Kosciusko County Indians

Indians Haunt County Lands, Hiding Clues To Society White Men Wiped Out

Part 1
by Jo Ann Merkle Vrabel, Feature Writer
Warsaw Times Union Spotlight June 24-30, 1974

Indian Jim Musquawbuck's bones lie under the Leesburg cemetery toolshed. There's a lone Indian grave in Leedy's woods, near county roads 100 North and 300 East. And ghosts of Indians past, stalk Kosciusko County through Indian history, legends and tales.

The first Indians who lived in Kosciusko County were Miamis. They moved here in approximately 1750 and built villages along the Tippecanoe River.

Between 1765 and 1795 some Potawatomi Indians came to this county too, according to J. F. Everhart, in the Combined Atlas Map of Kosciusko County, Ind. 1879, published by Kingman Bros., "Aboriginal History", page 13.

By the late 1700's, the Potawatomies were a stronger band of Indians than the Miamis. So the Kosciusko County Potawatomies seized the Miami Indian villages that were located along the Tippecanoe River, near the present sites of Warsaw, Atwood, Leesburg, Oswego and Clunette.

Potawatomies Took Over
At this time, the Potawatomies also took over some Miami villages in Wabash County, located along the Wabash river, according to Marion Wallace Coplen in the History of Kosciusko County Indiana to 1875, submitted to the Department of History, Indiana University, November 1944, for fulfillment of degree of Masters of Arts in the Department of History requirements, page 20.

Bone Prairie, located on Armstrong Rd. between Leesburg and Oswego, may have been the site of a great battle between the Miamis and Potawatomies sometime between 1795 and 1800, says Coplen. Bone Prairie was a small field of flat earth which is now part of the land owned by Donald and Juanita Boggs, Hershel and Helen Albert and Bert J. Anderson.

Fierce War
According to a Miami Indian legend, a fierce day-long war occurred at this little prairie when the Potawatomies and Miamis fought in hand-to-hand combat. In 1832, when the early white settlers came to live in Kosciusko County, they named this field Bone Prairie because when the first saw it the ground was covered with human bones. The bones not only overlaid the earth's surface, but were plowed up in large numbers when the early farmers tilled the soil. Indian casualties suffered in the legendary Miami-Potawatomi battle could account for the presence of all the bones, according to L. W. Royse, in the History of Kosciusko County Indiana Vol. 1 page. 51.

There are some puzzling stories about Bone Prairie. According to the Indian battle legend, the Miamis did not leave their dead on the field, but gathered their warriors' remains and went home in the night, according to Waldo Adams, of Leesburg, 1st VP of the Kosciusko County Historical Society. If the battle legend is true, only the skeletons of the Potawatomies could have possibly been left.

A second story accounting for all the bones on Bone Prairie is that a smallpox epidemic ravaged the Musquawbuck tribe, a group of Potawatomi Indians who lived near the prairie, north east of the present site of Oswego. Many Musquawbucks died directly from the disease and others became delirious with smallpox fever and plunged into the Tippecanoe Lake and River and drowned. "The few who escaped the pestilence fled in horror, leaving the stricken to die and the dead to waste away to skeletons," states Royse.

Another explanation for the bones at Bone Prairie is offered by Donald Boggs, of Rt. 1, Leesburg. He says the bones seen by the first settlers may not have been Indian bones. He believes the bones may have been from a herd of buffalo which froze to death during a severe deep snow in the winter of 1760.

Though no human bones have been reported found in Bone Prairie since those early settlers came in 1832 unexplained dark spots of earth speckle the field, according to Boggs who farms a portion of what used to be the prairie. Approximately eight or 10 inches below the plowed ground, there are circles or ovals of dark, sticky dirt between three and four feet in diameter. Two or three spots occur per acre of ground and there is one large square of the same gummy soil that measures approximately eight feet by eight feet.

Boggs says the mysterious dark ovals and large square appear to be made of soil with a high ash content and he believes the ovals may have been Indian firepots and the square may have been the site of a council fire. Another theory is the spots were made when tree stumps decayed. Boggs says he has never found a metal or stone Indian artifact in that field.

