About
Beginning on October 6, 1846, the Miami Tribe began a forced removal from their native homelands in the Wabash River Valley to a new home on a reservation in Kansas. The journey took almost a month to complete. The impacts of this event reverberate to this day. The removal started with the treaty of 1838, when the Miami tribal leaders agreed to relinquish their territories south of the Wabash River and would be granted land west of the Mihsi-siipiiwi (Mississippi River). The treaty did not mandate a removal to this newly granted land. It did, however, open up the possibility of a removal in the minds of tribal leaders who later decided it was in the tribe’s best interest to move as the United States government would never stop insisting that they should migrate. This led to the signing of the treaty of 1840, dictating the land to which they would migrate, as well as the payment they would receive for their current land. During this removal period, government officials and tribal members generated numerous letters and documents. These documents give an inside perspective of what people were feeling during the removal, and how they dealt with it. In this project, numerus documents from the Office of Indian Affairs roll 418 have been transcribed, and more remain. The goal of this project is to create a series of transcriptions that will allow scholars to conduct historical research more easily on the Miami removal, and open these primary sources to wider readership. Aiding this effort are students from Cam Shriver’s History 259 course, “Intro to the Miami Tribe,” who are working directly alongside researchers from the Myaamia Center to help organize the project and transcribe some of the primary documents.
For more information, browse Diane Hunter’s posts commemorating the Removal at Aacimotaatiiyankwi, the Myaamia Community Blog.