ONEOFMANYFEATHERS'
Potawatomi Trail of Death
Forced Removal
The Potawatomi Trail of Death was the forced removal by United States forces from September 4 to November 4, 1838, of 859 members of the Potawatomi nation from a place near Plymouth, Indiana, to the location of present-day Osawatomie, Kansas, a distance of 660 miles. Typhoid fever and the stress of the forced marched led to the death of over 40 individuals, mostly children.
The Indian Removal Act, part of a United States government policy known as Indian removal, was signed into law by President Andrew Jackson on May 26, 1830. It specifically targeted the Five Civilized Tribes on Georgia and Tennessee, but also led to treaties being negotiated with the many other minor tribes east of the Mississippi. The Removal Act paved the way for the reluctant—and often forcible—emigration of tens of thousands of American Indians to the West.
The Pottawatomie were the second major tribe to leave Indiana after white settlement began in the state. The tribe had allied with the British in the War of 1812. They lived in relative peace with their white neighbors, but the government of Indiana was eager to open up the northern parts of the state for settlers and development.
In October, 1832 treaties signed at Tippecanoe on the Wabash, ceded most of their remaining lands in northwestern and north central Indiana. In exchange for their lands in the east, they were given lands in Potawatomi County, Kansas along with annual annuities. Over the next 4 years, additional treaties were signed with the other Pottawatomies that would completely eliminate their titles from lands in Indiana. Unlike the other chiefs, Chief Menominee and his band at Twin Lakes, Indiana refused to sign the treaties. August of 1836 the Pottawatomie negotiated with state and signed the Treaty of Yellow River. The deadline for the tribe to leave was August 5, 1838.
By the deadline of August 5th, nearly the entire Pottawatomie Nation migrated peacefully to their new lands in Kansas except for the Twin Lakes village of Chief Menominee. After the deadline passed and the village refused to leave, it was ordered by Governor David Wallace, that they be forcibly removed.
August 30, 1838, General Tipton and one hundred soldiers surrounded Twin Lakes and proceeded to round up the 859 Pottawatomies. September 4, 1838, with crops and homes burned to discourage them from trying to return, With Chief Menominee, Chief Black Wolf, and Chief Pepinawa in a jail wagon, they began the forced march westward on a road their nation had granted the state permission to build only a few years earlier.
In Logansport, several of the sick and elderly were left to recover and those who had died were buried in a cemetery there. Eleven days later, several more members of the tribe were buried Perrysville, Indiana. Father Benjamin Petit, a Catholic missionary sent to the Potawatomi nation of Native Americans in Indiana in 1837, who had been in South Bend at the time, joined the march in Perrysville. Upon his return, Father Petit immediately began serving the needs of the sick and hearing the confessions. Petit accompanied them on most of the two-month march, now called the Potawatomi Trail of Death. Petit himself became ill during the march and later died on February 10, 1839 in Saint Louis, Missouri, two months after the march from illness brought on by exhaustion, while trying to return to Indiana.
On Sunday, September 16, Father Petit wrote in his journal, "I came in sight of my Christians marching in a line guarded on both sides by soldiers.... Almost all with babes, exhausted by heat, were dead or dying. I baptized several newly born happy little onces who first was from the land of exile to heaven." The caravan continued over land to Danville, Illinois where they resupplied and rested.
September 20th, General Tipton and all but fifteen of the Hoosiers returned to Indiana and left the tribe under the control of Judge William Polke, an Indiana Agent in Illinois. October 10th the tribe crossed into Missouri marching through Quincy, Palmyra, Clinton, Paris, Huntsville and finally Keatsville where they rested for about a week. November 1st, they resumed their march and on November 4th, less than 700 Pottawatomie reached the end of their journey having traveled 665 miles. Of the 859 that started the journey, not all of the missing 150 died as many straggled or escaped.
Many of the exiles did attempt to return to Indiana, but Chief Menominee died three years later, never returning to Indiana. Kansas would name a county after the tribe and a reservation still exist today. A statue of Chief Menominee was erected in 1909 near Twin Lakes on S. Peach Road, 5 miles west of U. S. 31. A boulder with a metal plaque marks the site of the log chapel and village.
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