New Purchase Boundary (Treaty of St. Mary's)
Benton County, Benton County, Indiana
Marker Inscription
New Purchase Boundary (Treaty of St. Mary's) In October 1818, Purchasing Commissioners Lewis Cass, Benjamin Parke and Governor Jonathan Jennings acquired Indian claims on the land shown on this marker. About one-third of modern Indiana was involved in this transaction.
Erected by Indiana Historical Bureau
The Story
In October 1818, commissioners Lewis Cass and Benjamin Parke, with Governor Jonathan Jennings, negotiated the Treaty of St. Mary's, extinguishing Native land claims across a vast swath of central Indiana. The cession—the 'New Purchase'—opened roughly a third of the modern state to survey and settlement. The boundary it drew reshaped the map of frontier Indiana almost overnight.
Why it matters
The New Purchase was a pivotal act of dispossession and expansion, transferring Indigenous homelands to the United States and clearing the way for the rapid settlement of the Old Northwest.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Lewis Cass
- · Benjamin Parke
- · Jonathan Jennings
Related events
- · Treaty of St. Mary's (1818)
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Treaty Between Harrison & the Indians
Vermilion County, IL
Erected in 1927 by the Woman's Club of Ridge Farm, this monument marks the site of an 1809 treaty negotiated by territorial governor William Henry Harrison with regional Native nations. In treaties of this era, the U.S. secured vast tracts of Indigenous land in the Indiana and Illinois country, fueling white settlement and deepening tensions that soon erupted into frontier war.
1826 Potawatomi & Miami Treaties
Wabash, IN
In October 1826, the Potawatomi and Miami nations met with United States commissioners and signed treaties ceding lands north of the Wabash River. Written into the agreements were grants of land to fund a canal and the Michigan Road — the very infrastructure that would soon carry settlers deep into northern Indiana. The cessions opened a region long held by Native peoples, accelerating both American expansion and the eventual removal of these nations.
Kin-com-a-ong Spring Memorial
Wabash, IN
In the autumn of 1826, at a flint-water spring the Miami called Kin-com-a-ong, federal commissioners and Miami leaders met to negotiate one of the treaties that steadily stripped Indigenous nations of their homelands across the Old Northwest. The council here opened land in the Wabash valley to canal-building and American settlement, part of the relentless push that would culminate in the removal of many Miami people west of the Mississippi a generation later. The spring, long a gathering place, became the stage for a transaction that reshaped who would live and farm this country.
Site of Kendall County's First Store
Newark, IL
Near this site stood Kendall County's first store, built by George Hollenback, until it was burned in May 1832 during the Black Hawk War. That conflict — sparked when Sauk leader Black Hawk led followers back across the Mississippi to reclaim ceded homelands — swept panic and violence across northern Illinois, driving scattered settlers to flee or fort up.