In 1973 Boggs gave a test sample of the sticky soil to an employee of the Indiana Department of Conservation who was stationed at the Tri-County Game Preserve near Syracuse. The employee later told Boggs the soil tests were not conclusive and the best way to interpret the soil of Bone Prairie is by using the Carbon 14 test. The employee said this carbon test is very expensive and the conservation department was not willing to use the method to test the Prairie ground, according to Boggs. So what made the ovals and square in Bone Prairie remains a mystery.

Kosciusko County was one of the last regions to be settled by the Indians of the past three centuries because it was so wet and dappled with humid swamps and lakes. But there was plenty of wild game here during the Indian occupation of this county from approximately 1750 to 1832. Deer, turkey, quail and duck dwelled in these lands. And large numbers of wolves stalked the woods, meadows and wet prairies, according to Coplen.

Approximately two-thirds of Kosciusko County was originally filled with many different kinds of trees including burr oak, beech, walnut, sassafras, dogwood, tamarack, willow, hazelnut, paw-paw, elder and huckleberry. The other one-third of this county was equally divided between wet and dry prairies, says Coplen.

The dry prairies were located in the middle of the county. They were the first place white fur traders located when they came here in 1720. The three main dry prairies were Big Turkey Prairie, or Big Prairie; Bone Prairie; and Little Turkey Prairie, or Little Prairie, says Coplen.

Big Turkey Prairie was located in parts of Prairie and Plain townships and enveloped what is now Clunette and stretched west and slightly north toward Leesburg. It was oval-shaped and roughly three miles long and two and one-fourth miles wide.

Little Turkey Prairie was located in the southern half of Van Buren Township and included a tiny northern tip in Plain Township. With a shape resembling an elongated oval, it was roughly two and three-fourth miles long and one-fourth mile wide.

In 1832, the first white settlements for farming were established in Kosciusko County. By this time there were villages of both Pottawatomies and Miamis with a total population of 500 Indians, according to Royse.

However, during the past four or five years more than six Miami Indian summer campsites have been discovered in the southern part of Kosciusko County. Though the campsites have not been positively authenticated, Indian relics have been unearthed at each of the six sites which are located on dry, sandy places near water, according to Adams.

500 More Indians
These new finds are causing local students of county history to speculate there were 500 more Indians here in 1832 than is traditionally believed.

The Kosciusko County Indians of 1832 were not the same as they had been in earlier days. They had been forced to sign treaties and to renig most of their hunting grounds. Though the Miamis here subscribed to their own Indian religion, the Pottawatomies were Catholic. Their chiefs were getting old; most of the Indian leaders were between 52 and 67 years old, according to Royse.

In 1832 the Kosciusko county Indians and their cultures were suffering. Only one-tenth as many Indians were living here as there had been in the late 1700's. Alcoholism, disease and hunger plagued them. The Indians were introduced to alcohol by bootleggers who followed the English fur traders into Indiana. Every time there was a large meeting between the Indians and whites to negotiate a treaty, the bootleggers came and brought whiskey to sell.

By approximately 1795, at the time of the treaty of Greenville, the Indians were well-acquainted with alcohol. The Indians were fascinated with whiskey because it could relieve pain. Before the whites came, the Indians had no pain killers; no aspirin, no alcohol, says Adams. But by 1832, Benack, a Pottawatomi chief in Kosciusko county, was purchasing whiskey by the gallons, according to early records in the general store located near Clunette in the 1820's and 30's.

White Man's Disease
Diseases of the white men also weakened the Indians here. Traders and bootleggers, and after 1832 the settler-farmers, carried tuberculosis, smallpox and venereal disease. And these illnesses spread among the Indians, who had no immunities to them.

One of the saddest conditions of the Kosciusko county Indians of 1832 was that they were forced to live on reservations. Often the Indians went hungry on these reservations because they depended on hunting game for food and the reserves were too small to supply enough wild animals to eat. So, the Indians were forced to go off the reservation and steal.

Bounding the Pottawatomi and Miami bread-winners on the reservations and giving them government pensions encouraged the Indian men to do nothing and to feel useless and worthless, says Adams. In 1832, approximately 500 Indians lived in the northern part of this county and at least eight chiefs were known by the early settlers. Of these eight known chieftains, six were Pottawatomies and two were Miamis.

The Pottawatomi chiefs were Monoquet, Musquawbuck, Benack, Checose, Mota and Topash. The Miami chiefs were Flat-belly and his brother Wawasee.

