Wyandot Tribe

The Wyandot Tribe was among the Emigrant Indian tribes forced to move to Kansas from Ohio in 1843. Even though the tribe was originally promised land near Westport, they arrived in Missouri only to find out that they didn’t actually have any land. This forced the tribe to camp out on a swampy tract of federal land, now the West Bottoms, where a tenth of the tribe died of disease and exposure. Eventually, they were able to buy 36 sections of land from the Delaware tribe and were gifted an additional three sections of land in remembrance of a time when the Wyandot had helped the Delaware. Despite everything the Wyandot had already suffered through, the U.S. Government dissolved the Wyandot tribe in the Treaty of 1855. Their communal land was divided into individual allotments, and their tribal citizenship was replaced with U.S. citizenship. Some of the Wyandot sought refuge among the Seneca tribe and were eventually able to reestablish the tribe in 1867. However, thirteen members of the Wyandot tribe would stay in Kansas and combine their allotments to fatefully found the town of Quindaro in 1856.