3
the business the Governor has entrusted to them; weighing the merits of the three sites proposed for the capital; the Bluffs, twenty miles to the south known as Whetzell’s Settlement, the home of the Indian fighter and trace maker; Conner’s Prairie to the north, a trading post surrounded by Indian huts, and the Fall Creek Settlement where McCormick’s cabin stood.
The determining factors in the choice were the river, presumably navigable, its banks at this point making a good boat landing, the level surface of the adjacent land and last but by no means least, the central location of the Fall Creek Settlement.
After the Commissioners had made a favorable report to the Legislature, Congress granted the request for land by a donation of four sections for “the Capital in the Wilderness,” as Judge Daniel Waite Howe so aptly calls it.
The donation was sixty miles from the nearest settlement and within a few miles of the boundary which divided the “New Purchase” from the land still claimed by the Indians.
Speaking of conditions which existed then a writer says, “There was no town, no people except in the lonely cabins miles apart; not a road leading anywhere, no farm lands under cultivation, no supplies except those bought by pack horses on the trails made originally by the Indians.”
Under such circumstances a visit from the neighbor in the remote clearing or the arrival of the traveller with news of the world was remembered with delight. The itinerant preacher of any denomination was always a welcome guest; he played no small part in the development of Indiana from the crude material of a hundred years ago. He did not hold himself aloof from the social and economic duties of the period, but helped in log rollings, house raisings and corn huskings while he kept up his preaching.
