Indian Artifacts Collected by Louis Munier from his farm on Big Creek in Monroe Township

From the beginning of the French Period to the removals of the 19th century, Indians and the white settlers had conflicting cultures, with the indians getting the worst of it. Each treaty signed more of Indiana over to the pioneers moving in from Kentucky. By the late 1780's Shawnee tribes lived in Northeastern Indiana. this tribe migrated into the prime hunting grounds of Southern Indiana. The treaties of 1834, 1838, 1840 completed the efforts of the US Government to remove the indian population from Indiana.

As white settlers gazed over those lands before them, they could probably see the remnant of the Indian West. The photos at the top of the page display Indian artifacts found by Louis Munier on his Father's Monroe Township farm. Mr. Munier stated that each spring when planting corn, he would pick up the arrowheads, tomahawk, and shards of relics left behind by the indians.

As the memory of Jefferson Proving Ground (JPG) recedes into the past following those long ago tribes to their "Happy Hunting Ground", interest in the history of the installation and of its pre-history increases. For the purposes of this document, pre-history is defined as before World War II. This material is provided to the reader by many sources. Indiana history books, personal observations, hundreds of hours of work by college students from Hanover College, and the members of the JPG Heritage Partnership group have been thrown into the mix of history with the hope that some sense of the extraordinary sacrifices given by the people of this area for the good of all can be reflected in these few pages.

The Rising Sun Community Foundation provided seed money to conduct and publish the interviews of folks who played their parts in this history. The JPG Heritage Partnership published the book, "Reminiscences and Reflections" and re-printed other significant books detailing the period.