The most powerful Indian leaders in 1832 were: Monoquet, whose village consisted of approximately 150 persons; Musquawbuck, who ruled 125; Flat-belly, whose village population was approximately 75; and Wawasee who headed 75 Indians. Chiefs Moto, Checose, Topash and Benack ruled small villages of Indians with a total population of 75, according to Royse. These population figures are not certain. Also in the 1830’s there were minor chiefs who led bands of Indians whose reservations boundaries were not definite or stationary, according to Coplen.

Chief Monoquet was a stern man and approximately 57 years old in 1832. His forehead was high and square; his eyes were small and bright; and he was a dark color. He had an aquiline nose, which was uncommon for an Indian to have, and his tenor voice was clear and sharp. He was approximately five feet seven inches tall, according to James W. Armstrong, in the History of Leesburg and Plain Township, Indiana, published by the Leesburg Journal, Leesburg Ind. page 8.

A brief encounter with Monoquet is described in the 1879 county atlas. Metcalf Beck, a Leesburg merchant in 1835 and a local historian, wrote a story about meeting the chief: "He (Monoquet) touched his forehead with the index finger of his right hand and thus addressed me: 'Nin Mon-o-quet,' then brought the hand down with a clap on his thigh and said 'cheep' (the Indians could pronounce no word ending with the sound of the letter "f"). It was a warm Sunday morning in the fall of 1835; his dress was a ruffled shirt of blue calico reaching midway down his thigh, and his feet were clad in moccasins. Our conversation was brief, for neither knew more than seven or eight words of the language of the other. We soon said all we could, then shook hands and parted; each made a bow to the other, and said 'ba-sho-nick', which in English meant 'goodbye.'

Monoquet ruled a tribe of Pottawatomi Indians who were forced to live on a four-section sized reservation located midway between Leesburg and Warsaw with approximately two-thirds of the reservation lying on the west side of State Rd. 15 North and one-third of the reservation lying on the east side of State Rd. 15 North.

Tiny Portion Allotted
One section of land is 640 acres and there are 534 sections in Kosciusko County. So Monoquet's tribe lived on 2,560 acres of this county's 341,760 acres.

Monoquet's village was located on a bluff, north of the Tippecanoe River and west of Leesburg Rd., where the road crosses the river bridge, on the site of the former town of Monoquet, according to Armstrong. This Pottawatomi settlement contained approximately 15 bark-covered wigwams that were scattered over two or three acres of land on the north bank of the river. The village was longest from east to west and there were no regular streets; "the wigwams were set at random, like the forest trees among which they were placed," says Beck in the county atlas.

Monoquet was a politically prominent chief among the Pottawatomies and he had won the reputation for being a good warrior when he fought under Tecumseh at the battle of Tippecanoe in 1811. Though some of the Indian chieftains became reconciled to the white takeover of Kosciusko county, Monoquet never did, according to Otho Winger in The Pottawatomi Indians published by the Elgin Press, Elgin, Ill., page 68. And by 1836, he was a morose and sullen man of 61 years, and he was much given to drink and quarrels.

Monoquet's death took place a few days after a night of carousel in which a young and pretty Indian squaw took part. The squaw was from Michigan but visiting at Monoquet's village. It was in the spring of 1836 (thought some say 1837) that Monoquet died of tuberculosis which was a common Indian disease in 1835.

His death was so sudden that his tribesmen became suspicious of the attractive Michigan squaw who purportedly attended Monoquet's revelry. The Indians thought the squaw may have poisoned or bewitched their chief. When she heard of their suspicions, the Indian girl was alarmed and started to go home on foot and alone.

Two Pottawatomi braves pursued her and brained her with a tomahawk, according to Royse. The spot where the Indian princess met her death can still be seen here. It is the dip in the field located along State Road 15, north of Warsaw, at the south edge of Leesburg, directly across the road from the present Polk and Sons Inc.

Monoquet was given the customary Indian interment for chiefs, according to Armstrong. The chieftain’s followers performed some death ceremonies and carried his body one-half mile south of Monoquet’s village, then southwest and laid the leader’s remains in a small field on the south side of the Tippecanoe River. Today this spot is on State Rd. 15, north of Warsaw, by the Tippecanoe River bridge says Winger.

