Britain held the land for more than twenty years, until, after its defeat in the American War of Independence, it ceded the entire Trans-Allegheny region, including what is now Indiana, to the newly formed United States. Indiana now had a functioning constitution and state government. On December 11, 1816, Indiana was admitted to the United States as the nineteenth state of the union. The war between indigenous groups and white settlers continued until 1794, when General Anthony Wayne defeated the indigenous peoples in a battle near Fallen Timbers, near the current Ohio-Indiana line, and forced them to make land concessions.
A growing number of white immigrants from southern states entered the area after 1800, leading to renewed native resistance. In 1811 the last major encounter, the Battle of Tippecanoe, was fought near Lafayette, with the general. With the end of indigenous resistance came rapid settlement and in 1816 statehood. The territorial capital, Corydon, became the first capital of Indiana.
For the next 25 years or so, the main tribes left the area. Slavery in Indiana was prohibited, however, this law did not apply to slaveholders who lived in Indiana before the constitution came into force. The territory of Indiana was increased in 1816 with the addition of a strip of land that established the northern boundary between the territories of Indiana and Michigan and was reduced by ceding the territory of the upper peninsula to the territory of Michigan. The Indiana Territory was organized on May 7, 1800, from the western part of the Northwest Territory; it included all of present-day Illinois, almost all of Indiana and Wisconsin, the western part of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and northeastern Minnesota.
With the founding in 1906 of the steel town of Gary, halfway between the iron ore deposits of the Mesabi Range of Minnesota, the coal deposits of central Appalachia and the limestone resources of southern Indiana and Illinois and the subsequent development of automobile manufacturing in South Bend, Indiana completed its change from an agricultural to an industrial base.
