Potawatomi Trail of Death
The Potawatomi Trail of Death was the forced removal by militia in 1838 of about 859 members of the Potawatomi nation from Indiana to reservation lands in what is now eastern Kansas.
The march began at Twin Lakes, Indiana and ended on November 4, 1838, along the western bank of the Osage River, near present-day Osawatomie, Kansas. During the journey of approximately over 61 days, more than 40 people died, most of them children. It was the single largest Indian removal in Indiana history.
Although the Potawatomi had ceded most of their lands in Indiana to the federal government under a series of treaties made between 1818 and 1832, Chief Menominee refused to sign the Treaty of Yellow River that would have relinquished the reserve granted to him in the Treaty of Tippecanoe. When the US demanded that Menominee and his band at Twin Lakes leave their reserve, they refused. Indiana governor David Wallace authorized General John Tipton to mobilize a local militia of one hundred volunteers to forcibly remove the Potawatomi from the state. On August 30, 1838, Tipton's militia tricked the Potawatomi into meeting at their chapel at Twin Lakes, where they surrounded them. Shots were fired, then the militia gathered the remaining Potawatomi from other villages as far away as Shipshewana, Indiana for forced removal to Kansas. Father Benjamin Marie Petit, a Catholic missionary at Twin Lakes, joined his parishioners on their difficult journey from Indiana, across Illinois and Missouri, into Kansas. There the Potawatomi were placed under the supervision of the local Indian agent father Christian Hoecken at Saint Mary's Sugar Creek Mission, the true endpoint of the march.
Historian Jacob Piatt Dunn is credited for naming "The Trail of Death" in his book, True Indian Stories. The Trail of Death was declared a Regional Historic Trail in 1994 by the state legislatures of Indiana, Illinois, and Kansas; Missouri passed similar legislation in 1996., 80 Trail of Death markers were located along the route in all four states, at every 15 to 20 miles where the group had camped between each day's walk. Historic highway signs signal each turn along the way in Indiana in Marshall, Fulton, Cass, Carroll, Tippecanoe, and Warren counties. Many signs are in Illinois, Missouri, and the three Kansas counties. Placement of markers, signage and online maps of the route are coordinated by the Potawatomi Trail of Death Association which exists to collect, preserve, research, interpret and memorialize the Trail of Death.
Background
The Potawatomi language is of Algonquian descent. The tribe moved south from northern Wisconsin and Michigan and historically occupied land from the southern tip of Lake Michigan to Lake Erie, an area encompassing northern Illinois, north central Indiana, and a strip across southern Michigan. Although the land in what became Indiana was long occupied by the Miami, the Potawatomi were also recognized as traditional owners under the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 and in subsequent treaties. They had become the second-largest Native American tribal group in Indiana.During the War of 1812, the tribe allied with the British Empire in the hope of expelling American settlers encroaching on their lands. The Potawatomi subsequently lived in relative peace with their white neighbors. In 1817, one year after Indiana became a U.S. state, an estimated 2,000 Potawatomi settled along the rivers and lakes north of the Wabash River and south of Lake Michigan. Around then, the state and federal government became eager to open the northern parts of Indiana to settlement and development by European Americans.
Under treaties between the US government and the Potawatomi in 1818, 1821, 1826, and 1828, the native people ceded large portions of their lands in Indiana to the federal government in exchange for annuities in cash and goods, reservation lands within the state, and other provisions. Some tribal members also received individual grants of northern Indiana land. The passage of the Indian Removal Act in 1830 enabled the federal government to offer reservation land in the West in exchange for the purchase of tribal lands east of the Mississippi River.
The government's intent during Indian Removal of the 1830s was to extinguish the land claims of Indian nations in the East, and to remove them from the populated eastern states to the remote and relatively unpopulated lands west of the Mississippi River. Other Indian tribes already controlled large territories there. The Act specifically targeted the Five Civilized Tribes of the Southeast in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee. It was also used to arrange removal of other tribes living east of the Mississippi, including several in the former Northwest Territory, south of the Great Lakes.
In three treaties signed in October 1832, at the Tippecanoe River north of Rochester, Indiana, the Potawatomi ceded to the federal government most of their remaining lands in northwestern and north central Indiana in exchange for annuities, small reservation lands in Indiana, and scattered allotments to individuals. They also received the federal government's agreement to provide goods to support the Potawatomi migration efforts, should they decide to relocate. These treaties reduced Potawatomi reservations in Indiana, which included land along the Yellow River.
