By A. Gwynn Henderson and David Pollack

On September 7, 1816, readers skimming the Niles’ Weekly Register might have noticed a story about two groups of Shawnee men visiting central Kentucky. It appears on a page with a variety of national and international news: an accounting of how many immigrants had arrived in America, details of Simón. Bolivar’s defeat, and a summary of European social and political events.

Subscribers who stopped to read the story in full would have learned that the first group had come to Lexington, Kentucky to visit their former army buddy. What brought the second group to Bourbon County, located northeast of Lexington, was not mentioned. The important person in that group, however, was named: Catahecassa (also called Black Hoof), principal civil chief of the Shawnee.

In his mid-70s in 1816, Catahecassa was no stranger to travel. In his youth, he had taken part in conflicts scattered across the Ohio Valley and upper Midwest. In his later years, as a diplomat, he had traveled to Washington D.C. to advocate for the Shawnee people. At the time of this trip, he was still active in Shawnee political affairs.

Unlike those 1816 readers, however, we do know one reason – perhaps the main reason? – why Catahecassa and his companions came to central Kentucky: to visit the area near Goffs Corner in eastern Clark County.

How do we know this?

Interviews carried out by Rev. John D. Shane of Cincinnati in the 1840s and 1850s with Kentucky’s aging early settlers. Shane had interviewed Clark County residents about the history of the Goffs Corner area. And those who had met the great Shawnee leader, orator, and diplomat and his companions in 1816 shared their experiences with Shane.

Why the Goffs Corner Area?

Eastern Clark County near Goffs Corner is a beautiful, even magical, rural place today. Bounded by Upper Howard’s Creek on the west and Lulbegrud Creek on the east, it is the last real level spot travelers cross before they enter Kentucky’s Eastern Mountains.

In 1816, it was a rural place, too. Widely scattered farmhouses, agricultural fields, and woodlands. Fresh and saltwater springs and salt licks. Good soil for crops. Diverse resources available to anyone living in this boundary zone of the Kentucky Bluegrass and the mountains. But there is no seat of government to visit, no powerful men to persuade.

Why, then, visit? What made this place so special to Catahecassa?

Memories. Memories of home.

The Trip

The travelers likely had started south from Wapakoneta in northwestern Ohio, where Catahecassa lived at the time. By modern calculations, the men would have covered a distance of about 220 miles on their way to their destination. If they had cut across country, the route might have been shorter. Travel in the early 1800s would not have been particularly easy. “Roads” were dusty tracks or muddy traces that extended from settlement to settlement, and true roads would not appear for decades.

The Visit

In their remembrances, the Clark County residents describe Catahecassa as an elderly man who said he had made the trip to “keep this place in mind” and to show it to his young companions.

Local resident Jesse Daniels remembered breakfasting with the travelers. Catahecassa, known for his oratory skills, delivered a speech, translated by one of his Kentucky hosts who was traveling with the group. Daniels recalled that in this speech, Catahecassa recounted the history of the area. He mentioned the Shawnee settlement where he had lived in 1754, and commented that hostilities with a southern tribe had forced his community to move away.

One Link in a Long Chain of Indigenous History 

Catahecassa’s 1816 visit could be considered a kind of pilgrimage to his old home. If he truly was born around 1740, then he would have been around 14 years old when he and his family lived there.

But there is more to this story than one Shawnee man’s return to the home of his youth. His is one link in a long chain of Native stories – thousands of individual stories – that reaches back over 10,000 years. These stories are written on the landscape. Remnants of scores of ancient seasonal camps. A circular farming village that more than 200 people may have called home for four decades over 700 years ago.

But there is more.

This area is also an ancient spiritual place. Native peoples built earthen burial mounds and circular enclosures on the ridgetops more than 2,000 years ago. Some enclosures are clearly visible today. Their causeways are aligned to the summer solstice sunrise and to the major moonrise, when the moon appears to pause in the Northern sky.

These ancient monuments remained sacred places even after their builders no longer visited them. Large, tall, rock-chinked, commemorative wooden marker poles were erected near some enclosures.

Archaeological research shows that later Indigenous peoples visited, revered, and often took care of these ancient monuments for over 2,000 years. These circular enclosures would have been known to, and likely even visited by, the young Catahecassa and his family.

Taking Meaning for Us Today

Home is not only where we live now; it is also the place our hearts consider home. Catahecassa’s visit illustrates how strong the pull of memories can be.

Neither the readers of Niles’ Weekly Register nor us today can know for certain what called to Catahecassa from across the miles and through the years. But it was a strong call, significant enough for him to make that journey home.

His visit reminds us to hold these places in our hearts and preserve and protect them. They make us who we are, and we cannot be whole without them.

To learn more about a circular enclosure near Goffs Corner, Kentucky read the Earthwalker site profile on Discover Kentucky Archaeology.

To appreciate Catahacassa’s oratory talent, read the February 5, 1802 speech he delivered to President Thomas Jefferson on behalf of himself and the Delaware and Shawnee Nations.