"The Wyandots’ great Chief Tarhe believed that the government’s treaty provided a protective fence around the tribe. But justice around the reservation had crumbled once again. If an Indian stole from a white, an Indian agent would take the money out of the Indian’s government account and pay the white. If a white stole from an Indian, there was no money, no jurisdiction and often no justice.

The Wyandot had their own form of justice. Compensation was a large part of it. If a woman lost a son in a battle, she might get a captive - white or Indian - to replace him.

Outright murder carried a more severe penalty. In the old days, the murderer was tied to the ground, face up. The victim would be suspended above him, decaying onto his dying killer. In Summunduwat’s time, the sentence was quicker: death by firing squad."

A Revered Wyandot Chief Is Murdered

The news arrived in searing images on a December day in 1841: Bodies hidden under brush. Axes through their heads. White murderers on the run.

And good Chief Summunduwat was dead.

Details blurred and conflicted. There were two attackers. Or three. Indians dismembered. Or not. Murderers living 18 miles away. Or seven.

One fact remained: Summunduwat, the Wyandot leader with the heart of an Indian and the soul of a Christian, was gone.

The tribe shuddered.

Oh, to cast aside that scene of violence and hold fast to a more peaceful image of the man. A man who lived a rich life.

Summunduwat was a full-blooded Wyandot who had given up his massive feathered headdress at the moment of his conversion. It was taken off and put into the fire, just before he fell to his knees.

The Indian religion “was all outward,” he once told a visiting Methodist bishop. “There was nothing in it to reach the heart.”

A heart now stilled.

In a scene reminiscent of Jesus turning the money-changers out of the temple, Summunduwat once locked himself inside the mission church. It was no place for Indian agents to distribute annuities, he said. And that was that.

Who would lock out the money- changers now?

Just before he died, he had been on his winter hunt, a few days’ ride north of Upper Sandusky.

It was fruitful. He could sit by the light of the campfire knowing his horses would head home stacked high with deer and raccoon skins.

The hides were money in his pocket. Better yet, they were a merciful sign that the western plains of Ohio still held bounty for its native people.

Lord, did they not?

Whites who lived nearby chased the murderers to their home and found them with all the chief’s belongings. They had the hides, the tools, the gems, the horses - even the dogs.

They also discovered the ruse. The murderers had told Summunduwat that they were lost and needed directions. Could they stay by the firelight for the evening and go their way in the morning? The tall, muscle-toned chief agreed and offered them food to eat. He said his prayers and went to bed.

Middle of the night, the axes came down.

The men who went West with Summunduwat on a land-scouting party remembered him sharing good times at traditional dances and ballgames with the Seneca tribe. They remembered how upset he had been at the Arkansas Statehouse, seeing the bloodstained chair of a murdered state senator. The chief didn’t think it was right to find blood on a chair in the middle of civilization.

Now his blood stained the forest.

The Wyandot got some relief when two of the three suspects, James Lyons and John Ander son, landed in the Henry County jail. But the relief was short- lived. Within a few weeks, they escaped their negligent jailer.

The third suspect, John Ellsworth, showed up in the Wood County jail on counterfeiting charges.

But Wood and Henry County officials refused to spend the money to prosecute Ellsworth. Indian agent John Johnston pleaded with the Commission of Indian Affairs for help, but it was denied.

Denied.

The Wyandots’ great Chief Tarhe believed that the government’s treaty provided a protective fence around the tribe. But justice around the reservation had crumbled once again. If an Indian stole from a white, an Indian agent would take the money out of the Indian’s government account and pay the white. If a white stole from an Indian, there was no money, no jurisdiction and often no justice.

The Wyandot had their own form of justice. Compensation was a large part of it. If a woman lost a son in a battle, she might get a captive - white or Indian - to replace him.

Outright murder carried a more severe penalty. In the old days, the murderer was tied to the ground, face up. The victim would be suspended above him, decaying onto his dying killer. In Summunduwat’s time, the sentence was quicker: death by firing squad.

Summunduwat’s murder occurred off the reservation, so the case was out of the tribe’s hands.

Hardly a “case.” It was a big hole in the rotting fence around them.

Almost immediately after Summunduwat died, the government showed up to offer land out west again. The Indians went for a look. They came home and started talking. The federal government was represented by John Johnston, the Indian agent well-known to the tribe. The Wyandot brought in John McIntire Armstrong, a part-Wyandot who recently had passed the Ohio bar exam. The Indians also came armed with independent land assessments.

Talks went on for 11 months. When they were done, in late 1842, the Wyandot had the largest removal settlement of any Ohio tribe. They would get nearly the going rate for land prices in Ohio, payment for reservation improvements, an annuity of $17,500 - $6,000 more than what the government originally offered. Some tribe principals got extra land.

Many Wyandot still didn’t want to leave. But staying was a diminishing option. If the government actually kept its word this time, the tribe could go any where and build one mighty strong fence around itself.