For decades, William Conner’s legacy has grown thanks to the Fishers living history museum that bears his name. Fewer people, however, know about his first wife, a Lenape woman whose family was instrumental in her husband’s livelihood and political position.
Now Conner Prairie, the museum that sits on land Conner once owned, is telling the story of Mekinges, a Lenape woman who was only about 12 when she married Conner, who was about a dozen years older, sometime near the start of the 19th century. After nearly two decades with Conner, Mekinges took their six children and left when her Lenape people were forced westward.
Conner Prairie has told the story of Mekinges’ life and Conner’s part in the nation’s relocation in bits and pieces over the years. In an exhibit that opened earlier this month, the museum is taking a new approach by using histories from the Lenape and original documents like land records, letters, diaries to reconstruct Mekinges’ and Conner’s place in the complex and often brutal story of Western expansion.
“Torn: A Family Portrait” is inside Conner Prairie’s newly renovated Museum Experience Center, part of a $44 million project that includes new trails and an exhibit devoted to Black experiences from pre-colonial Africa to the present-day United States.
“Torn” provides insight into both the Conner family’s pivotal role in shaping a young Indiana and a woman whose fortitude is honored by her descendants today.
“We wanted to go back to the primary sources for this research,” said Sara Schumacher, a curator of Native American history and culture who began researching Mekinges in 2022 when Conner Prairie hired her. “So we went to all the records and archives in Kansas and Oklahoma and spoke with direct lineal descendants of Mekinges and talked to them about what records they have, what stories they have.”
How Mekinges and William Conner met
Mekinges was born about 1789 in present-day Ohio as the youngest of nine siblings. Her mother was an elder and her father was Chief William Anderson. Although the Lenape’s homelands were originally in the area around what became New Jersey, a series of forced removals moved them westward.
Born in 1777, Conner was raised by a fur trader father and a mother who’d been taken captive as a child and adopted by the Shawnee. Conner grew up among the German-speaking Christian missionary Moravian community and Native peoples in Ohio and Michigan. He moved to Indiana as an adult and learned the Lenape language, participated in the nation’s cultural practices and built relationships with people in the Native nation, including Anderson.
White traders like William Conner knew that marrying into Native families helped forge business connections. However, Mekinges’ young age at the time of her wedding was unusual, and scant details exist about the reason behind it, Schumacher said.
“It could have been the only marriage prospect he had connected to a chief and to access those trade networks for the fur trade, he needed to be married in and part of the community,” Schumacher said.
The couple likely would have lived according to Lenape culture, in which women managed farming, distributing food and goods, and became matriarchal leaders, according to “Torn” exhibit information. The family probably lived on the Conner Prairie property near Conner’s trading post, Schumacher said.
“We’ve had primary sources, journal accounts of visitors to William Conner’s trading post where they say there was a Native woman there who didn’t want to talk to them in English,” Schumacher said. “We know she probably spoke English … and so it’s likely she just didn’t want to talk to these guys that showed up without warning.”
A Conner family split
Conner’s influence grew during his marriage to Mekinges. His knowledge of the Lenape language and people led him and his brother John to become interpreters during the U.S. government’s treaty negotiations with Native nations. In 1818, Lenape leaders signed the Treaty of St. Mary’s, which forced the nation to relocate again to Missouri.
Two years later, Mekinges left with the children and her Lenape family.
“It is a very fraught situation, and we don’t have any primary documents that say exactly how either party felt about it,” Schumacher said. “We know that when William Conner writes about the land that he is granted, he says that she left despite his persuasions to attempt to get her to stay. And so that’s really the only document we have that says how he feels about the situation.”
After his wife and children left, Conner’s personal fortune grew. He had been paid to interpret during treaty negotiations, sell supplies to aid the Lenape’s removal and settle debts, according to exhibit information. The government also gave Conner the land that’s now Conner Prairie.
Two months after Mekinges left, William married Elizabeth Chapman, a white woman whose family had recently arrived in the area. The couple had 10 children and lived in Conner Prairie’s brick house, which was built in 1823 and still stands.
The two sides of William’s family clashed after he died in 1855 without a will. Mekinges and her children sued Chapman to obtain their cut of the land’s value, but a jury denied them that, according to exhibit information.
At about age 80, Mekinges died in Oklahoma, where the Lenape had been forced to relocate after stops in Missouri and Kansas. Two of the sons she had with William served as Lenape chiefs. Great-grandson Richard C. Adams became a well-known attorney and poet. Today, River Whittle, one of Mekinges’ descendants, voices an exhibit video in the Lenape and English languages.
More in Conner Prairie’s new Museum Experience Center
The Museum Experience Center’s new experiences are spread across two floors in the renovated welcome building, which was originally constructed in 1988. A cafe and museum store also are now part of the center.
“I like to refer to the new Museum Experience Center as the appetizer for what is truly the main course of Conner Prairie, which is the grounds. So this doesn’t replace anything,” President and CEO Norman Burns said. “What it does is it allows our guests to engage and interact with the Conner Prairie experience on the front end and do a better job of that than what we did before.”
The renovated Experience Center also allows Conner Prairie to expand its hours year-round instead of operating on fewer days during the off-season, which stretched from the November to spring break, Burns said.
In addition to “Torn,” the center’s experiences include the following:
“Wellspring”: Artist Wes Bruce and his creative collective, The Curious Life, partnered with Conner Prairie to design a massive one-of-a-kind installation where children and their families can climb and explore natural themes. An imaginative limestone quarry, tree, fictional language that draws on natural clues and hidden rooms that house treasures are positioned across the artscape.
“There’s lots of symbology, lots of mythology,” said Mark Firestone, associate vice president of developing experiences. “There’s layers and layers of storytelling.”
“Power of Place”: Using the White River as a guide, the walk-through theater tells the story of Indiana’s natural resources and people that begins 22,000 years ago amid the glaciers.
“Spark!Lab”: Families can explore the nuts and bolts of invention, experimenting and problem-solving through the lenses of science, history, engineering and art.
“Caring for Collections”: This area explains how Conner Prairie preserves its approximately 30,000 objects. Visitors can also take a peek into the museum’s vault and see staff working on conservation.
“Traveling Exhibit Gallery”: The museum will show rotating exhibits in the flexible gallery space.
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Contact IndyStar reporter Domenica Bongiovanni at 317-444-7339 or d.bongiovanni@indystar.com. Sign up here for the newsletter she curates about things to do and ways to explore Indianapolis. Find her on Facebook, Instagram or X: @domenicareports.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: The little-known story of the Lenape woman who helped shape Conner Prairie
Reporting by Domenica Bongiovanni, Indianapolis Star / Indianapolis Star
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