Indiana ( IN-dee-AN-ə) is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Lake Michigan to the northwest, Michigan to the north and northeast, Ohio to the east, the Ohio River and Kentucky to the south and southeast, and the Wabash River and Illinois to the west. Nicknamed "the Hoosier State", Indiana is the 38th-largest by area and the 17th-most populous of the 50 states. The state's capital and largest city is Indianapolis. Indiana was admitted to the Union as the 19th state on December 11, 1816.
Indigenous resistance to American settlement was broken with their defeat in Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811, and the collapse of Tecumseh's confederacy in 1813. The new settlers were primarily Americans of British ancestry from the eastern seaboard and the Upland South, and Germans. After the Civil War, in which the state fought for the Union, natural gas attracted heavy industry and new European immigrants to its northern counties. In the first half of the 20th century, northern and central sections experienced a boom in goods manufacture and automobile production. Southern Indiana remained largely rural. After the rise and fall of the Klan in the 1920s, the state swung politically from the Republican to Democratic Party in the New Deal 1930s. Today, with a decades-long record of returning Republican majorities, Indiana is counted a "red state".
Indiana has a diverse economy with a gross state product in 2023 of 404.3 billion. Indianapolis is at the center of the state's largest metropolitan area, with a population of over two million. The Fort Wayne metro area follows with a population of 645,000.
The state's largest city, Indianapolis, is home to professional sports teams, including the NFL's Indianapolis Colts, the NBA's Indiana Pacers, and the WNBA's Indiana Fever. The city also hosts several notable competitive events, such as the Indianapolis 500, held at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
Indiana's name means "Land of the Indians", or simply "Indian Land". It also stems from Indiana's territorial history. On May 7, 1800, the United States Congress passed legislation to divide the Northwest Territory into two areas and named the western section the Indiana Territory. In 1816, when Congress passed an Enabling Act to begin the process of establishing statehood for Indiana, a part of this territorial land became the geographic area for the new state.
Formal use of the word Indiana dates from 1768, when a Philadelphia-based trading company gave its land claim in present-day West Virginia the name "Indiana" in honor of its previous owners, the Iroquois. Later, ownership of the claim was transferred to the Indiana Land Company, the first recorded use of the word Indiana. But the Virginia colony argued that it was the rightful owner of the land because it fell within its geographic boundaries. The U.S. Supreme Court denied the land company's right to the claim in 1798.
A native or resident of Indiana is known as a Hoosier. The etymology of this word is disputed, but the leading theory, advanced by the Indiana Historical Bureau and the Indiana Historical Society, has its origin in Virginia, Kentucky, the Carolinas, and Tennessee (the Upland South) as a term for a backwoodsman, a rough countryman, or a country bumpkin.
The first inhabitants in what is now Indiana were the Paleo-Indians, who arrived about 8000 BC after the melting of the glaciers at the end of the Ice Age. Divided into small groups, the Paleo-Indians were nomads who hunted large game such as mastodons. They created stone tools made out of chert by chipping, knapping and flaking.
The Archaic period between 5000 and 4000 BC saw the development of new ground-stone tools the building of earthwork mounds and middens, suggesting that settlements were becoming more permanent. The Woodland period began around 1500 BC marked by ceramics and pottery and the extended cultivation of plants eventually including crops such as corn and squash, and the development of long-term trade, notably by the Hopewell people.
The Mississippian culture emerged, lasting from 1000 AD until the 15th century, shortly before the arrival of Europeans. During this stage, people created large urban settlements designed according to their cosmology, with large mounds and plazas defining ceremonial and public spaces. The concentrated settlements depended on the agricultural surpluses. One such complex was the Angel Mounds. They had large public areas such as plazas and platform mounds, where leaders lived or conducted rituals. Mississippian civilization collapsed in Indiana during the mid-15th century for reasons that remain unclear.
The historic Native American tribes in the area at the time of European encounter spoke different languages of the Algonquian family. They included the Shawnee, Miami, and Illini. Refugee tribes from eastern regions, including the Delaware who settled in the White and Whitewater River Valleys, later joined them.
European exploration and sovereignty
In 1679, French explorer René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle was the first European to cross into Indiana after reaching present-day South Bend at the St. Joseph River. He was followed by French-Canadian fur traders exchanging blankets, jewelry, tools, whiskey and weapons with the Native Americans for skins.
By 1702, Sieur Juchereau established the first trading post near Vincennes. In 1715, Sieur de Vincennes built Fort Miami at Kekionga, now Fort Wayne. In 1717, another Canadian, Picote de Beletre, built Fort Ouiatenon on the Wabash River, to try to control Native American trade routes from Lake Erie to the Mississippi River.
In 1732, Sieur de Vincennes built a second fur trading post at Vincennes. In a period of a few years, British colonists arrived from the East and contended with the Canadians for control of the lucrative fur trade. Fighting between the French and British colonists occurred throughout the 1750s.
The Native American tribes of Indiana sided with the French Canadians during the French and Indian War (an episode of the Seven Years' War between the European great powers). With British victory in 1763, the French were forced to cede to the British crown all their lands in North America east of the Mississippi River and north and west of the colonies.
Tribal resistance continued with Pontiac's Rebellion and the capture of forts Ouiatenon and Miami. The Royal Proclamation of 1763 designated the land west of the Appalachians as an Indian Reserve, and excluded British colonists from the area, which the Crown called "Indian Territory". The measure was one of the first significant areas of dispute between Britain and the colonies and would become a contributing factor leading to the American Revolution.
In 1775, the American Revolutionary War began as the colonists sought self-government and independence from the British. The majority of the fighting took place near the East Coast, but the Patriot military officer George Rogers Clark called for an army to help fight the British in the west. Clark's army won significant battles and took over Vincennes and Fort Sackville on February 25, 1779.