In the negotiation of these treaties in the northwest, Governor Harrison acted as the minister plenipotentiary of the government, and the numerous Indian treaties of that day were conducted under express authority and command from the City of Washington. The series of negotiations finally terminated in the Treaty of Fort Wayne on September 30, 1809, by which the United States acquired the title to about 2,900,000 acres, the greater part of which lay above the old Vincennes tract ceded by the Treaty of Grouseland, and below the mouth of Big Raccoon Creek in Parke County. "At that period, 1809," says Dillon, "the total quantity of land ceded to the United States, under treaties which were concluded between Governor Harrison and various Indian tribes, amounted to about 29,719,530 acres." As the consummation of that treaty was the principal and immediate cause which led up to the great controversy with Tecumseh, and the stirring events that followed, including the Battle of Tippecanoe, and as the charge was subsequently made by Tecumseh that it was brought about through the threats of Winamac, the Potawatomi chief, it may rightfully be said to be the most important Indian treaty ever negotiated in the west, outside of General Wayne's Treaty of Greenville, in 1795. We will now enter into the details of that transaction. That part of the lands acquired by the United States Government by the Treaty of Fort Wayne, and being situated in the valley of the Wabash and its tributaries may be thus described: It lay south of a line drawn from the mouth of the Big Raccoon Creek, in what is now Parke county, and extending southeast to a point on the east fork of White River above Brownstown. This line was commonly called The Ten O'clock Line, because the direction was explained to the Indians as toward the point where the sun was at ten o'clock. The whole territory acquired in the Wabash valley and elsewhere embraced about 2,900,000 acres and in the Wabash region was to be not less than thirty miles in width at its narrowest point. It will thus be seen that the tract lay directly north of, and adjoining the white settlements in and about Vincennes. It was afterwards known as the New Purchase. There had been frequent and bitter clashes between the settlers and the Wea and Potawatomi Indians of this part of the territory for years. Justice and right was not always on the side of the white man. An accurate commentator, speaking of the early frontiersmen, says: "They eagerly craved the Indian lands; they would not be denied entrance to the thinly-peopled territory wherein they intended to make homes for themselves and their children. Rough, masterful, lawless, they were neither daunted by the powers of the red warriors whose wrath they braved, nor awed by the displeasure of the government whose solemn engagements they violated."