Quaker Agriculture missions to the Miami
In 1802, during a trip to Washington, DC, Miami Chief Little Turtle extended an invitation to the Baltimore area Quakers to visit Fort Wayne and teach the Miami about white civilization and European cultivation methods. The Quakers sent farm implements in 1803. Little Turtle, by way of William Wells, sent a letter thanking them for the tools, but expressed uncertainty of how they should be used. The Quakers sent two missionaries, a farmer, and a blacksmith, who arrived in Spring of 1804. Missionaries Gerard T. Hopkins and George Ellicott remained two weeks to see to the establishment of Philip Dennis, a Baltimore area farmer who would remain through Autumn to demonstrate the farming methods used by Americans on the East Coast. Their reception was small, as Little Turtle explained, because many were busy making seasonal maple sugar. However, they received a guided tour of the Miami territory, including the site of Harmar's Defeat and the migration of lake sturgeon up the Maumee River. The Miami tribes set Dennis in a solitary area, near the present-day border of Wabash and Huntington counties in Indiana. At the time, it was closest to Little Turtle's village, but not near any towns. Dennis established