battle on 22 October. Richardville was initially reluctant to take part in Miami tribal affairs, preferring instead to culturally identify himself as a creole Frenchman, dress in French clothing, and take an interest in European culture. Because his tribe had a matrilineal power system, Richardville gained leadership status in the tribe from his mother's people, meaning he gained authority through his mother’s brother, Chief Pacanne. Richardville became more politically active in Miami affairs as an ally of his uncles, Chief Pacanne and Chief Little Turtle. After the War of 1812, Richardville began to culturally identify more with the Miami people, instead of the creole French, and became a "prominent leader of the tribe." As an adult, Richardville refused to speak English or French languages or wear European-style clothing. Fur trader and entrepreneur Richardville began his career as a trader and operated a successful trading post at Kekionga (Miamitown), near present-day Fort Wayne, Indiana, while his mother ran a trading post at the Forks of the Wabash. These two outposts along the Maumee River and Wabash Rivers dominated trade between the two waterways, which connected the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River Valley. Richardville and his mother made most of their income from the fur trade, but they also established a profitable business charging fees to transport goods over and control of a portage connecting the Maumee River to the Little River (known in the present-day as the Little Wabash River). Under the terms of Article 4 of the Northwest Ordinance (1787), the U.S. Congress declared that all navigable waters and portages between the Mississippi and the Saint Lawrence Rivers were free for all to use. Although the Miamis lost control of the portage in the Treaty of Greenville (1795), Richardville acquired a trade license in 1815 that gave him a monopoly on carry-over services at the portage, which earned him considerable profits from the trading traffic. In 1824 Richardville had gained sufficient wealth to be among the first to purchase a lot in Fort Wayne, Indiana, that would serve as a site for his home and trading post. By 1831 he had relocated the Miami tribal headquarters and his trading post in Fort Wayne to a site at the Forks of the Wabash, which was closer to the Miami villages and tribal reserve lands. Tribal leader and landowner Beginning in the late 1790s, Richardville took an increasingly active interest in