Sat Body Upright
In this small meadow they sat Monoquet’s body upright against a tree and built a fence of horizontal poles six feet long, four feet wide and four feet high. At one end of the fence was the dead chief sitting, face toward the south with his blanket across his shoulders, says Armstrong. Monoquet’s horse and dog were killed and placed beside him. The sorrowing Indians brought hunting arms and succotash and other food to the dead chief, according to Winger. For months afterward Monoquet sat in his resting place undisturbed. Jim Monoquet, the chief’s son, was dubbed new leader after his father’s death.

A custom of the Indians who lived in Kosciusko county was to leave their dead adults sitting on top of the ground for four or five years, then bury the bones. (When babies died, squaws wove willow cradle-baskets, placed their little ones in them and fastened the cradles among the upper branches of trees.)

There are at least three versions of what happened to Monoquet’s remains. Winger says the white settlers in Kosciusko County would not allow Monoquet’s body to deteriorate on top the ground and they set fire to his little pole burial fence.

Coplen says Monoquet’s body remained in the pole fence until the Indians went west in 1838. He adds Monoquet’s tribesmen commented they did not want to leave Kosciusko County as long as their chief’s body retained its position. So someone who had preempted the Indian land stole into the resting place and strewed Monoquet’s bones about the vicinity. "In later years a half dozen physicians claimed they had the skull of the old chief, while another man said he had nailed it over his chicken coop to keep away the foxes and owls," writes Coplen.

Another legend claims the Indians buried Monoquet’s bones not far from the present site of Monoquet Meadows, in the southern part of Plain Township, section 30, on the farm of either Fay O. Rosbrugh, Warren Rosbrugh or Esther Rosbrugh.

Chief Musquawbuck
Another chief named Musquawbuck ruled a tribe of Pottawatomi Indians living on a reservation of four sections of land, located roughly one mile east of Leesburg. This reservation included land that is now the site of Oswego and the Armstrong Road was once an Indian trail that ran directly into the Musquawbuck reserve.

Musquawbuck's village was located on the south bank of the Tippecanoe River, northwest of the Oswego store and his reservation included Bone Prairie. This mild-mannered chief was a very handsome man, according to the Kosciusko County atlas of 1879. Descriptions of Musquawbuck say he was the most imposing figure of all the chiefs in Kosciusko County. He "was the finest specimen of physical manhood." His forehead was high and broad. He was large, erect and square-built and "in every respect well-proportioned."" He weighed 180 pounds. At age 65 years, he died from a fall from his horse in 1836, according to Winger.

Musquawbuck's family was not the usual dark copper color of Indians; they were lighter and resembled the mulattoes of the South. The chief's sons included Macose and Mazette, who were twins; John; and Bill, who was the youngest.

In 1836, Bill Musquawbuck was approximately 25 years old and extremely fond of white company. He spoke fair English and attended the old one-room Warner School, now an historical site located in North Webster beside the M & M Restaurant.

When the Indians were forced to leave Kosciusko County in 1838, '"Bill left with great reluctance, having to part with white friends in addition to the natural regret of leaving his native land and home," states the 1879 county atlas.

Killed Son
Chief Musquawbuck's third son, John, was killed one night near Leesburg. John was returning to his village at Oswego and Bone Prairie when he began quarreling with some of his drinking companions. One of the companions killed him at the foot of Harper's Hill which is located on the spot where the brick farmhouse stands on the C. W. Holderman farm, where Harper Road meets County Road 700 North, approximately three-tenths of a mile east of Martin's Leesburg Mill, on the east edge of Leesburg. The next day some white Leesburg citizens buried John and today his bones sleep beneath the north east corner of the tool house in Leesburg cemetery, according to Armstrong.Benack, Flat Belly Once Walked These Lands

Part 2
by Jo Ann Merkle Vrabel, Feature Writer
Warsaw Times Union Spotlight July 1-7, 1974

In 1832, there was a very wealthy and gruff Pottawatomi chief named Benack. He had two reservations. One as a reserve located southeast of Clunette,at the northwest corner of the intersection of County Roads 500 North and 300 West. His other lands lay between Kosciusko and Marshall counties.

