- The Nation's 250th anniversary will be celebrated on July 4th, 2026.

And on this Across Indiana Special, we're kicking off the celebration by diving into stories rooted in the American Revolution, the first one of which happened right here at the Scenic, George Rogers Clark National Historical Park in Vincennes, Indiana, the site of a pivotal moment during the Revolution.

Now, if I asked you to name a handful of notable figures from the Revolutionary War, I bet you could name most of the big ones.

George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, the guys in powdered wigs in tight pants.

You know, the usual suspects.

In our first story, we'll learn about a lesser known figure who played a major role in securing this region for the patriotic cause.

Across Indiana, producer Kristen Remley presents the turbulent tale of the namesake for this park.

George Rogers Clark, the man who conquered the Midwest.

But did he really?

- Today, George Rogers Clark is celebrated as the Conqueror of the Midwest.

A man who defied the British and secured the heartlands.

But as a nation, our memory can be a bit selective.

- Commemoration is really about an image of an individual, and history is about many, many perspectives and many, many angles.

He was presented as the conqueror of the Midwest, and he did not conquer the Midwest.

- Clark defied the British and calls for moderation.

He sparked new conflict with Native Americans who sought peace and died with his reputation in tatters, consumed by addiction and forgotten for 150 years until he became a convenient hero, - George Rogers Clark was asked to come to the Midwest, including to Indiana during the American Revolution, in order to secure forts, really not land, not territory, but forts for the rebel cause.

- Clark spent his first several months in the Midwest conquering forts across present day Illinois and Kentucky.

To strengthen control of the land in the area, Clark sent out his close friend, Father Pierre Gibault, to collect pledges of loyalty to the Patriot cause from the villages.

Suddenly an unassuming trading posts was thrust into the war for the Heartlands.

- That's what Vincennes was.

It was just this place in, really in the middle of nowhere.

It was very isolated and there wasn't much around it.

But this is where the fur traders radiated and where Native Peoples came, - Vincennes was far removed from the worst of the conflict without any significant fortifications, but massive strategic benefit thanks to the many tribes who came to trade there.

It was also deep within the lands of the Miami tribe and home to the Piankeshaw Chief Young Tobacco.

Young Tobacco sought to ally himself with the American cause and helped broker peace between Clarks men and the tribes of Indiana and Illinois.

- The Miami did try and play mediators a lot.

We, we really didn't want to go to war with the British or the Americans, and oftentimes we would try and play that middle ground.

It didn't work, obviously, but you know, during their lifetimes, it might seem like it did.

- In the late 1700s, the British controlled the province of Quebec from Fort Lernoult in present day Detroit.

From Fort Lernoult, British Governor Henry Hamilton forged alliances with native tribes to thwart patriot ambitions in the region.

Hamilton was ordered to send out his allies to raid settlements.

- He was a notorious figure among settlers as someone who hired and recruited native peoples to, to kill, to, to gather scalps.

Basically - Seeing Clarks push up the Wabash in alliance with the Piankeshaw as a threat to British control in the West, Henry Hamilton left Detroit and made for Vincennes entering the town in the winter, and immediately beginning to build up the aging Fort Sackville into a major base of British power.

With the dense woodlands of Indiana and Illinois blanketed in snow, Hamilton would have all winter to expand and reinforce Fort Sackville, the fatal flaw in Hamilton's plan, assuming George Rogers Clark was willing to wait, - And that's the epic moment where he marches during the winter with very mineral supplies.

- Clark raced for the fort, and during 16 days march through the snow, mud, and icy water to reach Vincennes before Hamilton even knew to send for reinforcements.

With only a few men in the garrison, Lord Hamilton surrendered after a brief siege turning himself over and spending the next few years in a Virginia prison.

Clark was celebrated as a hero for his defeat of the feared Lord Henry Hamilton.

- Even though he captured the British Commander, next commander continued to sponsor raids into Ohio and into Kentucky.

