Trail of Death

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Map was by T. Hamilton of the Fulton County, Indiana Historical Society, different pictoroial verison of it exists.

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 (Myers Lake and Cook Lake, near Plymouth, 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 660 miles (1,060 km) 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 (1836) that would have relinquished the reserve granted to him in the Treaty of Tippecanoe (1832).

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 (Jesuit) father Christian Hoecken at Saint Mary's Sugar Creek Mission, the true endpoint of the march. Indiana's Portion of the Trail:

On the first day, September 4, 1838, the group traveled 21 miles (34 km) and camped at Chippeway village on the Tippecanoe River, 2 miles (3.2 km) north of Rochester.

They camped from William Polke's house to his trading post on the Tippecanoe River, a mile long of campfires.

The second day they left sick persons at Chippeway. They marched single file down Rochester's Main Street, at gunpoint. Ten year old William Ward followed them to a mile south of Rochester, wishing to go west with his little friends, but his mother caught up with him and took him home.

They reached Mud Creek in Fulton County, where one infant died–the caravan's first casualty.

By the third day, September 6, they reached Logansport, Indiana, where the encampment was described as "a scene of desolation; on all sides were the sick and dying". The group remained at Logansport until September 9. About 50 of the sick and elderly and their caregivers were left at Logansport to recover; most of them were well enough to rejoin the group within a few days.

During this part of the journey the group traveled along the Michigan Road on land the tribe had ceded to the federal government for its construction in 1826. On September 10, the march resumed from Logansport and continued along the north side of the Wabash River, passing through present-day Pittsburg, Battle Ground, and Lafayette to reach Williamsport, Indiana, on September 14. Two or more deaths occurring nearly every day.

Their last encampment in Indiana was along an "unhealthy and filthy looking stream", near the Indiana-Illinois state line...

Wikipedia

Pottawattamie Emigration by George Winter. 1838 Courtesy: Tippecanoe County Historical Association

NOTE: There were two Potawatomi Trail Of Death events. First was in 1838, happened in Indiana, was conducted by Indiana State Militia. The second was a Michigan event, in 1840. Conducted by the US Army. Gathering place was Kalamazoo. The old train station in Kalamazoo has a bronze plaque in the entrance describing what happened. Both events were shameful.