Benack lived in a log house near Clunette. He was a large muscular Indian and fond of whiskey. Noted for his bitterness toward the whites, Benack used to scare youngsters who lived near Clunette when he boasted that he collected tongues of white men; he already had 99 tongues; and he was going to have an even 100 before he died, according to L. W. Royse in the History of Kosciusko County Indiana Volume I.

Benack was rich and he owned land on the west end of Big Turkey Prairie which is located in Prairie and Plain townships. When the other Kosciusko county Pottawatomies were forced to go west, he refused to go and remained in retirement until his death in the early 1850's according to Reub Williams in an article "Indians and their Burying grounds," from the Aug. 5, 1880 edition of the Northern Indianian.

In the early 1850's Benack's daughter Mary Ann inherited some sections of land on the south side of Big Turkey Prairie. When quite young she was married to a trapper named McCarter. They didn't get along so she gave him a section of land to leave her, which he did. She later married an Indian named Peashwa. The Benack lands were finally sold and Mary Ann and Peashwa moved to a reservation near South Bend Indiana.

Potawatomi Chief Checose, sometimes spelled Checase, was a shrewd land dealer with the whites, according to Royse. In 1832, Checose was leader of the Indians living on four sections of land located on the banks of the Tippecanoe River, northwest of Warsaw, which is now North Lake Street in Warsaw. Before 1832, Checose's band lived on four sections of soil now occupied by residents of Winona Lake including the north, east and south shores of Winona Lake and the land extending east, according to Vincent H. Gaddis and Jasper A. Huffman in The Story of Winona Lake, published by the Rodeheaver Co., Winona Lake, 1960, pages 16 & 17.

Ancient Burial Ground
Near Checose's Winona Lake village, there is an "ancient Indian burial ground" where Winona Lake is joined to the Tippecanoe River by Eagle-Walnut Creek, on the shores of the creek approximately one-half mile from the river, according to Gaddis and Huffman.

Another Pottawatomi Chief named Mota, whose face was disfigured by the loss of a part of his nose, ruled a reservation of four sections of land approximately one mile due east of Atwood and south on the banks of the Tippecanoe River.

Little is known about the Pottawatomi chief Topash whose band of Indians lived on Trimble Creek in Harrison Township. Topash was an old man by the year 1848 and he had two sons, Dominique and Joanita. In 1848, the whites expelled Topash and his sons, from their homes in Kosciusko County along with approximately 100 other Pottawatomies who were still here. The Topashes went to Michigan and one of the sons was later imprisoned in the Michigan City State Prison for stealing a horse, says Williams.

Another Pottawatomi chieftain who apparently lived here was Kinkash. He ruled a village located on the Tippecanoe River, between County Road 150 West and State Road 15, north of Warsaw, in Plain Township. His band lived on the Monoquet reservation, according to a map hanging in the Warsaw Public Library entitled "Indians of the State of Indiana" published by Hearne Bros., Detroit, Mich. Kinkash's name is also listed in the Government Survey Book 1828, Department of the Interior, General Land Office book, page 11, 1835, located in the Kosciusko County recorder's office.

Another Pottawatomi leader who governed a village here was Checkawkose. According to the "Indians of the State of Indiana" map, Checkawkose's settlement was located on the south side of the Tippecanoe River, approximately in Harrison Township, on the Kosciusko-Marshall County border.

Flat-Belly Greatest
Kosciusko County's great Miami chief in the 1830's was Flat-Belly. He claimed a total of 36 sections of land located in both Kosciusko and Noble counties. Nineteen of these sections were in Tippecanoe and Turkey Creek townships of this county including lands around the approximate eastern one-half of Lake Wawasee.

Flat-belly lived in a one-story brick house given to him by the United States government in exchange for land. When built, the house cost $600, according to Marion Wallace Coplen in the History of Kosciusko County Indiana to 1875.

Flat-belly's house was located in the southeast corner of his village which is now called Indian Village in Noble County. When he died, the house was torn down by the white settlers and the bricks from his house were used for chimneys, says Waldo Adams, first vice-president of the Kosciusko County Historical Society.

"Most of the early settlers here hated the Indians awfully. They didn't want to hear the sound or even smell the smell of an Indian around here. So they tore down any sign of the Indians that they could. That's why there are so few Indian relics here today. About the only thing left of the Kosciusko County Indians is made of stone that couldn't be destroyed," says Adams.

