Forts of Vincennes, Indiana

Fort Knox II Site
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
Reconstructed palisades at the site of Fort Knox II
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Nearest city	Vincennes, Indiana
Area	1.8 acres (0.73 ha)
Built	1803 (1803)
NRHP Reference #	82000045
Added to NRHP	March 24, 1982

During the 18th and 19th centuries, the French, British and American nations built and occupied a number of forts at Vincennes, Indiana. These outposts commanded a strategic position on the Wabash River.

The first trading post on the Wabash River was established by the Sieur Juchereau, Lieutenant General of Montreal. He, with 34 Canadians, founded the company post 28 October 1702 for the purpose of trading buffalo hides. The post was evidently a success; in the first three years, they collected over 13,000 buffalo hides. When Juchereau died, the post was abandoned, and the settlers left what they considered hostile territory for Mobile, the capital of Louisiana. The exact location of Juchereau's trading post is not known, but because of the crossing of the Buffalo Trace across the Wabash at Vincennes, it is thought by some to have been at or near the modern city of Vincennes. Some other historians place the post 50 miles further south.

François-Marie Bissot, Sieur de Vincennes, acting under the authority of the French colony of Louisiana, constructed a fort in 1731-1732. The outpost was designed to secure the lower Wabash Valley for France, mostly by strengthening ties with the Miami, Wea, and Piankashaw nations. It was named Fort Vincennes in honor of Vincennes, who was captured and burned at the stake during a war with the Chickasaw nation in 1735. In 1736, Louis Groston de Saint-Ange de Bellerive assumed command of the post. He rebuilt the fort, turned the post into a major trading center, and recruited Canadian traders to lure native people to settle there. By 1750, the Piankashaw resettled their village near the post.