American colonists had begun streaming over the Appalachian Mountains, joined by emigrants (including Catholic emigrants from France and Germany). Vincennes had been founded where the historic Buffalo Trace crossed the Wabash River and its subsidiary. Thousands emigrated from the East as well as South to settle central Indiana. This caused conflict with the Native Americans, who had lost the Northwest Indian War and the War of 1812. The sheer numbers of emigrants, many Catholic, helped qualify Indiana for admission as a separate state, with Vincennes as its first capital. However, it soon moved north, ultimately to Indianapolis on the National Road. The state line at the Wabash River little affected missionaries such as Bruté and Badin. However, Bardstown was across the falls of the Ohio River, and Kentucky, unlike Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, was a slave state. Slavery had become a significant spiritual as well as an economic issue in the new nation.