When Indian Territory was created the aboriginal population was estimated at one hundred thousand (Webster), though we find no statement as to the actual number within the limits of the present State of Indiana. The tribes in these latter limits consisted mainly of the Miami Confederacy, the Potawatomis and the Delawares. At the Greenville Treaty of 1795, the Miamis, through Little Turtle, their spokesman, claimed to have held form "time immemorial" a large territory that included all of Indiana. Such other tribes as occupied any part of that region seem to have done so by invitation or sufferance of the Miamis. What was known as the "Miami Federation," as represented here, consisted of the Twightwees, or Miamis proper, the Ouiatanons or Weas, the Eel River and the Piankeshaws. Their towns were mostly along the Wabash, from the site of Fort Wayne to Vincennes, each of the various sub-tribes having its own locality. The Potawatomis occupied that part of Indiana lying north and northwest of the Miami country, as far eastward as the head waters of the Tippecanoe and Eel rivers, and the Delawares had the White River Valley, their most eastern town standing where Muncie now is. Other tribes, notably Kickapoos, Shawnees, Winnebagos and Wyandotte or Hurons had towns in the Miami country. The south part of the territory east of the Wabash is said to have been common hunting ground. We hear of aboriginal villages here and there throughout that region, but whether these were in any sense permanent of other than the shifting villages of hunting parties is not established.

The vagueness of the Indian claims and their loose validity is illustrated by the fact that the Potawatomis and Delawares, though said to have been occupying Miami territory, yet figured in the treaties for land sales and shared in the money and goods that were paid (In the American state papers [Public Lands, vol. Iii, p. 337] is a petition to congress under date of February 24, 1820, form the "Muhheaknuck or Stockbridge nations of Indians," otherwise the Mohicans, in which the petitioners claim that antecedent to the Revolutionary War the Miamis had granted to them and to the Delawares and Munsees a tract of land situated on the waters of White River [in Indiana] equal to 100 miles square. These Mohicans, under the second article of the Fort Wayne Treaty of September 30, 1809, claimed to be the "lawful proprietors of an equal and undivided share of the Delaware territory and asked for a share of the government payments made therefore.") One thing that contributed to this vagueness was the shifting westward of the Ohio Indians by Wayne's Treaty of 1795, leaving those tribes without any clearly defined lands of their own. General Wayne was asked to apportion the territory remaining to the Indians by "fixing the bounds of every nation's rights," but declined the delicate task (Dun's "True Indian Stories," p. 74). Naturally, then, all the resident tribes came to regard themselves as having a right in the lands they occupied, and when these lands came to be sold made their claims accordingly.