Flat-belly, also named Papakeechie, was a large, strong Indian of a dark copper color. He weighed approximately 300 pounds and was 60 years old in the 1830's, according to J. F. Everhart in the Combination Atlas Map of Kosciusko County Indiana. He was one of the most politically powerful chiefs of the Miami nation in 1834.

Chief Wawasee
The other Miami chieftain was Waw-wa-esse, or Wawasee, often contracted into Wawbee. In the mid-1830's, Wawasee's village was situated near the southeast corner of Lake Wabee, approximately two and one-half miles southeast of Milford including the eastern shores of Lake Wabee.

Chief Wawasee was a minor leader but a brother of Flat-belly. Like his brother, Wawasee was big and strong. This chief dressed up for special occasions by wearing a large silver ring that hung from the cartilage of his nose. He sometimes substituted a fish bone for the ring, according to James W. Armstrong in The History of Leesburg and Plain Township Indiana published by the Leesburg Journal.

The Eel River Indians lived in the southern part of Kosciusko County along Eel River. They were a friendly tribe of Miamis who built summer camps further north, but still within the boundaries of the southern part of this county.

Pre-Historic?
Therefore, arrowheads and stone relics found in the county's southern townships were either made by the Miami Indians, sometime between approximately 1750 and 1848, or were made by pre-historic Indians of the Early Archaic Period, who lived between 4000 and 5000 B.C., according to Dean Ryan of Milford. Ryan has searched southern Kosciusko County. The southern townships in the county are Franklin, Monroe, Seward, Lake, Jackson and Clay.

Ryan says that 90 per cent of the arrowheads found in Indian campsites within an approximate two-mile radius of Claypool, in Clay Township were made by the early archaic Indians. The other 10 per cent of the relics found near Claypool were probably made by the Miami Indians.

Free land was a great attraction for young persons who wanted to establish a home and there was a land rush for Kosciusko County soil immediately after the Pottawatomi tribes were cajoled into giving up their lands by the treaty of 1832. Would-be settlers waited on the Elkhart-Kosciusko county border, near the eastern end of Goshen to run for their stakes, according to Adams.

Manifest destiny was a common belief among the early settlers of this county. Manifest destiny is the fallacious idea that "this land was made for us white people and not for you red people," states Adams.

The Indians of this county only lived on reservations a few years, approximately from 1832 to 1838 or 1840. In 1832 the Pottawatomi chiefs gave their Kosciusko County lands to the white settlers and agreed to live on small reservations on October 26 at a treaty meeting conducted north of Rochester, on Old State Road 31 on the Tippecanoe River.

And between 1834 and 1836 most of the Pottawatomi chiefs of Kosciusko County had given up even their reservations and villages. In December 1, 1834 Mota and his band of Indians yielded their tiny reservation-homeland and promised to move west of the Mississippi. The government paid the old chief and his Indians a total $600, according to Otto Winger in The Pottawatomi Indians

In 1836 the towns and reservations of the Powerful Pottawatomi chiefs Monoquet and Musquawbuck were surrendered and the Indians agreed to move to Kansas by September, 1838.

Monoquet's tribe was paid $1.25 per acre for the reservation which consisted of four sections of land lying between Leesburg and Warsaw. The Monoquet village was located in the reserve, three miles north of Warsaw where State Road. 15 crosses the Tippecanoe River. Musquawbuck's village was near the site of the present village of Oswego, says Winger.

Between 1826 and 1834 the Miami chiefs here also ceded most of their lands to the whites. One of the last of the Miami treaties was in October 1834, at the forks of the Wabash. The Potawatomies and Miamis were forced to sign these treaties. White bootleggers supplied the Indians with booze to get drunk while the government men spurred the Indians to sign, says Adams.

Stashing the Indians on reservations did not work. The Indians hunted for food and the reservations were too small to supply enough game to feed members of the tribes. So the Indians and their children were hungry and began to steal in order to survive.

The Kosciusko county Indians did not want to leave. At the time of old Chief Musquawbuck's death in 1836, he was already "broken-hearted because of the prospective move," according to Winger.

The Indians of this county were not exiled from here in one large group. Rather, they were escorted to Kansas in small groups of approximately 50 persons each. And the men who led the groups of Kosciusko county Indians to the new Kansas reservations were usually white fur traders who bid for government contracts to oversee the sad departures, Adams says.

