"There was no cause for celebration when they arrived on July 28 at their final destination in Westport, Mo., near Kansas City. The Kansas land promised by treaty was no longer available. Until December, they camped on lowlands. Floods there were so vicious, they left buffalo carcasses rotting in the trees. Fatal diseases swept in with them.

Every time they buried one of their own, the Wyandot marched up a hill near the confluence of the Kansas and Missouri rivers. The scrap of land was a gift from the Delaware tribe.

They marched up to the small cemetery more than 100 times in the year after they left Ohio. They carried elders, children and those in between."

The Wyandot Board Boats Headed For The Unknown

Barely a mile from the Cincinnati dock, the steamboat Nodaway’s growling engines fell silent and her floors stopped shaking. Capt. Cleghorn prepared for a salute.

On July 21, 1843, a line of Wyandots formed on the top deck. Each man pulled his hat from his head in a sign of recognition. The boat faced the Ohio riverbank and the grave of William Henry Harrison.

The ship’s cannon fired, thrashing the silence.

The men standing had fought with Gen. Harrison in the War of 1812, helping the United States quell the last rally of the British in American territory.

It had been a controversial move, since Tecumseh and his warriors fought against the Americans. They intended to halt settlers in their tracks. The Wyandot, led by Tarhe, believed the Americans would prevail and wanted to live with them in peace.

“Let me tell you, if you should defeat the American army this time, you are not done,” Tarhe’s messenger, Between-the-Logs, had told tribes near Detroit.

“Another will come on, and if you defeat that, still another will appear that you cannot withstand, one that will come like the waves of the great water and overwhelm you, and sweep you from the face of the Earth.”

Although the Wyandot fought alongside the Americans, they too were being swept from Ohio. By treaty, more than 600 of them were leaving a land that had become greedy, bullying and hostile. They were the last tribe to be removed from the state, no longer its residents.

But still its veterans.

“Farewell Ohio and her brave,” Chief Henry Jacquis called out from the deck.

The engines fired up and the Nodaway’s paddle churned ahead, its tall stacks leaving billows of sooty smoke.

Indians weren’t fond of steamboats. Canoes were good enough to get anywhere, including across the fickle Lake Erie.

Steamboats were mechanical monsters. Instead of human power, they took wood, fire and boiling water to run. They were known to explode, catch fire and sink. They were bigger than many log houses put together, and when they moved, the fire in their bellies roared.

Some Shawnee, Seneca and Ottawa refused to be removed by boat. “They do not wish to . . . be scalded, ‘like the white man cleans his hog,’ “ wrote Indian agent James B. Gardiner.

But the choice of those tribes to move by land became - with the ineptitude of the federal government - a tragedy of bad weather, sickness and death. The Seneca alone lost 30 of their tribe.

The Wyandot knew this and were the only tribe given permission to organize their own removal. Within the group were several reassuring chiefs and former chiefs who had gone on earlier land-hunting expeditions.

The broad Ohio River was the country’s entrance to the infant states of Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois and the unexplored West. For those seeking fortune, the boat trip could be a dally through the green bosom of the country. Deer, bear, elk and buffalo could be spotted across the steep round hills on either side.

But for the displaced, like the Wyandot, each turn in the river brought a fear of the unknown.

Worse, children fell seriously ill from the measles after someone carrying the disease came aboard in Cincinnati.

The Ohio River took the Wyandot to the Mississippi and upriver to the Missouri. The water churned there, startling Indians who had never seen rapids.

Capt. Cleghorn grew more irritable as the weeklong trip progressed. He was convinced the Indians were going to ruin his furnishings. He rolled up his carpets and packed them away and limited the Indians’ movement on the boat.

A few miles from their final destination, he stopped and insisted that the Indians leave the boat overnight. He said he had to make a trip upriver. There was but one small house for lodging, so most of the tribe, including children, slept unprotected outdoors. They awoke sopping with dew to see that the boat had never left.

There was no cause for celebration when they arrived on July 28 at their final destination in Westport, Mo., near Kansas City. The Kansas land promised by treaty was no longer available. Until December, they camped on lowlands. Floods there were so vicious, they left buffalo carcasses rotting in the trees. Fatal diseases swept in with them.

Every time they buried one of their own, the Wyandot marched up a hill near the confluence of the Kansas and Missouri rivers. The scrap of land was a gift from the Delaware tribe.

They marched up to the small cemetery more than 100 times in the year after they left Ohio. They carried elders, children and those in between.

The tear-stained hill belonged to the dead. Chief Jacquis and his tribe wondered if this hill of sadness and bones was all they would ever own.