Pigeon Roost was established in 1809 by William E. Collings and consisted mainly of settlers from Kentucky. These settlers had occupied Shawnee lands in southern Indiana following the passage of the Northwest Ordinance, moving across the Ohio River as squatters. Families in what is today Scott, Clark, Jefferson, and Washington Counties trace their ancestry back to these early settlers. The settlement was named for the great number of passenger pigeons in the area and consisted of a single line of cabins stretching approximately one mile north of the present town of Underwood.
Shortly after the War of 1812 began, Native Americans attacked the settlement. The nearest Native village was located some 20 miles north near the Muskatatuck.
The massacre resulted in the deaths of 24 settlers at Pigeon Roost, marking a significant violent conflict between settlers and Native Americans in the region during the early years of the War of 1812.
The early republic period saw the United States move from the weak Articles of Confederation to the federal Constitution ratified in 1788, with the Bill of Rights added in 1791. George Washington served two terms as president (1789–1797), establishing precedents for executive authority, and the federal capital moved permanently to Washington D.C. in 1800. The Louisiana Purchase (1803) doubled the nation's territory for roughly $15 million, opening vast trans-Mississippi lands to American expansion. The War of 1812 against Britain ended inconclusively but produced a surge of American national identity and eliminated most British support for Indigenous resistance east of the Mississippi. The Northwest Indian Wars (1785–1795) and the Creek War (1813–1814) broke Indigenous confederacies that had resisted US expansion. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 temporarily balanced slave and free states as the nation expanded westward, but embedded the contradiction of slavery in every subsequent territorial debate.
24 settlers killed
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