The Sun, the Moon, & the Hoosier State - Episode 1

Written By S J Reynolds

After a busy month of traveling and conferences and having great conversations with a lot of astronomers, historians, eclipse planners, and everyone in-between, I’m very glad to (finally!) be launching the first episode of this podcast!

If you’re not familiar with the location, you might wonder how the “Falls of the Ohio” feature in Indiana history, but they are actually an area on the Ohio River, where today it separates the cities of Louisville, Kentucky, and Clarksville, Indiana (you’ll hear about George Rogers Clark several times in this episode). Unfortunately I didn’t get to talk about the area too much in the episode other than its place in eclipse history, but today, the Falls of the Ohio is especially known for its fossil beds. Its also where Meriwether Lewis and William Clark started off together on their famed expedition in 1803, William Clark being the younger brother of George Rogers Clark, who settled there after his Revolutionary War adventures.

An April 2023 view across the Ohio River from the Falls of the Ohio River State Park on the Indiana-Kentucky border.

A view across the Ohio River from the Falls of the Ohio State Park on my visit there in April 2023.

The area today looks quite a bit different than it did in 1778. The Falls area has undergone quite a bit of development and restructuring over the years, and Corn Island, where George Rogers Clark and his men had established their initial outpost, is completely gone. However, the Falls of the Ohio State Park was still a great place to visit and see the river and some of the fossils embedded in its shoreline. The George Rogers Clark homesite overlooking the river was a peaceful place to hear the birds in the trees and try to envision what it might have been like in earlier times. (I also tried to interview a couple of geese, but got blank looks and some hurried waddling away.)

Resource links for this episode:

On the Falls of the Ohio:

On George Rogers Clark and His Revolutionary War Campaign:

  • George Rogers Clark: “I glory in War”, by William R. Nester (Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 2012) - Find at a local library via WorldCat or at a seller

  • George Rogers Clark and William Croghan: A Story of the Revolution, Settlement, and Early Life at Locust Grove, by Gwynne Tuell Potts (Univ. of Kentucky Press, 2020) - Find at a local library via WorldCat or at a seller

  • On enslaved African-Americans traveling with George Rogers Clark: That George Rogers Clark was a slaveholder is well-documented, but Jeanne Burke (Historian and Director of the Clark County Indiana Museum) discusses specifically some of what we know about who was likely traveling with him on his initial campaign in her talk on Guinea Bottoms, one of the first black settlements in Indiana, near Clarksville. This talk was part of a series organized by the Falls of the Ohio Foundation in 2022, available at the following link: https://www.fallsoftheohio.org/2022/03/the-ohio-river-a-passage-for-african-american-life-and-culture-video-series/

On other observers of the June 24, 1778 Eclipse and other Revolutionary War Era Eclipses:

  • This article by Colin Calloway can be helpful for thinking about what the Revolutionary War looked like from the Native American perspective, particularly for groups such as the Shawnee in (pre-)Indiana - “‘We Have Always Been the Frontier’: The American Revolution in Shawnee Country," American Indian Quarterly, Winter 1992, Vol. 16, No. 1, pp. 39- 52. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1185604

S J Reynolds
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The Sun, The Moon, & The Hoosier State - Podcast Intro