- Vincennes had significant symbolic value, but the military value was tied to Fort Lernoult.

in Detroit.

Without the manpower to spare or the funds for a campaign.

And with a new British commander already carrying on Henry Hamilton's work, Vincennes quickly lost its value as a military site.

As for George Rogers Clark, his decades of military service were drawing to a humiliating close - Misread things.

And we made some serious missteps that cost him his reputation.

He had an image of his younger man self, and as he was approaching middle age, his younger man himself was gone.

And that was very hard I think for him, he resorted to serious consumption of alcohol and a lot of resentment that just lodged deep within him.

- But even as the Revolutionary War ended, the battle for land in the West only intensified.

- It starts pretty much in 1783 when the British seed, their claims that they got from the French who didn't get it from anyone.

We start having raids going back and forth, which is what starts what you might call the Northwest Indian wars.

We would call the Chemosa Wars.

That's what kind of sparks that is their, their need for land to sell, to pay off all their war debts - To the settlers, The lands of the West were an untapped source of wealth.

To fill the treasury of a brand new nation, one by one, the Native American tribes were forced to seed more and more land.

- In 1795 of the Treaty of Greenville, that seeds mostly the southern half of Ohio, and that's just from us.

Our principal chief signed a treaty in 1840 agreeing to removal because he thought he saw the rioting on the wall, that if we stayed there, we were not going to survive as a people.

He was wrong, obviously, because we have citizens who live in Fort Wayne, Indiana, still and their families never left, and they're still very much Miami - To many Americans.

The Indian Removal Act was a moral stain on the nation.

Fierce debates waged on the place of Native Americans in society.

- We've always had people who, you know, viewed us as human beings who deserve respect and should be treated fairly.

There's always been people like that, but that's not necessarily who gets to make the decision on these things.

- In 1846, the US Army rounded up the Miami at gunpoint in Peru, Indiana.

They were first sent to Kansas and placed on a reservation only a fraction the size of what they'd been promised.

After 20 years, they were again displaced, sent next to Ottawa County, Oklahoma, where they are today.

- We are being forcibly removed and forcibly placated in this way.

And then we're being put right next to, you know, some of the only people we ever had generational warfare with.

In that very beginning, there would've been a lot of pressure in the area, and that's not to mention the tribes that were from there, that were being compressed within their own homelands.

They had this vast area and they're just being smashed down.

- The war over land in the west was over.

As for George Rogers Clark in the late 1800s, his story was revived.

It captured the imaginations of the masses and made him a symbol of the bygone days of the wild frontier.

And the explorers who tamed it, no matter what history said, - The commemoration process happens at sort of assigned moments like 100th anniversaries and 150th anniversaries, et cetera, et cetera.

And those commemoration moments use historical figures to satisfy their own cultural moment and what their own cultural needs are.

And so they create images of people in the past.

Now we have much more of an appreciation of the complexity of what happens in the Midwest, and that process is so much muddier and messier and has so many different moving parts to it.

So where George Rogers Clark becomes one moving part now rather than the moving part the way he was, and now I don't know what the next step will be in terms of how he's commemorated.

That's so much an important part of history.

The quest is to find the harder things to find and not the easier things to find.

- From an almost forgotten figure to one of the most well-known, this man has over a hundred locations named after him in the US, and was a character in a small musical production a few years back.

I, I doubt you've heard of it, Across Indiana producer, Logan Vaught, tells us about the first rock star to tour the US.

Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier de La Roch Gilbert du Motier de La Fayette.

Better know as the Marquis de Lafayette - He was treated like a rock star.

The crowds were proportionally larger than the crowds for The Beatles.

- In 1824 and 1825, the young United States was growing exponentially, clearing land, moving west, and disagreeing about a lot of things.

However, there was one thing most Americans could agree on.

The Marquis de Lafayette rocked Gilbert du Motier, the Marquis de Lafayette, a hero of the American Revolution was French.

