The Wabash Land Company, which negotiated what was perhaps the first land deal in Indiana, dates back to 1775. Then, as now, real estate speculators were a thrifty class and their opportunities were great. In the year mentioned Louis Vivial, the agent of the company mentioned, negotiated with the Piankeshaw Indians at Vincennes for two tracts of land bordering on the Wabash River, that, besides a large tract out of eastern Illinois comprised perhaps one-half of Indiana. The first, extending along the Wabash above Vincennes for one hundred twenty miles, reached from the river westward for ninety and eastward for one hundred twenty miles. The other, extending from the mouth of White River to the junction of the Wabash and the Ohio, reached the same distance west and east as the first one. This eastward stretch carried it almost across the present state. This vast possession amounting, all told, to about thirty-seven million, four hundred and ninety-seven thousand six hundred acres, was actually transferred, being "signed by the grantees, attested by a number of the inhabitants of Post Vincennes, and subsequently registered in the office of a notary public as Kaskaskia." The contract between the parties printed in full in Dillon's "Indiana" (pp. 104-9) is too long to reproduce here, though the purchasing price may be given. The items specified are: "Five shillings in money, four hundred blankets, twenty-two pieces of stroud, two hundred and fifty shirts, twelve gross of star gartering, one hundred and twenty pieces of ribbon, twenty-four pounds of vermilion, eighteen pairs of velvet laced housings, one piece of malton, fifty-two fusils, thirty-five dozen large buckhorn-handle knives, forty dozen couteau knives, five hundred pounds of brass kettles, ten thousand gun flints, six hundred pounds of gunpowder, two thousand pounds of lead, four hundred pounds of tobacco, forty bushels of salt, three thousand pounds of flour, three horses; also the following quantities of silverware, viz.: eleven very large armbands, forty wristbands, six wholemoons, six halfmoons, nine earwheels, forty-six large crosses, twenty-nine hairpipes, sixty pairs of earbobs, twenty dozen small crosses, twenty dozen nose-crosses, and one hundred and ten dozen brooches."

All these commodities, amounting in value to but a very few thousand dollars, even when figured at traders' prices, doubtless seemed to the simple Indians a bewildering display of wealth.

As a matter of fact, they got the best of the bargain, for Clark's conquest of the country threw it all into other hands; the claim of the Wabash Land Company was, of course, not confirmed, and later the land was again purchased of the original claimants by the United States.