Journal of Jacob Hull’s Detachment of the Potawatomi Removal of 1838

On August 28, 1838, General John Tipton arrived at the Twin Lakes encampment in Marshall County, Indiana, accompanied by one hundred armed militia, to enforce the provisions of an 1836 treaty with the Yellow River Potawatomi that specified the band’s removal from their lands and homes in northern Indiana to the Osage River reserve in Kansas. Eight hundred and fifty-nine Potawatomi were forcibly gathered for the march from Indiana to Kansas, departing Twin Lakes on September 4. A small contingent of Potawatomi, too ill to accompany the main group, were left behind in Logansport, under the command of Captain Jacob Hull. They began the march to Kansas on September 27. Hull’s journal, transcribed and edited by Dwight L. Smith, appeared in the Indiana Magazine of History in 1949, and is published here with a revised introduction and footnotes.