In 1777 as a wealthy, idealistic 19-year-old, he bought a ship and sailed to the colonies to become an officer in the continental army.

He quickly learned English, bonded with General George Washington, and became a trusted leader.

- He was really amazing for the American Revolution, and he was a human being like everybody else.

He had his ups and downs, but he, he did some amazing things and he was uniformly kindhearted.

And, and for that reason, the American troops loved him.

You know, he saw them ragtag, starving, and, and he did something about it.

- Lafayette's connections with the French court and his own personal fortune provided financial aid to the cause.

But he played an active role as well.

He was injured at the Battle of Brandywine, forged an important alliance with the Oneida tribe and stayed with the troops during the long hungry winter at Valley Forge.

And finally, in 1781, alongside Alexander Hamilton and George Washington Lafayette led the siege at Yorktown ending the war.

- He was, he was just really different than a lot of people of his era.

He was a true believer in the values of the American Revolution.

He argued for equal treatment and fair treatment of Native Americans.

Argued that slavery should be prohibited in the United States, that people should all be treated fairly.

- And so nearly 50 years after the end of the Revolutionary War in 1824, at the invitation of President Monroe, 67-year-old Lafayette came back to tour all 24 states to remind the country of its founding beliefs.

- He was the last living general of the revolution.

James Monroe was president and it was a rough job being president at that time.

'cause people were really divided.

By that time, old divisions over things like slavery and abolition, what kind of economy the US should have, how the government should manage the economy.

All these old divisions were really festering.

And he thought it would be a good idea to bring Lafayette who everybody loved, and let Lafayette schmooze with people and give them something to rally around and remind them of the original values that bought them together.

- 50,000 people gathered at The Battery in New York City on August 16th, 1824, to welcome his ship.

Thousands more lined the parade route, hoping to catch a glimpse of the hero as he made his way up Broadway to City Hall.

On the 25th of August, he visited an 88-year-old John Adams in Quincy, Massachusetts, and met with veterans of the war in Boston.

- It was a festival like atmosphere.

Everywhere there was Lafayette merchandise, there were Lafayette banners.

Women wore Lafayette gloves with his face printed on them.

And so he was reduced to picking up people's hands and kissing his own face, which really mortified him.

- Throughout the fall, He was honored with parades in Philadelphia and Washington DC meeting with more veterans along the way.

On October 17th, he visited Mount Vernon and George Washington's tomb, where he spent an hour paying his respects to his leader.

What was supposed to be a four month visit, soon became a 13 month grand tour.

Lafayette was invited to Indiana's new capital in Indianapolis, but with poor roads making the trip arduous, everyone decided Jeffersonville across the Ohio River from the city of Louisville would be a much better choice.

On May 12th, 1825, the Marquita Lafayette arrived in Jeffersonville to a 24 gun, salute rows of soldiers and crowds of war veterans and well wishers.

He was escorted along the river to the Posey Mansion on Front Street and was greeted by Indiana Governor James B. Ray, - The ladies of Jeffersonville, spread a huge banquet underneath the bows of trees and fill the trees with spring flowers.

There was a great deal of speechmaking.

We know that the governor of Indiana had some things to say.

We have the, the records of a number of toasts made, and Lafayette had a great deal to say.

It's amazing his voice held out through the entire trip because he was called upon everywhere to speak.

Everyone wanted to hear from him.

- And just as Lafayette was remembered for his wartime contributions in 1825, Diane Stepro has been working to ensure he remains remembered.

May 12th, 2025 was a 200th anniversary of Lafayettes stop in Jeffersonville, a day of rediscovering the Marquis de Lafayette.

- It was pretty big.

3 to 4 hundred people attended, of them dressed in varied costumes.

It was very colorful.

We had reenactments of the speeches.

The fifth graders were asked originally to perform some melody that would've been popular at the time when Lafayette visited.

And they were given some choices and they came back with, we'd rather do the Lafayette song from Hamilton.

