Called "Wah-bah-shik-ki" by the Miami and "Oua-ba-che" by the French, the Wabash River was the principal route connecting Quebec and New Orleans. The Miami, Potawatomi, Mascouten, Wea, Kickapoo, and Piankashaw lived in the Wabash Valley, and along the river the French established Fort Ouiatanon in 1717 and Post Vincennes in 1732. After the French lost their empire to the British in 1763, the Ottawa chief Pontiac, who had led a revolt against the British, made peace with them at Ouiatanon in 1765. During the American Revolution, George Rogers Clark seized Vincennes and Ouiatanon from the British, and in 1778 Lt. Governor Henry Hamilton moved a force of 350 soldiers and Indians to Vincennes by the Wabash route before Clark captured his command in February 1779. In the 19th century both flatboats and steamboats used the Wabash, and by 1852 the Wabash and Erie Canal linked the Great Lakes with the Ohio. For two centuries the Wabash served as a major highway for travel, trade, and settlement, and in song and story it symbolizes Indiana.
