Indian Removal
In 1835, Caldwell and his band of Potawatomi left the State of Illinois and relocated in Platte County, Missouri.
In 1836 as a result of the Platte Purchase, Caldwell and his band were removed from this reservation to Trader's Point on the east bank of the Missouri River in the Iowa Territory. The Potawatomi band of an estimated 2000 individuals settled in a main village called "Caldwell's Camp", located where the later city of Council Bluffs, Iowa developed. (This was on the eastern bank of the river, opposite the present-day city of Omaha, Nebraska.)
From 1838 to 1839, Caldwell and his people were ministered to by the notable Belgian Jesuit missionary Pierre-Jean De Smet, based in St. Louis, Missouri. The Jesuit priest was appalled at the violence and desperation that overtook the Potawatomi in their new home, in large part due to the whiskey trade. After De Smet returned to St. Louis, the Catholic mission was abandoned by 1841.
Caldwell died on September 28, 1841; scholars believe it may have been from cholera. His wife Masaqua died in the winter of 1843. Together they had one surviving son, Pe-y-mo. Pe-y-mo married and had his own family, and they lived for some time with the Kickapoo in Kansas. In the late nineteenth century, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States.
Read more about this topic: Billy Caldwell
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