And those little kids rapped that song and they also gave the mayor a bit of a lecture on, on how important Lafayette was.

They were just absolutely fabulous.

- Just as Americans were reminded of the values the Marquis de Lafayette stood for in 1825, Hoosiers in 2025 continue to honor his legacy and ideals.

- Lafayette stood for so much that is important for people to remember now, just as it was a divided time, then it's a divided time now, perhaps it's always a divided time.

And it always seems like our own time is worse.

There is a lot of lack of civil discussion and a figure like Lafayette that reminds us of the best values of the revolution.

The idea of universal equality and religious tolerance.

The idea of fair treatment of people no matter where they're from.

Those were all important to Lafayette.

And people understood that he meant to care for them with those ideals.

And we wanted to remind people that that's where we, we came from.

We came from loving leaders like that.

- Lafayette was a true believer in the future of this country.

As he said about America in a letter to his wife in 1775... - And if you wanna learn more about Lafayette history, head up to South Bend to the Studebaker National Museum.

They have a beautiful carriage in their collection that was used by Lafayette during his 1824 to 1825 tour.

- This was used for part of the journey in upstate New York.

And so they tried to coincide his visit with the opening of the Erie Canal, right, which is a, one of the larger civil engineering projects of the early kind of country.

It's one of their ornate carriages in our collection.

So if you look, it's got this beautiful sort of dashboard footboard here with this eagle motif on the bottom, beautifully painted.

When it was restored, we actually preserved the parts of the original color scheme that were uncovered as part of that restoration conservation.

'cause you have to imagine this is a 200 year old vehicle.

It had undergone sort of some prior repaints and conservation efforts, if you will.

And so it's you, you're sort of telling the different lives of the carriage, right?

So we did uncover a lot of the original parts, but we left some of those later components too, to show kind of how it evolved over time.

- Hoosiers are known for being down to earth, but in our last story, we're going down into the earth to explore something not unique to Indiana, but special nonetheless.

Limestone.

Indiana limestone to be exact, has helped build some of America's most iconic landmarks, including 35 state capital buildings, the Pentagon and the Empire State Building.

50 years ago, a massive chunk of limestone from Bedford, Indiana found its way to a far more symbolic site, the very spot where General George Washington and his troops crossed the Delaware River.

Across Indiana producer Jeremy Sage, chiseled away to reveal this rock solid story.

- 2026 is America's Semi-Quincentennial, but this ain't our first “ennial While Indiana was barely an idea in 1776, Hoosiers have celebrated their country in many Hoosier ways since becoming a state.

In 1892, our only resident to become President Benjamin Harrison, proclaim that we let the national flag float over every schoolhouse in the country.

Why just 50 years ago in 1976, South Bend took a break from the disco and painted their fire hydrants to look like Revolutionary War heroes.

Alexander Hamilton never looked so ratifying adorable, but in the southern county of Lawrence home to Bedford and lytic something underground was waiting centuries to be brought out and fashioned into a Titanic tribute to our patriotic origins.

Whatever could this something be?

- Limestone!

Lawrence County was a, like most southern Indiana counties, an agrarian county.

And then suddenly people became aware that the stone underneath our feet was good for building.

That's where the Indiana limestone industry in Lawrence County developed.

And it was huge, huge thing.

We had all of these Italian carvers here that were basically brought from Italy - At the turn of the century.

When the limestone was booming here in Bedford, they would send recruiters out to the big cities to find the Italian carvers.

And so they found my great-grandfather in Brooklyn, New York, and recruited him to come to Bedford, Indiana to do carvings.

- This limestone capital of the world was home to many amazing carvers, but one in particular continued honing his craft into his 90s.

Frank Arena Jr.

- My grandfather actually carved the release on that bank back in the day when the in industry was booming, people would ask the carvers to add a little ornamentation to their buildings.

The the process was an apprentice, journeyman and master carver.

And I remember as a young man that every time we would drive through downtown, my grandfather would tell me about the Masonic Lodge here, the capitals, which is the very top of the columns.

