Beneath a grove of hickory trees in a park on the west side of Moberly is a small bronze plaque.
You might not notice it on the asphalt path, but it tells a story of a painful journey. A story of loss. A story of death.
It is the story of a march by members of the Potawatomi tribe, who walked 660 miles from Indiana to a forced resettlement in Kansas in 1838. Descendants and others now make the same trip every five years so no one forgets the injustice and death they endured.
Susan Hunley is making her fourth journey on the Trail of Death caravan. To her, remembering the original journey is essential, regardless of whether or not she’s an American Indian.
“If you don’t know your history, you don’t know where you’re going,” Hunley said Thursday as the caravan stopped in Moberly, one of the markers on the route.
“There’s so much grief that’s a part of this. So many non-Indian people know very little,” she said.
From September to November 1838, a government-directed militia pushed at least 800 members of the Potawatomi nation from their land in northern Indiana on a march to a small reservation in what is now eastern Kansas.
The tribe was not prepared for the arduous 61-day, 660-mile journey, and more than 40 people died. The Potawatomi nation came to call this ordeal the “Trail of Death.”
Since 1988, the Potawatomi Trail of Death Association has commemorated the forced removal with a symbolic retracing of steps in the form of a caravan, which stops at each of the encampment sites on the original journey.
On Thursday, George Godfrey parked his car on the side of the road closest to the Moberly memorial marker. He looked left, then right, then left again.
He took his time — and his cane kept him steady, albeit a bit slow. As he approached the marker, he wore a turban in the spirit of Cherokee tradition, a red long-sleeved shirt, a gold-and-red belt, a cloth with flower symbols, and necklaces with beads, beaver claws and a seashell.
For Godfrey, president of the Potawatomi Trail of Death Association, this is a journey he knows well. He’s joined the caravan since it started, but that doesn’t make it any easier.
“I think of the children that were lost,” Godfrey said. “I can’t help but think that things were really, really ...” and he paused.
“I think of the grief-stricken parents. (But) I think of the other direction. Where are we going? Are we going to do something for the benefit of people, all people, or are we going to do something that is for the benefit of ourselves?"
This year’s memorial caravan started Monday in Rochester, Indiana, and has stopped at all of the historical markers along the trail.
The first stop was to visit a statue of Chief Menominee, the Potawatomi tribal leader at the time of the resettlement. He sternly resisted the militia’s insistence that his tribe leave, but those efforts failed, and he became one of the hundreds who were forced to move.
Marjory Weldon is a part-Potawatomi member who said she’s always known about her heritage. This is her first commemorative caravan.
“I think I was expecting it to be a kind of emotional experience, and it has been,” Weldon said, tears gathering in her eyes.
“Brings you a lot closer to your ancestors and what they went through. When you start reading the journal entries, and every day, ‘Another child died. Another mother died,’ it just makes it feel a lot more real.”
The group spent just over half an hour at the Moberly marker before heading to the next one, 10 minutes down the road in Huntsville.
That marker is slightly less elegant. It’s on the side of the town’s main street, but the rock supporting the plaque is less prominent. No trees offer any shade, no greenery softens the sunlight.
You might not notice this plaque if you were walking by, but the Huntsville marker commemorates the same event as the Moberly marker.
Shirley Willard is not Potawatomi — she has no American Indian connection at all — but she is the reason the memorial caravan exists in the first place.
The president of the Fulton County Historical Society in Rochester from 1971-2001, Willard said she learned about the march down the city’s main street and felt something should atone for it. This is her eighth caravan.
“It wasn’t right and it’s a black mark in our history, so we reached out to the Potawatomi to let them know that we don’t feel the way the settlers did,” she said. “We love them.”
Willard said she contacted Boy Scout leaders in 26 counties where markers were needed to see if any Scouts needed Eagle projects. They added most of the plaques.
Jeannie Wamego said the emotional parts of the trip are found in journal entries. They make her “sad and angry,” she said, especially the ones about the unnamed children who died on the way.
Many of the travelers on the caravan are older. Some have made this journey two, three, four times. Some have ancestors who walked the Trail of Death in 1838 or have American Indian heritage.
Phil Chan is different than most. He lives in Goshen, Indiana, on land the Potawatomi owned before 1838.
“Living there, I think it’s important to know where it comes from, and the history behind it,” Chan said.
“Walking with babies and being forced from your home, people dying left and right all around you, it puts into perspective how much it is and how hard it is,” Chan said.
“You get to feel just a tiny bit, a super tiny bit, of the places they walked through, and this (was) not that long ago.”
The caravan plans to stop in five Missouri towns before ending in Kansas on Saturday. They visited markers in Palmyra and Paris on Thursday and will stop in De Witt and Independence on Friday.
