Removal, dated: the column that did not pass, and the operation that emptied the valley

1838 NOT-HERE; 1840–43 THE VALLEY EMPTIED

The great column of 1838 did not pass this ground, and it is printed as not-here: the Twin Lakes reserve, in the county below this one, fell due on 5 August 1838 under the Yellow River treaty of 5 August 1836 — a signature Menominee protested on 4 November 1837 had been forged for him. Governor Wallace authorized General John Tipton; the militia surrounded the village; the rolls recorded 859 people. The column set out on 4 September 1838 and walked 660 miles in 61 days to the Osage River country at present Osawatomie, Kansas: 42 dead, 28 of them children; 756 arrived. Its road ran south through Logansport; it crossed neither the rapids nor this ground — but the people it took were this valley's people, from the reserve one county below, and the Citizen Potawatomi Nation's own account of the column is carried whole in Before the City, where this build prints the removal narrative once. Indiana's own removal, 1840–43, was the operation that emptied this ground's valley: run under the treaty provisions of 1834 and 1836, General Samuel Milroy first in charge, then General Hugh Brady as superintendent of emigration, and its conductor's contract went to the valley's own trader, Alexis Coquillard. Chapman's county history closes the story in one sentence: "they were removed in 1840-'43, per order of the general Government, into Iowa, under the conduct of Alexis Coquillard." The destination word is Chapman's. Against it stands the caravan record of a column of about 500 Indiana and Michigan Potawatomi crossing the Mississippi at Quincy in the fall of 1840, Abram Burnett interpreting, on the road across Missouri toward Kansas. The two statements are carried unharmonised, here as in the sister legs. By 1843 the valley's south side — this ground among it — stood emptied of the people who had held it, excepting only the band the next article holds.