"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."

Sources

Information, including dialogue, came from many hours of interviews with American Indian experts and from the following publications and websites:

“Address of Tarhe, Grand Sachem of the Wyandot Nation, to the Assemblage at the Treaty of Green ville, July 22, 1795,” Wyandotte Nation of Oklahoma Web site, http://www.wyandotte-nation.org/history/tarhe_greenville_address.html

“The American Revolution,” by Edward Countryman, Hill and Wang, 2003.

“Atlas of Great Lakes Indian History,” by Helen Horn beck Tanner, University of Oklahoma Press, 1986.

“The Heathen’ Party: Methodist Observation of the Ohio Wyandot,” by Martin W. Walsh, University of Michigan.

“History of the Wyandott Mission at Upper Sandusky, Ohio,” by the Rev. James B. Finley, Methodist Episcopal Church, 1840.

“In the Wigwams of the Wyandots: The Story of Jonathan Pointer,” by Myrtle E. Felkner, K.Q. Associates, 1984

“Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties,” University of Oklahoma Digital Library, http://digital.library.okstate.edu/kappler/
Vol2/treaties/wya0145.htm.

“The Missionary Pioneer, or A Brief Memoir of the Life, Labours, and Death of John Stewart, (Man of Colour) Founder, under God of the Mission among the Wyandotts at Upper Sandusky, Ohio,” electronic edition by Joseph Mitchell, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1999, http://docsouth.unc.edu/mitchell/mitchell.html.

“Moccasin Trails to the Cross,” by Thelma R. Marsh, United Methodist His torical Society of New York, 1974.

“Tecumseh: A Life,” by John Sugden, Owl Books, 1997.

“The Ohio Frontier,” by R. Douglas Hurt, Indiana University Press, 1996.

“Andrew Jackson and His Indian Wars,” Robert V. Remini, Viking, 2001.

“In a Barren Land: The American Indian Quest for Cultural Survival, 1607 to the Present,” Paula Mitchell Marks, Perennial, 1998.

Proclamation on the wall at Indian Mill Museum, Upper Sandusky.

“White, Red, and Black: The Wyandot Mission in Upper Sandusky,” by Donald L. Huber, Ohio Timeline, May/June 1996.

Original letter by John L. Leib in the Thelma Marsh Collection, Upper San dusky Public Library.

Original letters by the Rev. James Finley and John Johnston at the Hayes Presidential Center Library, Fremont.

“The Wyandot Indians, 1843 to 1876,” by Robert E. Smith Jr., University of Oklahoma, 1973.

“White Attitudes and Their Effects on the Wyandot Indian Removal,” Elizabeth L. Plummer, master’s thesis, Bowling Green State University, 1976.

“American Notes,” by Charles Dickens, St. Martin’s Press, 1874.

Letter by the Rev. James Wheeler transcribed for the Wyandot Nation of Kansas at www.wyandot.org.

“Moccasin Trails to the Cross,” by Thelma R. Marsh, United Methodist Historical Society of New York, 1974.

“The Removal of the Wyandots from Ohio,” by Carl G. Klopfenstein, Ohio Historical Quarterly, Vol. 66, April 1957.

“The Removal of the Indians From Ohio,” by Carl G. Klopfenstein, from “The Historic Indian in Ohio,” edited by Randall Buchman, Ohio Historical Society, 1976.

‘Trespassers, Beware!’: Lyda Burton Conley and the Battle for Huron Place Cemetery,” by Kim Dayton, Yale Journal of Law and Feminism, 1996. Can be found at www.wyandot.org.

 “The Rights of Indians and Tribes, The Authoritative ACLU Guide,” by Stephen L. Pevar, Southern Illinois University Press, Third Edition, 2002.

©2003 The Plain Dealer. Used with permission.