LAFAYETTE, a city of Indiana, U.S.A., on the Wabash river, 64m. N.W. of Indianapolis; the county seat of Tippecanoe county. It is on Federal highway 52, and is served by the Chicago, Indianapolis and Louisville, the Big Four, the Nickel Plate and the Wabash railways and by electric inter--urban lines. The popula tion was 22,486 in 1920 (92% native white) and was 26,240 in 1930 (the Federal census). It lies in a valley 56oft. above sea-level, bordered on either side by the walls of the Wabash basin, in the heart of a rich agricultural district. The city is an important market for grain, hogs and cattle, and has substantial manufac turing industries (including railroad shops, pork-packing plants, factories making automobile accessories and steering gears, lum ber and flour mills), with an aggregate output in 1927 valued at $11,570,138. It is the seat of Purdue university (a State institu tion and a "land-grant college," bearing the name of a local business man whose generous contribution secured its establish ment here by the State legislature in 1869), which offers courses in agriculture, engineering, applied science, industrial education, pharmacy and home economics.
Lafayette is 5m. N.E. of the site of the ancient Miami Indian village known as Ouiatanon, where the French established a post about 1720. They were displaced by the English about 1760, and during the Conspiracy of Pontiac the stockade fort was destroyed. Near the present village of Battle Ground, 7m. N. of Lafayette, was fought (Nov. 7, 1811) the battle of Tippecanoe, in which the Indian forces of the Shawnee chief Tecumseh and his brother "the Prophet" were decisively defeated by Gov. William Henry Harrison. The battle ground is now owned by the State. Per manent settlement on the site of Lafayette dates from 1820. The town was laid out in 1825, but grew slowly until after the com pletion of the Wabash and Erie canal (1843). It was incorporated in