Though the Kosciusko county Indians were exported to Kansas in small groups over a period of years from 1837 through the 1840's, the Marshall county Pottawatomies of Menominee's tribe were even more unfortunate. This large tribe of Pottawatomies was expelled from Indiana in a long horrible Trail of Death march to Kansas.

In July 1837 approximately 100 Pottawatomi Indians assembled at Kewanna village in Fulton County and a government man named George Proffit took them west, according to Royse. The leader of these Marshall County Pottawatomies was Menominee, a religious Catholic chief whose headquarters were a Christian mission and Menominee Chapel located near Twin Lakes, approximately five miles southwest of Plymouth. Menominee refused to sign a treaty that said his tribe would have to leave Indiana and march west, according to Winger.

So General John Tipton, an Indianapolis politician and Indian agent for Indiana organized a group of soldiers and ordered them to surprise and capture Menominee and the men, women and children of his large tribe. Many of Menominee's tribesmen were in the chapel in prayer when the soldiers gave notice of their arrival with a volley of shot and then made them prisoners, says Winger.

Menominee stood at bay with a dagger in his hand but the soldiers threw a lasso over his head and tied his feet and hands. Then they threw the chief into a wagon and hauled him from his home and work. He went into captivity and joined the Trail of Death march with approximately 859 other Marshall County Pottawatomies of the Menominee tribe. What became of Menominee, no one knows, states Winger.

The Trail of Death march of these Marshall County Indians began September 4, 1838. Sixty wagons carried women, babies, children and sick persons. Most of the Pottawatomi men had to walk. Before they left on the morning of September 4th, Tipton's soldiers set fire to all huts and cabins so the Indians would not be tempted to return. By the second day of the march, 51 persons were unable to continue the journey because they needed transportation and they were sick, says Winger.

At almost every camping place one or more Indians was left in a nameless grave. Through Logansport and down the Wabash the sad procession continued with no medical supplies and little food. Not only was the physical suffering terrible, but the mental anguish was more. To be driven from the homes of their ancestors and to be on the march hundreds of miles to a land they knew not was all human strength could endure, writes Winger.

In 15 days, on September 19th, 1838, Tipton left the march and turned the Pottawatomies over to other white men who continued the journey westward, across Illinois, across the Mississippi, across Missouri and on to Kansas, their final destination. The march took 60 days. It was winter time when the Indians arrived in Kansas and they were without proper food and shelter, according to Winger.

By 1840, many Pottawatomi and Miami Indians had been expelled from Kosciusko county. But there were still some Indians here. So, in 1840 a man named General Brady and his troops forced remaining Pottawatomies out of Kosciusko County and took them to Kansas. All went by land, on horseback, according to Royse. "When they arrived at their crossing on the Mississippi where they were to cross to the borders of Kansas, the hearts of some of the chiefs drew eastward instead of westward and ... some of the Pottawatomies were endeavoring to escape," writes Royse. So the white soldiers took away the Indian leader horses and those men in charge of the expedition crossed the Indians on barges to the border of Kansas, says Royse.

Several homesick Indians returned to Kosciusko county after they were transplanted in the west, according to Adams. Bill Musquawbuck came back home once but was returned to his reservation in Pottawatomi county, Kansas, and later became a chief there. Bill Musquawbuck was the youngest son of chief Musquawbuck whose Indian village was located at Oswego in the 1830's. Bill was educated by the Kosciusko county whites and had many white friends here, according to Royse.

Flat-belly and Wawasee also escaped from Kansas and came back to their lands near Syracuse and Milford, respectively. But government men were hunting the runaways and the Indian brothers fled to Michigan where all tracks of them were lost, states Adams. The last Indians of Kosciusko County were removed to Indian territory in 1848.

In August, 1880, Reub Williams wrote a newspaper account of that final exodus: "...although I was quite small, I well remember their (the last Kosciusko county Indians) passage through Warsaw with their ponies; their guns; dogs, squaws and papooses, making as motley a crowd as one might not expect to see more than once in a lifetime. There were a few who still remained. Old Benack refused to go...Topash with the two boys...Dominique and Joanita, removed to Michigan. But little has ever been learned from those who removed to the Indian Territory..."