Potawatomi tribal members were forced at gunpoint in 1838 to leave their homes in Indiana and walk a 660-mile route known as the "Trail of Death," Jon Boursaw said Thursday.
They then lived in what is now Linn County in east-central Kansas, where 600 members died of cholera and were buried in unmarked graves before the Potawatomi were relocated in the late 1840s to the Topeka area, Boursaw said.
A native Topekan and a Potawatomi tribal legislator, Boursaw was among those who spoke at a ceremony in southwest Topeka to dedicate an exhibit focusing on Potawatomi tribal history.
He stressed that the Potawatomi have been here since before Topeka became a city in 1854 and Kansas became a state in 1861.