Chief Menominee’s Yellow River Potawatomis and forced them to march through Indiana on their way to Kansas, with the chiefs at the head of the line, riding in a jail wagon. This exodus became known as the Trail of Death as so many of them died along the way.

George was so unnerved by that scene that he was sick for many months, emerging finally with his determination to devote his life to becoming an Indian painter.

What he hadn’t counted on was the fact that there was no market for Indian pictures at that time. The citizens had just gotten rid of the Indians, so were not interested in having their pictures in their homes even if they could have afforded to buy one.

His financial woes were further compounded when Mary informed him that her parents were sending her away, hoping she would forget George, whom they didn’t approve of. With help from friends, George planned an elopement, but was so heavily in debt the new couple soon had to move in with Mary’s parents. In the next ten years, they would have to seek refuge with her parents three times.

Those hard times prompted George to innovate. In order to pay the bills, he started writing newspaper articles. This effort also paid off in developing his literary ability, as later on he wrote prodigiously, filling many journals about his experiences and knowledge of the Indians, along with paintings of them from his vast files of sketches.

Toward the end of the 1840s, George’s innovations started paying off, when he found a means of painting and selling, without compromising his standards.

George was aware and probably proud of the fact that he created his own destiny—“I did not follow in the beaten tracks of others”—while propagating his compassion for the downtrodden people he had come to love. He did that, plus bringing beauty and culture to the frontier, without losing sight of his mission.

Because of his perseverance and dedication, today we know about the lives, loves and activities of his adopted people, the Potawatomi and Miami Indians of Indiana.

Maconaquah's Story
by Kitty Dye

Five-year old Frances Slocum was abducted by Delaware Indians during the Revolutionary War. Adopted by them, she grew up thoroughly Indianized---white people became her enemy, also.

She married the Miami chief, Shepoconah, who named her Maconaquah and took her to live with his people in Indiana.

When Maconaquah was 61, in 1835, she told her birth secret, hoping to be excluded from the Miami's scheduled exodus to Kansas. Instead, it permitted her Slocum family to find her. Kinship worked its magic; apprehensions turned to love and trust, enabling this classic pioneer story to have a mutually happy conclusion.

Genre: fictionalized history, ISBN: 0-9702501-0-X, Price: $18, 176 pages
This book can be ordered through the Fulton County Museum Book Store.

Excerpt from the book:
When Chief Tuck Horse abducted little Frances Slocum from her Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, home in 1778, little could he have known that he was carrying her right into the pages of history. Two hundred twenty-five years later, her story is still fascinating readers of history, biography and adventure.

The first five years of Frances’ life were spent in a Quaker household, so it was a big adjustment for her to be suddenly thrust into an Indian wigwam so far from home. Frances replaced the deceased daughter in Tuck Horse’s family, so she was treated well. The Indian way of life would have appealed to a Quaker child, with their love of colorful clothing, games, music but especially having the time to enjoy each other with story telling.

When the fall came and the corn was harvested, the Indians had another celebration to the Great Spirit as well as to all the lesser gods who helped grow the corn. Then, while the women and girls prepared the corn for winter storage, the men would go out to hunt deer. The winter months would be spent in preparing the skins for clothing and moccasins, for appliquéing ribbons and wampum into adornments and jewelry, and for much storytelling around the wigwam fire.

By the time it was safe for the Slocums to start hunting for her, five years later, little Frances had become so endeared to her Indian family, she never tried to make contact with white people who crossed her path. In fact, she even adopted the Indians' hatred and fear of all white people who were trying so hard to take the Indians' land.

The Slocums knew she was living with an Indian family, so they made seven excursions into Indian territory in the next fifteen years trying to find her. By this time, however, she was living near Kekionga (site of present-day Fort Wayne, Indiana). She married first a Delaware Indian, and secondly the Miami chief, Shepoconah.

It was Shepoconah who gave her the Miami name of Maconaquah, meaning Little Bear Woman, and took her to live with his tribe on the banks of the Mississinewa River, near its junction with the Wabash River in Indiana where there was a growing city called Peru.

The early part of the 1800s was a crucial time for the Indians as they tried desperately to hold onto their lands. The government officials used every possible tactic to acquire the Indians' property to sell to the ever increasing onslaught of settlers.

Shepoconah was deaf so he and Maconaquah's home became known as Deaf Man’s Village along the Mississinewa River, about seven miles south of Peru. It was here that they raised their family of two sons and two daughters.

In the mid-1830s, the government had “bought” so much of the Indians’ land that the negotiations now were regarding when the Miamis would leave for reservations in Kansas. Shepoconah and the two sons had died by then, so Maconaquah, now grown old, and the two daughters, grown and married, were fearful they, too, would have to move to the reservation established for the Miamis in Kansas. Clearly they would have to do something---but what?

Maconaquah decided to appeal to the Great Spirit for help. First, however, she reasoned she must make her peace with him by unburdening her soul of the secret she had been harboring all these many years. This notion had been on her mind a lot lately but she had always been reluctant to tell it because her Indian family had told her that if her white relatives ever found her, they would make her return to them, and that hated way of life as a white person.

She didn’t want to do that, but after all this time, she reasoned, her Slocum family had probably forgotten about her, or were dead. Yes, it was safe to tell now, and she could appeal to the Great Spirit with a clear conscience.

Maconaquah carried out her plan, by telling a trusted trader all she could remember about her former life along the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania. To her great dismay, however, it completely backfired on her, as two years later she was still on the list to go to Kansas and here were three white people standing before her, claiming to be her brothers Joseph and Isaac, and sister Mary. .

Despite her fears and apprehensions, that reunion with her Slocum family proved to be the answer to her prayers. The Great Spirit was not only looking out for her, but her Slocum family as well. An extra added bequest to her was that she learned that not all white people are bad. It also enabled the Slocums to learn that the Indian way of life was such a good one, not at all like they had been led to believe all those years.

What makes this story doubly remarkable—unusual— is that it’s a pioneer abduction story with a happy ending.

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