 The region entered recorded history in the 1670s when the first Europeans came to Indiana and claimed the territory for the Kingdom of France.After France ruled for a century (with little settlement in this area), it was defeated by Great Britain in the French and Indian War (Seven Years' War) and ceded its territory east of the Mississippi River.Britain held the land for more than twenty years, until after its defeat in the American Revolutionary War, then ceded the entire trans-Allegheny region, including what is now Indiana, to the newly formed United States.