Lake Maxinkuckee Its Intrigue History & Genealogy Culver, Marshall, Indiana

One Township's Yesterdays Chapter XXXI  



"LO, THE POOR INDIAN!"


    "Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutored mind
    Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind."
    ... Alexander Pope
     


WHEN THE WHITE MAN CAME the days of the red man were numbered in the pleasant land of Maxinkuckee. Soon the Indian would be leaving; he would be going by the "Trail of Death" to lands assigned to him farther west.

The first white settlers in Union Township had not been here long before the Indians were going, never to return. It was a sad departure, and a long, long journey along a trail of tears & and blood. White men today, looking back over the span of nearly a hundred years to those days of the removal of the red men, see that act of the government in the light of shame.

It was in 1836 that the government ordered the Indians to leave, and gave them two years to do it. The first Potawatomi migration was in 1837. About one hundred went of their own accord, including the good Chief Nas-Wau-Gee, who ruled over a little band at his village on the east side of Lake Maxinkuckee. Nas-Wau-Gee agreed to go peaceably. The day before he left he called the white settlers together at his village, and bade farewell. It was a sad parting. This country and the white people who had come to it were dear to him. Next morning, packing their personal belongings on ponies, they went away, single file, south along the lake and to Kewanna, thence westward. The rest of the Indians, in a spirit of rebellion, stayed on, with Chief Menominee. In 1838, they were taken away against their will.

In '34, '35 and '36, NOAH NOBLE was Governor of Indiana during the first settlements in the Maxinkuckee country, and in '37 was succeeded by DAVID WALLACE, the Governor who sent General JOHN TIPTON with a force of troops to remove to the West 859 Indians, from their reservations in this part of the country. It was this hegira, sometimes known as the "Trail of Death," that set out from Twin Lakes, in '38. Before them was a miserable nine hundred mile march. It was claimed that the removal was on account of trouble arising between the Indians and white settlers, but this has been denied.

"As they were marched across the plains, under the hot, blazing sun," old Chief Simon POKAGON recalled, "wolves in the distance followed in the rear, like carrion crows, to feed upon the fallen." Well authenticated reports told how, "on the long and weary march towards the setting sun, from fatigue and want of water, children, old men and women expiring fell; how infants untimely born, clasped, in their mother's arms, together with them died and were left half buried on the plains, the prey of vultures and of wolves." Blood-stained trails they traveled, shamefully pushed into banishment.

The grief of the good priest, Father PETIT, when the Indians were sent westward across the Mississippi, was most pitiful. He was harrowed by the bitter anguish of his soul. Father PETIT accompanied them and administered to them on the long, dreary march. On his return trip, at the age of twenty-seven, he died of malaria in St. Louis. His body was afterward removed to Notre Dame, Indiana, where it still lies in the Church of the Sacred Heart, near that of Father DE SEILLE.

Not many years ago old settlers in these parts recalled the going of the Indians. Among them were DAVID HOW, JOHN LOWERY, Mrs. EMMA DICKSON, and THOMAS K. HOUGHTON. Said Mr. HOUGHTON: "In 1838 I lived with my father on the Indian trail between the Benack village in Tippecanoe Township and the Menominee village, where the Indians were congregated to get ready to be removed. I was not there at the time, but it was about the only subject of conversation for many years, and I heard considerable about it."

"It was a sad sight, _ said Mrs. DICKSON, who lived with her father, JOHN HOUGHTON, in a cabin close to the Indian trail between Benack and Menominee villages, "to see the Indians forced away, for their lands were taken by fraud; the government would treat for their land and give firewater to drink, and while drinking the chiefs would sign their rights away."

Lo, the poor Indian!