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The Potawatomi belonged to the Algonquian group and were first encountered by white men in the vicinity of Green Bay, Wisconsin. They were originally associated with the Ottawa and Chippewa as one tribe, the separation taking place about the head of Lake Huron. Subsequently, the three tribes formed a confederacy for offense or defense, and when removed west of the Mississippi River asked to be united again. They sided with the French until about 1760, took part in the Pontiac Conspiracy, and fought against the United States in the American Revolution. The Treaty of Greeneville put an end to hostilities, but in the War of 1812, they again allied themselves with the British.

Between the years 1836 and 1841 they were moved west of the Mississippi River, those in Indiana having to be removed by force. Some escaped to Canada and lived on Walpole Island in the St. Clair River.

Potawatomi Rain Dance, probably at the Prairie Band Reservation in Kansas, 1920.

Quapaw Indian.

The Otoe, one of the three Siouan tribes forming the Chiwere group, were originally part of the Winnebago, from whom they separated near Green Bay, Wisconsin. Moving southwest in quest of buffalo, the Otoe went up the Missouri River, crossed the Big Platte River, and in 1673 were living on the upper Des Moines or upper Iowa River.

Lewis and Clark, in 1804 found them on the south side of the Platte River, 30 miles from its mouth, where, having become decimated by war and small-pox, they lived under the protection of the Pawnee. The Otoe were never an important tribe in Kansas history, though in March, 1881, they ceded to the United States a tract of land, a small portion of which lies north of Marysville in Marshall County.

In January, 1838 several New York tribes were granted reservations in Kansas, but the vast majority  refused to occupy the lands -- only 32 Indians came from New York to the newly established Indian Territory. Some 10,000 acres were allotted to these 32 Indians in the northern part of Bourbon County. In 1857 the Tonawanda band of Seneca relinquished their claim to the Kansas reservations, and in 1873 the government ordered all the lands sold to the whites, including the 10,000 acres in Bourbon County, because the Indians had failed to occupy them permanently.

By the treaty of New Echota, Georgia on December 29, 1835, the Cherokee Nation ceded the lands formerly occupied by the tribe east of the Mississippi River and received a reservation in southeastern Kansas. The tribe never assumed an important status in Kansas affairs, and in 1866 the land was ceded back to the United States. The Cherokee tribe was detached from the Iroquois at an early day and for at least three centuries inhabited Tennessee, Georgia, southwestern Virginia, the Carolinas and northeastern Alabama. They were found by De Soto in the southern Alleghany region in 1540, and were among the most intelligent of Indian tribes.

Last but not least of the Indian tribes that dwelt in Kansas at some point were the Wyandot, or Wyandot-Iroquois, who were the successors to the power of the ancient Hurons, who originally lived on the northern shore of Lake Ontario. About the middle of the 18th century the Huron Chief Orontony  moved from the Detroit River to the lowlands about Sandusky Bay. Orontony hated the French and organized a movement for the destruction of their posts and settlements, but a Huron woman divulged the plan. The hand-book of the Bureau of Ethnology said: "After this trouble the Huron seem to have returned to Detroit and Sandusky, where they became known as Wyandot and gradually acquired a paramount influence in the Ohio valley and the lake region."

During the French and Indian War, the tribe was allied with the French, and in the Revolutionary War they fought with the British against the colonies. For a long time the tribe stood at the head of a great Indian confederacy and was recognized as such by the United States government in making treaties in the old Northwest Territory. At one time they claimed the greater part of Ohio, and the Shawnee and Delaware tribes settled there with Wyandot consent. In March, 1842, they relinquished their title to lands in Ohio and Michigan and agreed to move west of the Mississippi River. On December 14, 1843, they purchased 39 square miles of the east end of the Delaware Reserve in Kansas. Connelley says: "They brought with them from Ohio a well organized Methodist church, a Free Masons' lodge, a civil government, a code of written laws which provided for an elective council of chiefs, the punishment of crime and the maintenance of social and public order."

Soon after the Wyandot came to Kansas efforts were made in Congress to organize the Territory of Nebraska, to include a large part of the Indian country. The Indians realized that if the territory was organized it meant they would have to sell their lands, notwithstanding the treaty promises of the government that they should never be disturbed in their possessions, and that their lands should never be incorporated in any state or territory. A congress of the Kansas tribes met at Fort Leavenworth in October, 1848, and reorganized the old confederacy with the Wyandot at the head. At the session of Congress in the winter of 1851-52 a petition asking for the organization of a territorial government was presented, but no action was taken. The people then concluded to act for themselves, and on October  12, 1852, Abelard Guthrie was elected a delegate to Congress, although no territorial government existed west of the Missouri. At a convention on July 26, 1853, which had been called in the interest of the central route of the proposed Pacific Railroad, a series of resolutions were adopted which became the basis of a provisional territorial government, with William Walker, a Wyandot Indian, as governor.

On January 31, 1855, tribal relations among the Wyandot were dissolved and they became citizens of the United States. At the same time, the 39 sections purchased in 1843 were ceded to the government, with the understanding that a new survey was to be made and the lands conveyed to the Wyandot as individuals, the reserves to be permitted to locate on any government land west of Missouri and Iowa.

In the social organization of the Wyandot four groups were recognized -- the family, the gens, the phratry and the tribe. A family consisted of all who occupied one lodge, at the head of which was a woman. The gens included all the blood relations in a given female line. At the time the tribe removed to Kansas it was made up of eleven bands, which were further divided into four groups.

Mooney says the Wyandot were "the most influential tribe of the Ohio region, the keepers of the great wampum belt of union and the lighters of the council fire of the allied tribes." But, like the other great tribes that once inhabited the central region of North America, the Wyandot have faded away before the civilization of the pale-face. The wigwam has given way to the school house, the old trail has been supplanted by the railroad, and in a few generations more the Indian will be little more than a memory.