Indian Removal: Potawatomi Trail of Death, 1838

As has been said many times, the Five Southeastern Tribes weren't the only ones removed during the Jackson administration's purge of Natives from the Eastern United States.  Natives remaining in the Old Northwest, what is now Indiana, Illinois and Ohio, were also forced to remove.  In 1838, it would be the Potawatomi's turn.

The Potawatomi had been at odds with Government official since the Battle of Fort Dearborn in August, 1812, when Potawatomi attacked a caravan of soldiers and civilians evacuating the Chicago area.  Beginning in 1818, the Potawatomi had signed a series of treaties agreeing to cede their land and move west, then did their best to stall for time.  Leaders such as Menominee, who was also a medicine man, thought up one excuse after another to keep their people in Indiana.  The signs weren't favorable.  Hunting hadn't been sufficient in this or that season.  Too many people were old or ill.  For years, this had worked.  Patience with the Potawatomi ran out during the Black Hawk War of 1832 when, although many leaders tried to keep their people neutral, some individuals sided with Black Hawk and others served with U.S. forces.  No matter what they did, the Potawatomi were distrusted it and it all harked back to Fort Dearborn.  Even the fact that they had begun to farm and to Christianize didn't soften officials' attitudes toward them.

Finally, in 1838, the Governor of Indiana authorized General John Tipton to remove Menominee and his Yellow River Band, who were living at Twin Lakes, Indiana, near present-day Plymouth.  On August 30, 1838, Tipton and his men surrounded Menominee's village and called for them to meet in their chapel for a council.  As the people arrived, their leaders were detained and the rest of the group not allowed to leave until the march began.  859 people would march over 660 miles from Twin Lakes to what is now Osawatomi, Kansas.  On the way, 40 people, mostly children, would die from malnourishment and exposure to heat, dust and disease along the trail.  As they left, the soldiers destroyed the village to prevent any attempt at lingering or return.   Their village missionary priest, Father Benjamin Petit, went with them to serve as interpreter, priest, caregiver and in any other way he could.  Menominee and two other leaders were at first forced to travel in a wagon as prisoners.  With Petit's intercession, they were finally allowed to travel on horseback at the head of their people. 

Petit, Tipton and some others wrote journals during their travels, as well as letters to family, friends and colleagues, giving details of the march.  Many of the Potawatomi had horses to ride, which lessened the burden somewhat, but the heat, dust and scanty rations took their toll on everyone, mostly the children.  Petit spoke of baptizing children who died almost immediately after birth.  At his urging again, the men were allowed to hunt to supplement their rations with game and the health conditions began to improve for some, but not others.  Care for the sick was a constant concern, as their only recourse was riding in the intense heat in jolting wagons, sweltering under canvas coverings.  Many of them also died. 

The Potawatomi, minus the ones who had died and were buried along the trail, arrived in Osawatomi, Kansas on November 4, 1838, as winter was coming on, with no way to cultivate the land or build shelters against the approaching cold.  Father Petit stayed with his congregation until a new priest arrived to take up where he left off.  As he journeyed back to Indiana, he became ill in part from the harsh conditions of the journey and died in St. Louis.  Meanwhile, the trek wasn't over for the Potawatomi who had come from Indiana.  They moved across Kansas several times in the years leading up to the Civil War.  In 1861, some Potawatomi accepted a treaty giving them land in Oklahoma along with United States citizenship.  They became the Citizens Band Potawatomi.  Other Potawatomi remained in Kansas, where the Prairie Band Potawatomi has a reservation.  Meanwhile, others had returned or remained in Indiana, where they became part of the Huron or Pokagon Bands.  Over 2500 fled to Canada.  As with the Kickapoo and other Northeastern tribes, the Potawatomi were scattered and broken up into smaller and smaller units. 

Since 1838, groups of interested citizens began placing markers along the trail taken by the Potawatomi from Indiana to Kansas.  There are over 80 such markers now.  Benjamin Petit was buried under the chapel at Notre Dame University.  A statue commemorating Menominee stands near Plymouth, Indiana, where his village once stood.  In 1909, Historian Jacob Platt Dunn called the march the Trail of Death in a book he wrote about Indian Stories and the name has stuck ever since.