Fort Au Glaize and the First Wapakoneta Shawnee Council House

Fort Au Glaize and the First Wapakoneta Shawnee Council House. . According to early histories of Auglaize County, in 1748 the French built a trading post 380 yards north of this marker along the north bank of what were the navigable headwaters of the Auglaize River for keel boats when this area was in Upper Louisiana of New France. It may have been the first European-built structure in this region following George Croghan's British Trading Post built the same year at Pickawillany. The traders received goods transported up the Miami of the Lakes (Maumee) and Auglaize rivers on pirogues and scows from Detroit and traded these for furs and hides with Miami, Wyandot and Ottawa tribes. The peltry was then floated down river to Detroit. In 1752 it was enclosed with a palisade making it the first fort built along the Auglaize River and one of the first fortified French trading posts in Ohio. Around 1770, it was re-established as Francis Duchouquet's Trading Post. Sometime after 1785 it was named Fort Au Glaize after the river. It was abandoned shortly after the Treaty of Greenville in 1795 but was strengthened and used as a supply base during the War of 18 12., The first of the two Wapakoneta Shawnee council houses (ti mi wi s'ki ke) was constructed a short distance east of the fort between 1795 and 1798 when Wapakoneta became the most important village of the Shawnees. It was the primary meeting place for the Shawnees which included Black Hoof, Tecumseh and his brother The Prophet, Blue Jacket and Captain Logan. The council house was made the center of the Wapakoneta Shawnee Reserve in the Treaty at the Foot of the Rapids (Fort Meigs) which was signed by the Shawnees and other tribes on September 29, 1817. This council house was used until it was replaced in the 1820's by the second Wapakoneta Shawnee council house which was located in present-day downtown Wapakoneta., Author/Historian Ken Eichert