He did those as his passage from a journeyman to a master carver.

That was his final project.

I said, do you consider yourself an artist or a craftsman?

He said, well, I guess I was a craftsman because I never put my name on the work like an artist would.

- In 1973, Indiana's Lieutenant Governor asked, what do you folks from Bedford intend to do to celebrate the bicentennial?

With less than three years to go the manager of their chamber of commerce knew just what they could provide.

- As one of the special times in everyone's lives.

I think that when we were celebrating the bicentennial year, - Merl Eddington thought big and he had this idea to present something made out of local limestone to the nation.

This, there's this 1851 painting by Emanuel Leutze a German-American immigrant of Washington, crossing the Delaware on Christmas, 1776.

Washington and his men stayed sober, you know, 2,400 of them.

They surprised the Hessian mercenaries who were probably deep into their cups.

You know, probably that was the first big win.

And everything went better after that for the Continental Army.

- And so it was agreed to carve a life-sized version of that out of local limestone.

- It cost about a $100,000 to do and that was raised locally.

Apparently.

I've never seen an accounting of who gave what.

It didn't matter because that's over $500,000 now that's a huge, a huge budget, you know, for a, a community celebration.

Arena was already a really, really accomplished carver at this point.

But I'm sure that a project of this size must have made his eyes open pretty wide.

- I, I think he was more focused on how do I take this two dimensional Leutze painting and make it a three-dimensional and life size of all that, - Which may not sound that hard to those of us who don't know how that works.

But I'm sure that was a huge challenge.

- You know, he was always someone I looked up to and I would always watch him in the basement doing his carvings as well as his models.

Because carvers don't just start chipping away at the stone.

They use a model first.

- He started with a half scale model done in clay.

Clay being, as we know, cheaper than limestone.

He did a boat and he did 12 figures, one of them being George Washington and the others being various members of the crew of that little boat.

And he envisioned the ice on the Delaware River.

'cause this is a monster of a stone carving.

It weighed 40 ton.

So just moving something that heavy across the country.

I mean it, - The limestone ship sailed out on the highway for the entire month of June ‘76, looking for adventure in a sort of reverse migration east.

- It stuck to the old national road that was used by, you know, a huge number of pioneers back in the day.

- First stopping in Indianapolis, then to Richmond, Indiana over to Columbus, Ohio.

Wheeling, West Virginia, Washington, Pennsylvania, Bedford, Pennsylvania, Washington DC, Philadelphia, and then its resting place for now half a century.

- Well, it's called a gift to the nation.

But in fact, where it ended up was in Washingtons Crossing, Pennsylvania, right on the Delaware River near the spot where Washington was said to have launched all those boats.

Really ambitious.

I mean, Merl Eddington, you know, I salute you.

- For it's dedication ceremony on July 5th, the Bedford North Lawrence High School band played “On the Banks of the Wabash” and Eddington stress that we have a responsibility to hand down the heritage of freedom to future generations.

According to Master Carver, Frank Arena Jr.

It was probably the favorite of my carvings.

It was also the most difficult and challenging to do.

Conjuring elegance from ancient stone is not a lost art.

Quarries in the area are still unearthing limestone and stone cutters are still splitting, fabricating, and carving for the many exteriors of tomorrow.

As USA 250 approaches, along with fireworks, parades and theatrical performances, Lawrence County will also dig up their 1976 time capsules.

I wonder if they'll find that half-size clay model, perhaps some bicentennial coins?

If nothing else, they are bound to uncover some more local limestone, AKA, Indiana Rocks USA 250.

- I hope we were able to get you into the Revolutionary Spirit.

I know, I'm feeling it.

That's all we have for you today on this Across Indiana special.

But until next time, thank you for watching.

- Funding for this video was made in part by a community engagement grant around the American Revolution.

A film by Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt.

You can stream the full film on the PBS app.

We'd like to thank the following funders.