It's a type of dogwood for sure
Looks a lot like:
Roughleaf dogwood (Cornus drummondii)

But there are also others that look similar in Indiana:
Alternateleaf dogwood (Cornus alternifolia)
Silky dogwood (Cornus amomum)
Roundleaf dogwood (Cornus rugosa)
Redosier dogwood (Cornus sericea)

Where there any fruit, what color where they?

Thanks Treeguy123! I looked at all your listed possibilities on various on-line university horticulture sites, and drummondii seems to be right on! I didn't see the berries on the larger tree, and I think the little ones are too young to fruit or flower. The websites indicate they can reproduce through runners, which appears to be what is happening here since the 3 young trees are very close to the larger one, and no where else. I will definitely try to keep the 3 young ones. I'm wondering if they can be transplanted if they grew from runners ?? Thanks again! Kim

Other plants that spread by runners can be transplanted when they have a good root mass of their "own". I don't see why you couldn't do it with a dogwood. Try it and see how it goes!

Here's an interesting dogwood tidbit for you that I just recently learned....take a leaf from a dogwood, fold it in half (across the middle of the leaf and veins), fold it hard and carefully pull the leaf apart on the fold. Just barely pull it apart. If you do it carefully, you will see stretchy, rubber-band like connective fibers that run through the leaf's veins. It stretches quite a bit and you can have the two green parts only connected by these filaments. I was told this only works for dogwoods and a one other type of tree native to China.

FataMorgana

Yea either a dogwood or a viburnum. When i first saw the pic I thought Dogwood.

If you removed the largest tree by cutting it down it will be back. Its actually a fire-adapted shrub that suckers from the roots. In the absence of fire it may reach tree size, but its more of a shrub at heart and will bounce back from anything that kills the aboveground growth...

sounds like an invasive weed to me .... lol ....

such type plants.. can easily take over .... think hard about where you are going with this thing..

you took out one.. now you have 3.. and probably 10 by spring.. move them around the yard .. and try to kill them in 3 years.. and the next thing you know.. you have 50 .... etc ...

i am NOT telling you to destroy it.. i am suggesting you really think out the plan ... and what you might have to do in 10 years.. when you have 1000 .... considering that you will probably not want to fall back on a slash and burn technique ...

ken

This growth habit is simply one of the more common adoptions to fire among shrubs on the plains. It does not have any relation to how invasive it is. Of the species with that adoption, I have seen that species spreads much less than associate sumac and snowberry.

adaptation, not adoption. The word document decided to play games with autospellcheck.