Potawatomi Trail of Death

Overview

The Potawatomi Trail of Death refers to the forced removal, in 1838, of approximately 859 members of the Potawatomi nation from their reservation lands at Twin Lakes, Indiana, to newly designated reservation lands in what is now eastern Kansas. The march covered about 660 miles over 61 days and is recorded as the largest single Indian removal in Indiana's history. During the journey, more than 40 people died, most of them children.

Background

The Potawatomi had ceded most of their Indiana lands to the federal government through a series of treaties between 1818 and 1832. Under the Treaty of Tippecanoe (1832), Chief Menominee's band retained a 14,080-acre reserve at Twin Lakes. However, a subsequent Treaty of Yellow River (1836) purported to cede this reserve as well. Menominee and members of his band refused to sign this treaty and later petitioned General John Tipton and federal officials, including President Martin Van Buren and Secretary of War Lewis Cass, alleging that signatures on the 1836 treaty had been forged. No record exists of a formal reply to these petitions, and the federal government maintained its removal deadline of August 5, 1838.

The Removal and March

On August 30, 1838, Indiana Governor David Wallace's authorized militia, commanded by General John Tipton, surrounded the Potawatomi at their chapel at Twin Lakes under the guise of a council meeting, detaining tribal leaders. Between August 30 and September 3, 1838, the militia gathered Potawatomi from Twin Lakes and surrounding villages, burned crops, and destroyed the village of roughly 100 structures. The march began September 4, 1838, with 859 Potawatomi, 286 horses, 26 wagons, and roughly 100 armed militia escorts. Catholic missionary Father Benjamin Marie Petit joined the caravan, later securing the release of three chiefs—Menominee, Black Wolf, and Pepinawa—from being transported as prisoners in a wagon.

The route passed through Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri before reaching the western bank of the Osage River near present-day Osawatomie, Kansas, on November 4, 1838. Contemporary journals and letters, including those of Father Petit, Judge William Polke, and General Tipton, document daily deaths, illness, heat, and dust along the route. Of the 859 who began the march, 756 survived to the endpoint; 42 deaths were recorded, 28 of them children, with the remainder unaccounted for as escapees.

Aftermath

Chief Menominee died in Kansas in 1841 and never returned to Indiana. Father Petit, weakened by the journey, died in St. Louis in February 1839 while attempting to return home. The Potawatomi later relocated within Kansas and, following an 1861 treaty, some became the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, now headquartered in Shawnee, Oklahoma. The Trail of Death was designated a Regional Historic Trail by Indiana, Illinois, and Kansas in 1994, and by Missouri in 1996, with dozens of historical markers placed along the route.