Pigeon Roost State Historic Site

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Pigeon Roost State Historic Site is located between Scottsburg and Henryville, Indiana, near Underwood, Indiana. A one-lane road off U.S. Route 31 takes the visitor to the site, where Indians massacred several families in 1812 just as the War of 1812 was started.

The village of Pigeon Roost was built in 1809, led by William E. Collings (born in Pennsylvania in 1758 and died in Scott County Indiana on November 25, 1828), and consisted mostly of people from Kentucky. Collings, who has been claimed to be a famous frontiersman during his own time and a crack shot, and his large family, held original land grants in what is now Nelson County Kentucky signed by the Governor of Virginia, Patrick Henry. After passage of the Northwest Ordinance, many families along with the Collingses moved north across the Ohio River to homestead the fertile farm grounds of Southern Indiana. Many families living in what is today Scott, Clark, and Washington Counties in Indiana can directly trace their heritages back to these founding Hoosier families. (See "The Collings, Richeys and The Pigeon Roost Massacre" Presservation Alliance (2003) Library of Congress Card Catalog No. 80-50632).

It was named Pigeon Roost due to the great number of Passenger Pigeons there. The settlement itself was a line of cabins stretching over several miles in a north/south line approximately one mile east of what is now the town of Underwood. The nearest Indian settlement was probably located approximately 20 miles north of the Pigeon Roost near the Muskatatuck River. By all accounts, none of the Indians of this settlement had anything to do with the attack on Pigeon Roost. The closest forts, commonly called "blockhouses," were located in Vienna to the north in what is now Scott County and near what is now Henryville in Clark County to the south.

On September 3, 1812, Indians (mostly Shawnee, but possibly Delawares and Potawatomis) made a sneak attack on the settlement, coordinated with attacks on Fort Harrison (near Terre Haute, Indiana) and Fort Wayne in the same month. Twenty-four settlers, including fifteen children, were massacred, with only the Collings family escaping the attack. Two children were kidnapped as well. Only four Indians died. The Indians escaped before the local militia based in Charlestown could retaliate. According to local reports during the War of 1812, the leader of the attack on Pigeon Roost was rumored to be an Indian named Missilemotaw. He was captured on September 20, 1813 and under threat of death confessed to being the leader of the raid. He claimed to be a close confidant of the Indian leader Tecumseh. He also detailed to his captors that the British had been supplying the Indians with arms and equipment since 1809 in preparation for war.

William Collings' actions during the attack have been the subject of much conjecture to Hoosiers who know the story. Versions of the actual engagement range from Collings killing each of the four Indians singlehandedly and then holding off the rest with either inoperable or unloaded rifles, to he, a visitor, and his youngest son sneaking out the back of his cabin and hiding in a nearby cornfield, using it as cover for their escape to the blockhouse to the south near Henryville.

The raid was the first Indian attack within Indiana during the War of 1812. The settlement was rebuilt, but was eventually abandoned. Most of the victims were buried in a mass grave at this site, which remains to this day, but one ranger under Colonel Dawait, John Zink, was buried in Salem, Indiana's Brock Cemetery.

In 1904 the state of Indiana spent $2,000 to build the memorial statue, a 44-foot tall obelisk, on the property, and was made a state historic site in 1929.

Recently, new historic markers were placed on US-31 at the entrance to the site, and a picnic shelter was built. Other than a small parking lot and monument, no other improvements have ever been made to the site, although a separate cemetery is on the property. The Lanier Mansion State Historic Site oversees the site.