I’ve finished my third book this month about the expulsion of Indians. It was based on a bill that only passed with a margin of 5 votes in Congress so those who don’t think it matters who controls Congress……well let that be food for thought.
One of the books villains was a naïve Indian missionary, Isaac McCoy, who made it his mission to move Indians to new western territories such as Oklahoma and Kansas. Those two states weren’t mentioned much in the book and as an old Kansas I poked around the Internet to see what I might find out about their destination for several refugee tribes. That led me to my old hometown and the 1966 tornado that devastated Topeka. I was googling “Burnett’s Mound” the highest point in the city where the tornado began a seven mile rampage through town. The page had several pictures of the damage. At another site I found this picture which shows the old castle like water tower that was next to my Grandmother’s house. The house blew away and today you can order a Big Mac from the McDonalds that took its place.
What caught my eye in my poking around was the Pottawattamie Trail of Death which is now a long stretch of roads from Indiana to Topeka and mention that Mr. Burnett had been an Pottawattamie interpreter for Rev. Isaac McCoy.
The Pottawattamie were barely mentioned in the book I just finished, Unworthy Republic. It spent most of it time describing the ordeal of the Civilized tribes of the Deep South. However, the ever reliable Wikipedia has a solid entry about this episode
I now have an official bug to read up on the entire history, episode by episode of North American Indians. I have been collecting books to read in some unplanned future and that history has just begun. Here’s a peak of some of the books I’m tempted to order which are well reviewed at Amazon.com.
