Americana & the U.S.

This is an original drawing of Shawnee Indian Princess named Koneta, who is the most famous female Native American personality in the early history of Wapakoneta, Ohio! Princess Koneta was the legendarily beautiful, young wife of Shawnee Chief Wapa. Their very names combined had produced the name of our beloved Auglaize County seat!: WAPA………….KONETA……….. WAPAKONETA! Beyond what I have written here, nothing is known historically regarding this beautiful Princess and/or her Shawnee leader husband.

After years of frustrating, fruitless research into the historical identities of these two legendary local members of the Shawnee tribe, I had discovered: THEY BOTH WERE PURE LEGEND! I had substantiated the fact after years of research on local Shawnee tribe… THERE NEVER WAS A CHIEF WAPA! THERE NEVER WAS A PRINCESS KONETA!

How do such local legends become fact? I traced the origin to a turn of the century, circa 1890s Wapakoneta school play which centered on the romance of a fictional Chief Wapa and his equally fictional Shawnee bride, Princess Koneta. The play was presented for years in Wapakoneta schools. Another factor in support of this fictionalized fact was the anonymous erroneous placement in one of the local cemeteries a grave stone for a Chief Wapak!

People have asked me over the years if the hardest work of a historian is the endless research it takes to capture aspects of history in the most truthful way? I have always answered, “Of course, but that work is no more harder than the endless, even more frustrating attempt to prove wrong historical fictions which have been accepted as fact!” For over fifty years local audiences have heard me present the facts of a fictionalized historical account. But the aceptance as fact of Chief Wapa and Princess Koneta persists beyond my vain attempts to set the historical record straight! I believe the majority of people have always, and will always embrace a more romantic fictionalized version of the truth. Thus I’m still questioned more, than for actual local Shawnee personalities, for information about Chief Wapa and Princess Koneta.

As I had revealed above, being a local historian dedicating so much of my time and energy into verifying, chronicling the truth of Shawnee history… after one speech to a local audience, first question was concerning the character of Chief Wapa! The Wapa question had finally pushed me over the historical edge and I had blurted out “Enough is enough! Alright, you can have Chief Wapa with bride Koneta, creating the Shawnee town name of Wapakoneta; but then your Chief Wapa must have had such a legendarily spirited affair with Indian maiden Tomica… gave Shawnee town near the present Belfontaine, Ohio, its name of WAPATOMICA!”