Writing in September 1863, Indian agent John G. Pratt described the Delawares’ plight: “The Delawares are affected by the unsettled conditions of the country. Many of them are in the army. Their families are consequently left without male assistance.”

By the end of the war, Interior Department officials were, as the Indians had long expected, advocating removal of the Delawares from Kansas. In two treaties, signed in 1866 and 1867, tribal leaders agreed to sell their lands in Kansas and move to the Cherokee Nation, purchasing Cherokee citizenship rights. Kansas and Washington politicians, traders, and railroad officials profited greatly from the deal. John C. Frémont, friend of the Delawares and now a railroad magnate, was one of the profiteers.

As the outspoken leader of the traditionalists within the Delaware community, Falleaf actively protested his tribe’s move to the Cherokee Nation. With his faction of nearly 300 Delawares, he resisted, holding out for nearly six months and facing starvation before agreeing to leave Kansas. Finally, he agreed to move his wife and family to Indian Territory, where he died in the late 1870s.

Black Beaver lived his remaining years at Anadarko as an Absentee Delaware surrounded by Caddos in southwestern Indian Territory. The former rugged mountain man died in 1880, shortly after he had become a Baptist minister. CWT

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Deborah Nichols, a pharmacist living near Kansas City, Missouri, is a Delaware Indian from northeast Oklahoma. She writes a history column in the Delaware tribal newsletter, and is presently editing Legends of the Delaware Indians and Picture Writing, by Richard C. Adams, due out from Syracuse University Press this year. Laurence Hauptman is the author of two other articles in this issue.

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