Tract The earliest land claims by inhabitants of Vincennes were based on a sale by the Indians to the French in 1742 of a tract of land containing 1.6 million acres, known as the Vincennes Tract. It was a rectangular block lying at right angles to the course of the Wabash River at Vincennes. The tract was ceded by France to Britain by treaty in 1763 after the French and Indian War. On October 18, 1775, an agent for the Wabash Company purchased two tracts of land along the Wabash River from the Piankeshaw tribe called the 'Plankashaw Deed'. In these deeds, the Vincennes Tract was excepted, and it was the first recognition of the tract in period documents. Eventually, the United States Supreme Court invalidated the deeds. The claims based on French sovereignty or individual deeds issued under it were eventually rejected by congress, because if there were such grants, they passed to the United States by the Treaty of Paris 1783. By right of conquest, George Rogers Clark secured this land for the United States in 1779 and the Land Act of 1796 honored its boundaries. The Vincennes Donation Lands were embodied in An Act for granting lands to the Inhabitants and settlers at Vincennes and the Illinois country, in the territory northwest of the Ohio, and for confirming them in their possessions (1791). Growth of the town By 1798, the population had reached 2,500. Vincennes was no longer considered a trading outpost, but a thriving city. Elihu Stout published the first newspaper in the Indiana Territory in 1804 at Vincennes. The Indiana Gazette debuted on July 31, 1804. Fire destroyed the printing presses in 1806, but Stout revived the newspaper as the Western Sun in 1807. Vincennes served as the first capital of Indiana Territory until it was moved to Corydon on May 1, 1813. In 1826, "A party of Shawnee Indians ... in men, women, and children, to 500, passed through this place [Vincennes] ... from their reservation at Wapaghkonetta, moving to the Mississippi. The celebrated Indian prophet, and a son of the great Tecumseh, were in the company." Slavery Slavery was practiced in the 16th century, when the present-day state of Indiana was part of New France (1534–1763), by the French and Native Americans. When the area became part of the Northwest Territory, slavery was banned by the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, but slavery and