Removal and Beyond

The story of Ohio’s Indigenous people continued long after the early 1800s.

A train moving through a valley with a small pioneer village on one side and two Indigenous people on horseback on the other.

Image: Across the continent, “Westward the course of empire takes its way.” F. F. Palmer (1868). Library of Congress, no known restrictions on publication.

Each tribe that lived in Ohio followed a different path of forced removal. A wider tidal wave of removal pushed tribes like the Shawnee, Delaware, and Wyandotte from east to west.

Forced to leave their homes and farms, the treks from one settlement to another were long and arduous. They faced an uncertain future, but the threat of white settlers was motivation enough to leave.1Weslager, The Delaware, 360. Removal was directly caused by white settlers who wanted to take Indigenous lands for themselves. Despite their histories of hundreds of years of removal, the Wyandotte, Shawnee, and Delaware continue to survive today.

Below are the individual stories of Wayne County’s main tribes:

Delaware
Shawnee
Wyandotte

Removal from Ohio

1795-1843

This image shows how counties in Ohio began to be established in the early nineteenth century. Image from page 378 of “Ohio archæological and historical publications” Internet Archive via Flickr, public domain.

Forcefully removed from their settlements in Ohio, the Shawnee, Wyandotte, and Delaware started new villages further west. They hoped to remain, and while the US government tried to get them to adopt European agricultural styles, the Wyandotte, Shawnee, and Delaware fought to preserve their traditions.2Weslager, The Delaware, 337.

Map of Treaties in Indiana. “Indiana Indian Treaties.” Charles Edward (2009). Wikimedia images. Public Domain.

Although the government provided some protections and payments for Indigenous people, they could not stop the tidal wave of white settlers, who were now spilling out of Ohio.3Weslager, The Delaware Indians, 350. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 was especially instrumental in forcing Ohio’s Indigenous groups onto lands west of the Mississippi River.4Weslager, The Delaware Indians, 371. Removal was not a pleasant experience. One Wyandot Chief, Chief Warpole, described how removal felt by saying:  

“…the disposition of white folks is to crowd; and if we try to get away from them by going where they tell us, they will still crowd up until they crowd us all out; unless we could fly up and live in the air, and feed on nothing, there would soon be left no place for us.” 

Chief Warpole of the Wyandotte Nation, from James Wheeler’s Missionary Memoir.

As these tribes moved westward, their populations fell. They had to rely on lower-quality farmland, and having to travel for so long was too much for some.5 Bowes, Land too Good for Indians, 3-4; Stockwell, The Other Trail of Tears, 172; 216; Weslager, The Delaware Indians, 363.

Kansas and Oklahoma

1850s-1870s

A train drives past two Indigenous people and a dwelling. The caption reads: The early railroad in Indian Country
A map showing the railways on the eastern half of the United States.
First image: Page 217 of Outdoor Life and Indian Stories, by Edward Ellis (1912). Internet Archive. Public Domain. Second image: A railway guide, circa 1854. In the 1860s, railways began to encroach on Indigenous lands. Image: Dinsmore & Company’s new and complete map of the railway system of the United States and Canada; compiled from official sources, under the direction of the editor of the “American Railway Guide.” Curran Dinsmore (1850), Picryl. Public Domain.

As these tribes were pushed into Kansas and Oklahoma, they were promised that they would no longer have to move. Negotiators such as Lewis Cass, the governor of the Michigan Territory, saw removal as more humane, but it also provided lands for white settlers.6Hixson, American Settler Colonialism, 115-118. However, in the 1850s and 1860s, trouble mounted. With the Gold Rush and pressure from railway companies who wanted to expand rail lines, Wyandot, Shawnee, and Delaware groups in Kansas were forced to take much smaller plots of land.7Stockwell, The Other Trail of Tears, 223.   Despite this, Ohio’s former Indigenous inhabitants gave their service to the United States. For example, 80% of able-bodied Delaware men volunteered for the Union.8 Delaware Tribe of Indians, 2022.

At the same time, when Kansas opened for white settlement in 1855, the Delaware, Shawnee, and Wyandotte found themselves caught in the middle of the violent Bleeding Kansas conflict and white settlers trespassed on their lands.9Bowes, Land too Good for Indians, 222.  

A political cartoon showing a woman wrapped in an American flag trying to stop a man from strangling another man, while a house burns and people with guns chase each other in the background.
This political cartoon from 1856 shows just how violent the Bleeding Kansas conflict was, but Indigenous people are noticeably absent from the image. Image: “Liberty. The fair maid of Kansas in the hands of the “border ruffians”” (1856). Picryl. Public Domain.

In 1863, President Lincoln began to push for the removal of Indigenous people from Kansas, and by the end of the Civil War, these groups moved onto parts of Cherokee lands in Oklahoma.10Stockwell, The Other Trail of Tears, 224. On these small plots of land, cultures from Ohio clashed with other removed cultures from the Great Plains.11Hixson, American Settler Colonialism, 118. During and after the Civil War, removal to reservations became the United States’ formally adopted policy, and the United States pushed a policy of individual plots of land, rather than tribal lands.12Weslager, The Delaware Indians, 409-410.  

A map showing the territories given to the Cherokee, Chicksaw, Chocktaw, Seminole, and Creek nations in Oklahoma.
A large group of students in uniform pose in front of a large building
First image: “Indian Territory, 1860.” Charles Henry Roberts (1914). Library of Congress and Wikimedia Images. No known copyright restrictions. Second image: Image: “CARLISLE INDIAN INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL, CUMBERLAND COUNTY.” Jerrye and Roy Klotz. Wikimedia. Creative Commons 4.0.

By the late 1800s, white Americans began to believe that Indigenous people no longer existed. However, this was not the case. Records show that dozens of Shawnee, Wyandotte, and Delaware children attended the Carlisle Indian School, which was designed to eliminate Indigenous cultures and assimilate young people.13Hixson, American Settler Colonialism, 141. Not only did these schools attempt to erase Indigenous cultures, but they also abused and neglected the children in their care. However, these Indigenous cultures endured, and continue to this day.  

In the 1930s, Congress passed the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act and the 1936 Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act. Both of these laws encouraged tribal self-government instead of assimilation to American cultures. After these acts, tribal nations could write new tribal constitutions. However, some nations struggled to be recognized as federally-recognized tribal nations.14 Delaware Tribe of Indians, 2022.

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