General William H. Harrison, long familiar with the North West Indians, in an official letter to the secretary at War, dated H.Q.  Cincinnati, March 22d, 1814, giving an able view of the Indian tribes, makes the following remarks on the descent of this northern confederacy, upon the great Illini nation.

“The Miamies have their principal settlements on the forks of the Wabash, thirty miles from fort Wayne; and at Mississineway, thirty miles lower down.  A band of them, under the name of Weas, have resided on the Wabash, sixty miles above Vincennes; and another under the Turtle, on Eel river, a branch of the Wabash, twenty miles north west of Fort Wayne.  By an artifice of the Little Turtle, these three bands were passed on General Wayne as distinct tribes, and an annuity was granted to each.  The Eel river and Weas however to this day call themselves Miamies, and are recognized as such by the Mississineway band.  The Miamies, Maumees, or Tewicktovies are the undoubted proprietors of all that beautiful country which is watered by the Wabash and its branches; and there is as little doubt, that their claim extended as far east as the Sciota.  They have no tradition of removing from any other quarter of the country; whereas all the neighboring tribes, the Piankeshaws excepted, who are a branch of the Miamies, are either intruders upon them, or have been permitted to settle in their country.  The Wyandots emigrated first from Lake Ontario and subsequently from lake Huron, the Delawares from Pennsylvania and Maryland, the Shawanies from Georgia, the Kickapoos and Pottawatamies from the country between lake Michigan and the Mississippi, and the Ottawas and Chippeways, from the peninsula formed by lakes Michigan, Huron and St. Clair, and the strait connecting the latter with Erie.  The claims of the Miamies were bounded on the north and west by those of the Illinois confederacy, consisting originally of five tribes, called Kaskaskias, Cahokias, Peorians, Michiganians, and Temorias speaking the Miami language, and no doubt branches of that nation.

“When I was first appointed governor of Indiana Territory, these once powerful tribes were reduced to about thirty warriors, of whom twenty five were Kaskaskias, four Peorians, and a single Michiganian.  There was an individual lately alive at St. Louis, who saw the enumeration of them made by the Jesuits in 1745, making the number of their warriors four thousand.  A furious war between them and the Sacs and Kickapoos reduced them to that miserable remnant, which had taken refuge amongst the white people of Kaskaskia and St. Genevieve.  The Kickapoos had fixed their principal village at Peoria, upon the south bank of the Illinois river, whilst the Sacks remained masters of the country to the north.”