Ohio River Valley: A Place for Refugees

Clark's sketch of the Ohio and Mississippi River confluence notes recent Spanish and ongoing American military presence in the area.

Library of Congress Geography and Map Division

The Ohio River Valley in 1803 was a place where people had been re-starting for over a century.

Indigenous people who were displaced by British or American settlement to the east, including folks from Shawnee, Delaware, and Seneca communities, resettled here in the 1700s. As pressures from American settlement grew, so did the number of refugees in the Ohio River Valley. People flowed in, from Mahican, Wyandot, Miami, Huron, Pinkashaw, Ottawa, and Cherokee towns and villages that had seen violence from American settlers. They accepted refugees from far-flung communities and created new alliances across languages and backgrounds.

In the 1790s, Delaware and Shawnee leaders organized an intertribal confederacy against the American government, who they felt was trying to kill them and take their lands: Secretary of War Henry Knox had issued an order to “extirpate” Shawnee and other Indigenous people in the Ohio River Valley.

The genocidal wars waged by the American government in this region culminated in the 1795 Battle of Fallen Timbers, near Lake Erie. At that battle, Americans, including a young William Clark, defeated a pan-Indigenous confederacy. Delaware and Shawnee leaders were then forced to sign a treaty that ceded parts of present-day Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois to the United States. They headed west and north, again refugees.

At their winter camp in Illinois, Clark recognized several Delaware individuals who he had met during that treatymaking, who had moved west as a result of it. He also saw many Shawnee and Delaware residents near Fort Kaskaskia.

The Ohio Valley was a place of re-settlement. In 1803, Clark and Lewis, while they set out on the next task in the American colonial project, observed how it had was already happening here.

About this article: This article is part of a series called “Pivotal Places: Stories from the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail.”

Lewis and Clark NHT Visitor Centers and Museums

This map shows a range of features associated with the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail, which commemorates the 1803-1806 Lewis and Clark Expedition. The trail spans a large portion of the North American continent, from the Ohio River in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to the mouth of the Columbia River in Oregon. The trail is comprised of the historic route of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, an auto tour route, high potential historic sites (shown in black), visitor centers (shown in orange), and pivotal places (shown in green). These features can be selected on the map to reveal additional information. Also shown is a base map displaying state boundaries, cities, rivers, and highways. The map conveys how a significant area of the North American continent was traversed by the Lewis and Clark Expedition and indicates the many places where visitors can learn about their journey and experience the landscape through which they traveled.