Acting under its new Constitution of 1851, the state government enacted major financial reforms, required that most public offices be filled by election rather than appointment, and greatly weakened the power of the governor.

Following the end of the last glacial period, about twenty thousand years ago, Indiana's topography was dominated by spruce and pine forests and was home to mastodon, caribou, and saber-toothed cats.

The French built a series of forts and outposts in Indiana as a hedge against the westward expansion of the British colonies from the east coast of North America and to encourage trade with the native tribes.

[34] In 1717, François-Marie Picoté de Belestre[note 3] established the post of Fort Ouiatenon (southwest of modern-day West Lafayette, Indiana) to discourage the Wea from coming under British influence.

This influence caused the Northwest Indian War, which began when British-influenced native tribes refused to recognize American authority and were backed in their resistance by British merchants and officials in the area.

Major Jean François Hamtramck's expedition to other native villages in the area also failed when it was forced to return to Vincennes due to lack of sufficient provisions.

[60][61] In 1791 Major General Arthur St. Clair, who was also the Northwest Territory's governor, commanded about 2,700 men in a campaign to establish a chain of forts in the area near the Miami capital of Kekionga; however, nearly a 1,000 warriors under the leadership of Chief Little Turtle launched a surprise attack on the American camp, forcing the militia's retreat.

[62][63] St. Clair's loss led to the appointment of General "Mad Anthony" Wayne, who organized the Legion of the United States and defeated a Native American force at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in August 1794.

[81] Acting as the combined judicial and legislative government, a territorial governor and a General Court, which consisted of a three-member panel of judges, were appointed by the U.S. Congress, and later, the president with congressional approval.

Overspending on the internal improvements led to a large deficit that had to be funded by state bonds through the newly created Bank of Indiana and sale of over nine million acres (36,000 km2) of public land.

Throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, Indiana attempted to keep Black Hoosiers from attending public school, voting, testifying in court, and endeavored to set other limits on African American citizenship and inclusion.

The goal was to encourage settlement by providing easy, cheap access to the remotest corners of the state, linking every area to the Great Lakes and Ohio River, and thence to the Atlantic seaports and New Orleans.

Many Hoosiers freely indulged in drinking locally distilled whiskey on a daily basis, with binges on election days and holidays, and during community celebrations[158] Reformers announced that the devil was at work and must be repudiated.

By the 1850s Indiana's Republican party, whose adherents tended to favor the temperance movement, began challenging the state's Democrats, who supported personal freedom and a limited federal government, for political power.

Before the war, the population was generally in the south of the state, where many had entered via the Ohio River, which provided a cheap and convenient means to export products and agriculture to New Orleans to be sold.

The development of heavy industry attracted thousands of European immigrants in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as well as internal migrants, both Black and white, from the rural and small town South.

Nearby South Bend experienced continued growth following the Civil War, and became a large manufacturing city centered around the Oliver Farm Equipment Company, the nation's leading plow producer.

A unique art culture also began developing in the late 19th century, beginning the Hoosier School of landscape painting and the Richmond Group of impressionist painters.

One of the leading supporters for the temperance movement in Indiana was Emma Barrett Molloy, who was an active member of the WCTU and lectured across the country to promote the ban of alcohol.

After Prohibition took effect in 1920 until its demise in 1933, it opened up a financial bonanza for criminal activity, especially underground bootlegging and the smuggling of liquor into Chicago, Gary, South Bend, Fort Wayne, Indianapolis, Evansville and other thirsty cities.

[245] The KKK called for punishment of bootleggers and set up the "Horse Thief Detective Association" (HTDA) to make extra-legal raids on speakeasies and gambling joints.

Shumaker proposed that "personal liberty had to be sacrificed in order to save people," Gilliom replied that surrendering power and individual freedoms was a slippery slope to centralized government and tyranny.

It provided passenger service for students en route to Purdue, Indiana U. and numerous small colleges, painted its cars in school colors, and was especially popular on football weekends.

[181] The IASL, although not the first organization to take up the dry crusade in Indiana, became a key force behind efforts at attaining passage of statewide prohibition in early 1917, and rallied state support for ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1919.

In December 1917, several temperance organizations formed the Indiana Dry Federation to fight the politically powerful liquor interests,[263] with the IASL joining the group a short time later.

One of the most prominent members in Indiana was Madame C. J. Walker of Indianapolis, who owned a nationally successful business selling beauty and hair products for Black women.

Club meetings focused on home-making classes, research, and statistics regarding the status of African Americans in Indiana and nationwide, suffrage, and anti-lynching activism.

Most of the opposition dissipated when the United States officially declared war against Germany in April 1917, but some teachers lost their jobs on suspicion of disloyalty,[286] and public schools could no longer teach in German.

[299] The economy began to recover in 1933, but unemployment remained high among youth and older workers until 1940, when the federal government built up supplies and armaments going into World War II.

Redlining, or the discriminatory and exclusionary housing practice meant to separate affluent white populations from low-income racial groups, was a form of forced migration and relocation that many Black communities experienced during the twentieth-century.