John Augustus Stone
Main Street
Metamora, Indiana
By Heather Chacón
My first memory of Metamora, Indiana, is of being twelve and sitting on a wooden bench on the front porch of an old house-turned-shop with my friend, Holly. It is December. Above us hang several pieces of artwork for sale, paintings of landscapes and animals on reclaimed barn wood done by a local artist. We are sipping hot chocolate with lots of whipped cream and laughing while her parents shop inside the crowded building, the laughter making what happened next all the more startling. A man suddenly grabs a painting off the wall above our heads and takes off running. He nearly makes it off the porch before being tackled, suddenly and fully about the waist. Other people, whether patrons or employees we do not know, secure the painting. There are murmurs of “shoplifter” amongst the crowd, and eventually the store owner appears to loudly berate the man and ban him from the store. I do not remember any police being called, but the collective scorn from that crowd frightened me regardless.
Had I been more familiar with the history of Metamora, I would have also understood that the concepts embedded in this event — artistic ownership, community censure, thwarted commerce, repurposed materials as the start of mythos-building — were as much a part of this town’s history as the nineteenth-century buildings and homespun atmosphere I loved.
You see, Metamora got its name from the play Metamora; or, The Last of the Wampanoags (1829), written by John Augustus Stone. Stone entered this play in a competition sponsored by one of the (many say the) most prominent American actors of the nineteenth-century, Edwin Forrest. Keen to find a play he believed would be well-suited to his style of acting and physical presence, as well as show that the young nation could produce works of literary and dramatic merit, Forrest offered $500 for the best original “tragedy, in five acts, of which the hero, or principal character, shall be an aboriginal of this country.” From among the fourteen plays submitted, the Committee of Award (headed by William Cullen Bryant) chose Stone’s.
Initially Stone was elated to win the prize and have his work performed by such an important thespian. This pleasure soon turned to worry and dismay, however, as Metamora became a meteoric success that helped establish Forrest’s professional reputation and personal fortune without yielding such stability for its author. The play’s popularity hinged, in part, on Forrest’s acting talent, but it also gave the American people the opportunity to celebrate a uniquely “American” history.
While some brochures and websites mention the town is named after a play, very few include any details of its plot or popularity. Set in 1600s New England, the melodrama tells the tale of Metamora, a fictional chief cast in the “noble Indian” mode, who eventually kills his wife to protect her from the terrors of settler colonialism and enslavement before being slain by white pioneers. Importantly, by 1829 New England was largely under the control of white settlers, thus allowing northeastern audiences watching Stone’s play the chance to experience catharsis rather than fear of Native American retaliation. Yet Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Act, passed in 1830, insured white Americans’ interest in stories dramatizing the usurpation of Native American lands and “disappearance” of their earlier inhabitants. The play became such a cultural phenomenon that it inspired the name of Metamora, Indiana, when the town was platted in 1838. This was not unique, as towns named Metamora can also be found in Michigan, Illinois, and Ohio — locations that had more recently been settled on the frontier.
Forrest performed Metamora to great acclaim until his death in 1872. The play spawned at least 35 additional “Indian” dramas and Forrest made thousands by playing the role. Stone, meanwhile, never saw additional remuneration above his $500 prize money, unless you count Forrest buying Stone’s headstone after Stone committed suicide by drowning in 1834. When Stone died many whispered that Forrest’s unwillingness to share the profits of Metamora contributed to Stone’s melancholy. The scandal clung to Forrest for a while, but ultimately did little to impact his popularity.
Today visitors to Metamora, Indiana, will find little evidence of why the town bears this name or the fact that it was established on land that used to be the home of Miami and Shawnee peoples. Instead, public memory centers largely on its identity as a “canal town.” Metamora was established along the proposed route of Indiana’s Whitewater Canal, an infrastructure project designed to transport raw materials from the state’s interior to the Ohio River. Construction of the canal section in Metamora began in 1836 and was completed by 1847. Yet the canal was unfortunately prone to flooding due to the relatively low elevation of the surrounding land and its proximity to the Whitewater River. By the 1860s, the railroad supplanted canal travel as the preferred means of transporting goods.
With this change, Metamora met challenges well known to much of the rural Midwest: declining populations, gradual shrinkage of family-owned farms, a dearth of well-paying jobs. A resourceful bunch, Metamora residents still used the canal to power several grist mills in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, one of which still operates at the Whitewater Canal State Historic Site under the care of the Indiana State Museum. Their grits are extremely good, particularly on a summer day when you can watch them be freshly ground and placed directly in the bag.
In the last few years, interest in the town has risen somewhat, in part due to renewed interest in preserving historic architecture like Metamora’s nineteenth-century shops and municipal buildings. The town’s beautiful natural setting, affordability, and relative proximity to Cincinnati draw visitors who want to stroll around antique shops or take the family on a historic train or canal boat ride. It’s a pity most visitors to Metamora’s functioning wooden aqueduct, the only one still in existence in the United States, have no idea they’re also visiting a town named after the “last of the Wampanoags.”
Maybe it’s time to make sure that darker history is not also carried off into the night.
Heather Chacón is a proud native Hoosier and scholar of nineteenth-century American Literature. She is an assistant professor in the Department of English, Communications and Media at Greensboro College in North Carolina. When she isn’t grading or in the archives, she enjoys being outside and visiting historic sites—beloved pastimes she first developed in Indiana.