Under the terms of a treaty made on October 26, 1832, the federal government established Potawatomi reservation lands within the boundaries of their previously ceded lands in Indiana and Illinois in exchange for annuities, cash and goods, and payment of tribal debts, among other provisions. This treaty provided the bands under Potawatomi chiefs Menominee, Peepinohwaw, Notawkah, Mas-saw and Muckkahtahmoway, with a joint grant of 22 sections of reservation land. Chief Menominee's signature was recorded with an "x" on the treaty of 1832. He and his Yellow River band at Twin Lakes, Indiana, southwest of present-day Plymouth, would be forced to remove from these reservation lands on the Trail of Death to Kansas in 1838.
Increased pressure from federal government negotiators, especially Colonel Abel C. Pepper, succeeded in getting the Potawatomi to sign more treaties that ceded their lands and obtained their agreement to move to reservations in the West. In treaties negotiated from December 4, 1834, to February 11, 1837, the Potawatomi ceded the remaining reservation lands in Indiana to the federal government. In 1836 alone the Potawatomi signed nine treaties, including the Treaty of Yellow River in Marshall County, Indiana; five treaties on the Tippecanoe River north of Rochester, Indiana; two treaties in Logansport, Indiana; and one treaty at Turkey Creek in Kosciusko County, Indiana. These agreements were called the Whiskey Treaties because whiskey was given to get the Indians to sign. Under the terms of these treaties the Potawatomi agreed to sell their Indiana land to the federal government and move to reservation lands in the West within two years.
One treaty that directly led to the forced removal of the Potawatomi from Twin Lakes was made at Yellow River on August 5, 1836. Under its terms, the Potawatomi ceded the Menominee Reserve, established under an 1832 treaty, to the federal government and agreed to remove west of the Mississippi River within two years. In exchange, the Potawatomi would receive $14,080 for the sale of their 14,080 acres of Indiana reservation lands, after payment of tribal debts were deducted from the proceeds. Chief Menominee and seventeen of the Yellow River band refused to take part in the negotiations and did not recognize the treaty's authority over their land. In a petition dated November 4, 1837, Chief Menominee and other Potawatomi submitted a formal protest to General John Tipton. The chiefs claimed that their signatures on the August 5, 1836, treaty had been forged and the names of other individuals who did not represent the tribe had been added. There is no record of a reply to their petition. They sent additional petitions to President Martin Van Buren and Secretary of War Lewis Cass in 1836 and 1837, but the federal government refused to change its position.
By 1837, some of the Potawatomi bands had peacefully removed to their new lands in Kansas. By August 5, 1838, the deadline for removal from Indiana, most of the Potawatomi had already left, but Chief Menominee and his band at Twin Lakes refused. The following day, August 6, 1838, Col. Pepper called a council at Menominee's village at Twin Lakes, where he explained that the Potawatomi had ceded land in Indiana under the treaty, and they had to remove. Chief Menominee responded through an interpreter:
After the council meeting, tensions increased between the Potawatomi and the white settlers who wanted to occupy the reservation lands. Fear of violence caused some settlers to petition Indiana governor David Wallace for protection. Wallace authorized General John Tipton to mobilize a militia of one hundred volunteers to forcibly remove the Potawatomi from their Indiana reservation lands.
Reverend Louis Deseille, a Catholic missionary at Twin Lakes in the 1830s, denounced the Yellow River treaty of 1836 as a fraud and argued, "this band of Indians believe that they have not sold their reservation and that it will remain theirs as long as they live and their children". In response to his support of the Potawatomi's resistance efforts, Col. Pepper ordered Father Deseille to leave the mission at Twin Lakes, or risk arrest for interfering in Indian affairs. Father Deseille went to South Bend, Indiana, although not without protest, and intended to return to Twin Lakes, but died at South Bend on September 26, 1837. Father Deseille's replacement, Reverend Benjamin Marie Petit, arrived at Twin Lakes in November 1837. Within a few months Father Petit had resigned himself to the Potawatomi's removal from Twin Lakes. Father Petit received permission to join his parishioners on the forced march to Kansas in 1838.