"The trail to Cincinnati produced a few groves of peace, places to read the Bible and hear some preaching. But it was otherwise rugged. It was full of wheel-sucking swamps, of stumps that rocked the wagons and narrow, overgrown passages that clawed the canvas coverings. Worse were the towns where white men stood at the edge of dusty streets and stared at the Indians as they passed. More than one Indian felt this was not a people equipped to teach proper manners.

It was the same in every town - Bellefontaine, Urbana, Springfield, Xenia and Lebanon.

In Cincinnati, crowds of curious whites were escorted off the riverboats to make room for the Indian passengers. The pressing attention sent a buggy horse into a start, knocking his driver off and breaking his legs. A cry of “fire” on a nearby riverboat proved true, but the threat was quickly snuffed. An ill Indian child and a 103-year-old woman died as soon as they got on board."

The Wyandot Begin The Long, Sad Journey West

One month after the Wyandot signed a treaty to leave Ohio, English writer Charles Dickens came to town. His arrival on the April day in 1842 was purely coincidental. Upper Sandusky was a stagecoach stop on Dickens’ trip from Cincinnati to Niagara Falls.

After a spine-rattling ride along Ohio’s stump-filled roads, he and his traveling companions spent the night at the town’s log inn. When one of his friends found himself sharing a room with a snorer, the friend took refuge in the coach itself. But it wasn’t a good . . . well, this is how Dickens described it:

“This was not a very politic step as it turned out, for the pigs scenting him, and looking upon the coach as a kind of pie with some manner of meat inside, grunted round it so hideously, that he was afraid to come out again and lay there shivering till morning.”

Worse, Dickens couldn’t get a glass of brandy to warm him. Not in an Indian village, where the government didn’t allow it. A pity, he wrote, since they could get liquor - of a greater price and lesser quality - from black-market sellers.

Dickens saw the Indians on the streets, thinking that they looked like “a fine people, but degraded and broken down.” They reminded him of gypsies at home in London. He thought they must be related to that “wandering and restless people.”

He ate breakfast with none other than John Johnston, the Indian agent who had negotiated the Wyandot treaty. Dickens thought Johnston was a mild old gentleman, and while the author was saddened by the Indians’ fate, he seemed to take the agent’s word that removal was the best thing for them.

And that was it. The champion of the underclass in his own city packed up and left to go see one of the natural wonders of the world.

Dickens was not in town a few months later when the wagons started assembling for the move west. There were 120 wagons and about 300 horses. And plenty of liquor sellers.

They came day and night, clinging to the wagon train like leeches.

They came with pocket bottles, jugs and barrels. They returned when Indians slept so they could steal provisions, harnesses and even the linchpins from the wagon wheels.

Who could defeat them? Who possibly could keep sober a slow- rolling procession of more than 600 people?

It was bad enough that the Wyandot had to leave their home in Upper Sandusky for an unknown territory in the West. They also had to run the gauntlet of civilization’s evils.

To make it to Cincinnati’s steamboats in one week, they became their own law enforcers. They set up watches and patrols. One whiff of firewater which was particularly devastating to Indians and they flew into action.

On the second day of the trip, the Wyandot were camped on the banks of the Scioto River when a man showed up with a jug. One of the guards grabbed it and started pouring the alcoholic contents on the ground. The man begged them not to waste it and told a pitiful story of need. The guard kept pouring.

Later that night, the same man showed up in camp dispensing liquor not from a jug, but from a big barrel at the back of his wagon. The Indian guards rolled the barrel out of the wagon, poured the liquor out and tossed the barrel into the river. Another seller, frightened by the action, hopped on his horse and took off, Indians in close pursuit.

The struggle for sobriety continued throughout the trip, but the tribe faced a bigger battle: the toll of grief.

Few wished to leave their stone church and the bones of their dead. They refused to sell that property and, for protection, dug up the remains of beloved chiefs Between-the-Logs and Summunduwat and transferred them to it.

Church services had stepped up in the weeks before the move. So did tears.

In his final address, Chief Squire Grey-Eyes said a melancholy farewell.

“No more shall Sandusky’s plains and forests echo to the voice of song and praise,” he said. “No more shall we assemble in our temple to sing the sacred songs and hear the story of the cross.

“Here our dead are buried. We have placed fresh leaves and flowers upon their graves for the last time.

“Soon they shall be forgotten, for the onward march of the strong white man will not turn aside for the Indian graves.”

Federal Indian agent Purdy McElvain, who was interested in buying parts of the reservation, described the tribe’s parting mood as one of “perfect resignation.”

The trail to Cincinnati produced a few groves of peace, places to read the Bible and hear some preaching. But it was otherwise rugged. It was full of wheel-sucking swamps, of stumps that rocked the wagons and narrow, overgrown passages that clawed the canvas coverings. Worse were the towns where white men stood at the edge of dusty streets and stared at the Indians as they passed. More than one Indian felt this was not a people equipped to teach proper manners.

It was the same in every town - Bellefontaine, Urbana, Springfield, Xenia and Lebanon.

In Cincinnati, crowds of curious whites were escorted off the riverboats to make room for the Indian passengers. The pressing attention sent a buggy horse into a start, knocking his driver off and breaking his legs. A cry of “fire” on a nearby riverboat proved true, but the threat was quickly snuffed. An ill Indian child and a 103-year-old woman died as soon as they got on board.

Liquor sellers, as usual, were everywhere.

The night before the boats left the dock, an Indian long soured on brew staggered aboard, lost his balance and fell into the water. Before he drowned, other Indians could hear his last roar of life. They knew that alcohol or sadness had killed him.

Or both.

He would not be with them on this journey to the unknown.