In the book “Ohio: the History of a People” by Cayton, one paragraph sums up the decimation of the native tribes of Ohio.
“The population of Ohio exploded in the first half of the nineteenth century. From 45,365 in 1800, it rose to 230,760 in 1810, 581,434 in 1820, and 1,980,329 in 1850. Virtually barren of English-speaking residents in 1790, Ohio was the third largest state in the Union by 1850 … The U.S. had extinguished the claims of Indians through treaty cessions, most notably the Treaty of Greenville in 1795, an 1817 Treaty with the Wyandots, and St. Mary’s Treaty of 1818.”
By 1832 the Wyandots, Shawnee, and Senecas were confined to the Upper Sandusky. By 1842 they were moved west of the Mississippi.
According to Cayton, the mood of the Ohioans in the early nineteenth century was one of progress, of “the triumph of civilization over barbarism.”
In my research I’m discovering evidence that many German immigrants thought differently, their thinking influenced in part by romantic poets and ideas of the day. Key principles of the romanticism movement included a spiritualized view of nature, and the desire to lose oneself in it.
In 1849, Uncle Jakob sent two Indian vests and a pair of moccasins to his nephews and niece in Germany. I’d like to believe he saw the Indians as artisans, and as human beings.