The Papers of William W. Cleghorn

ABSTRACT: William W. Cleghorn (1815–1878) was an Indian trader and fur trader who worked in northern Indiana and later in the Kansas Territory. Cleghorn’s business and personal papers, held by the Lilly Library at Indiana University Bloomington, are here excerpted with scholarly footnotes, and published for the first time. The papers provide a look into mid-nineteenth-century Indiana and the West through the lenses of Native Removal, the Indian trade and fur trade, the operation of the federal Office of Indian Affairs, and the webs of patronage and influence that made up life for so many people like William Cleghorn.