On May 28, 1830, President Andrew Jackson signed into law the Indian Removal Act, which called for removing all Native American tribes from the states to the western prairies.

The Treaty of Greenville of 1785 had ended the Indian Wars in Ohio Country. The agreement promised the Native Americans land in northwest Ohio for "as long as the woods grow and waters run."

In 1817 the Treaty of the Miami of Lake Erie laid out reservations along the Sandusky River in and around Seneca County, Ohio. Tracts were granted to individual Seneca families by name.

After Jackson's election in 1829, Indian removal became a priority for the legislature. The Senecas of Sandusky (who were not actually Seneca, but the remnants of several tribes including Delaware and Shawnee) were the first to agree to move after the passage of the 1830 act. They were to receive government land in northeast Oklahoma as well as money to improve it and assistance in moving.

The last of the Ohio tribes to sign a removal treaty were the Wyandots of Upper Sandusky. The last of them departed Ohio for Kansas in July 1843. As their steamer pulled away from the banks of the Ohio River at Cincinnati, the chief cried "Farewell Ohio and her brave!"

Rebecca Goodman

E-mail rgoodman@enquirer.com or call 768-8361.