The Potawatomi Trail of Death

<--The original homeland of the Potawatomi Indians is in red. Cities like Milwaukee got their names from Potawatami (Algonkian) words.

I first learned of the Potawatami Trail of Death while visiting the Forest County Potawatami's museum (which is several miles east of Crandon, just off of Highway 8) in Forest County, Wisconsin. In my opinion, it is an above-average tribal museum.

While not as infamous as the Cherokee Trail of Tears, the Potawatomi Trail of Death was arguably an even more severe atrocity. Here are some relevant links and graphics that I found on the web:


Read about the Potawatomi Trail of Death:

• Historical Background


• Artist George Winter's eyewitness account


• Letter from Benjamin Marie Petit, a priest and missionary to the Potawatomi, to Bishop Brute, November 13, 1838.

The Potawatomi bands in Kansas and Oklahoma are the survivors of the Trail of Death. Other bands, such as the Forest County Potawatomi, are Indians that escaped the forced migration by running off into the woods.

When the Forest County Band was just wandering and starving in northern Wisconsin, a Lutheran missionary named Erik Morstad helped them obtain their own land (by taking advantage of the Homestead Act). Morstad's son wrote about his father's work for the Norwegian-American Historical Association.