Seneca and Shawnee at Lewistown, Ohio (1831)

What happened

On July 20, 1831, James B. Gardiner and John McElvain signed articles at Lewistown, Logan County, Ohio, for the United States. The other party was the "mixed band of Senecas and Shawnee Indians residing at and around the said Lewistown." The preamble says the President had acted under the Act of Congress of May 28, 1830, and that the band had "expressed their perfect assent to the conditions of said act, and their willingness and anxiety to remove west of the Mississippi river."

In Article 1 the band ceded the forty-eight square miles granted to them by the 1817 treaty at the Rapids of the Miami River. It also ceded "eight thousand nine hundred and sixty acres" reserved to them by the 1818 treaty at St. Mary's. In Article 2 the United States agreed to remove the band, "about three hundred souls," and grant them 60,000 acres west of the Mississippi. The land lay next to the Sandusky Seneca lands and the Cherokee settlements.

The United States also agreed to support the band for a year and build a saw mill and blacksmith shop. It would advance $6,000 in place of their improvements, to be repaid from the sale of the ceded land. After seventy cents per acre and other costs were deducted from those sales, any balance would pay the band five percent a year. At the chiefs' request the treaty granted land to James McPherson and to their interpreter Martin Lane. The Statutes at Large record a proclamation on April 6, 1832.

Summarized with AI assistance from 3 sources and checked against their words; not yet reviewed by historians or by the nations. Report an error