“The Last?”

If we expand our view, it’s clear that Indigenous people did not “disappear.”

This painting, made by Asher Brown Durand in 1853, is titled “Progress.” Can you spot the Indigenous people? What is this painting trying to communicate? Courtesy of Wikimedia images. CC 1.0 Universal Public Domain.

While it was common for local historians to claim white settlers to be the “first settlers,” the other side of the coin was to claim that the Indigenous people who left a given area were the “last” of their race or that they “vanished”.

Local historians claimed that Indigenous people vanished because they were not advanced enough to live in the “modern world” although they continued to exist, either in other parts of the country or sometimes in the local area.¹ A more subtle way that local historians erased Indigenous people was simply not mentioning what happened to them after they left Ohio, which gives readers the sense that the timeline of Indigenous history stops after 1812 and that modern Indigenous people do not exist.

Read Douglass’s accounts of Indigenous removal from Ohio:

Delaware

“In 1795 the United States got possession of their lands on the Muskingum, when they removed to the Wabash country, Indiana, where they remained until 1819, when they followed the going down of the sun west of the Mississippi.”
Benjamin Douglass, History of Wayne County, Ohio (1878) 162

Shawnee

“They lost by that treaty (Treaty of Greenville) nearly the whole territory which they held from the Wyandots; and a part of them, under the guidance of Tecumseh, again joined the British standard during the war of 1812.”
Benjamin Douglass, History of Wayne County, Ohio (1878), 165

Wyandot

“The last remnant of the Indian tribes in Ohio sold the last acre they owned within the limits of our State to the General Government and retired, the next year, to the far west, settling at and near the mouth of the Kansas River.”
Benjamin Douglass, History of Wayne County, Ohio (1878) 163

This is Douglass’s narration of local Indigenous groups’ removal, which included the above-listed tribes:

“Their sudden disappearance from the county was most remarkable, occurring, as it were, in a single night, and that, too, soon after the War of 1812 had been announced…and hastened westward to deepen the blood-stain of their hands.”
Benjamin Douglass, History of Wayne County, Ohio (1878) 166.

What do these excerpts have in common?

While Douglass is more specific about what happened to the Wyandotte and Delaware after the early 1800s, words like “following the sun” and “retired” give readers the sense that Indigenous people left without conflict or resistance. It also gives no indication that these tribes still exist. Douglass obscures the hardships that nations such as the Wyandotte and Delaware faced when they were removed, such as long and often deadly migrations, and their loss of tribal lands once they arrived in places like Kansas and Oklahoma.

In contrast, the description of the Shawnees’ removal obscures the fact that the Shawnees were forced westward after the Treaty of Greenville, such as with the Indian Removal Act of 1830. The description of the Indigenous peoples in the area also says nothing of the pressures of the War of 1812 as leaders like Tecumseh made a last stand to protect their lands or the wave of white settlement that came soon after in Ohio.

The last quote is vague, and gives the sense that Indigenous people were one-dimensional and fundamentally evil and violent, which is another myth.

These descriptions give readers little information if they want to learn about the devastating impacts of removal that were direct results of white settlement.

Claims that Native Americans no longer existed also helped to make them into a distinct group from white settlers: local historians viewed Native Americans as traditional, backward, and fading away, while they viewed white settlers as modern, successful, and prominent. Take a look at this poem in Douglass’s book, originally written by Return Jonathan Meigs in 1789.

Where late the savage, hid in ambush, lay,

Or roamed the uncultured valleys for his prey,

Her hardy gifts rough industry extends,

The groves bow down, the lofty forest bends;

And see the spires of towns and cities rise,

And domes and cities swell into the skies.

-Return Jonathan Meigs, quoted by Douglass on page 178.

Image: American Progress by John Ghast, 1872. Courtesy of Wikimedia Images. Public Domain.

Here, there is a contrast between the hidden Indigenous people in the “uncultured valleys” and the sweeping cities of the white people. However, the cultural history of the groups that lived in this area and more broadly in Ohio shows that they did not “fade away” and continued to exist after they were forcibly removed from Ohio.

These narratives that Indigenous people “vanished” from geographic areas acted as helpful explanations for why they were populated for the most part by white settlers after the early 1800s.² It also helped to reinforce stereotypes of Indigenous peoples as backward, uncivilized, traditional, and all-around inferior to white settlers, which made their removal seem like a natural consequence of their inferiority. ³

How can I challenge assumptions about the “last” Indigenous people?

Research the treaties that impacted Indigenous groups in your area and where they went after removal.
Investigate the potential reasons why groups would have left a particular area at a particular time. What events were going on regionally or nationally that could have made Indigenous groups fearful of staying? Were they forced to move? Did some stay behind?
Search for tribal nations that have connections to your local area. What do they do to preserve their culture? Are there any Indigenous people or centers closeby?