President
Andrew Jackson's
Indian Removal Act, a major law in his project of
Indian removal, was passed in 1830 and required
Indigenous communities to move west of the
Mississippi River.
Commissioners sent by the federal government to negotiate treaties began pressuring the Wyandots to leave, and many nearby
Lenapes and
Shawnees moved west. However, Wyandot scouting parties out west in 1831 and 1834 rejected the land tracts proposed by the government. Squire was against removing and only conceded when a Wyandot council voted two-thirds in favor. The Wyandots secured within
Kansas City, Kansas, then reluctantly signed a removal treaty in March 1842. On July 12, 1843, Solomon gathered alongside hundreds at the Wyandot Mission Church. They grieved, spread flowers across the adjacent cemetery, and heard Squire give a farewell speech. Mrs. Parker, a white friend, cried and hugged Solomon before she left. At least one daughter travelled with Solomon and Young, though at least two of their children had died and were buried in the mission church cemetery. Solomon felt distraught leaving them behind. Around 664 Wyandots arrived in
Cincinnati, Ohio, after a week of travel by wagon, horse, and foot. Whiskey traders gathered and threatened them before they boarded two steamships to
St. Louis, Missouri. They boarded two more steamships to Kansas City, but upon arrival, the federal government failed to provide the land described in the treaty. The Wyandots were forced to camp in flooded lowlands along the
Kansas River, where eye inflammation,
measles, and severe
diarrhea were widespread and 100 of them died. In December, the Wyandots secured 25,000 acres of land from neighbouring Lenapes. In Kansas, Young began work as a ferryman while Solomon recuperated from the removal with her family. The two settled in a small house built around December 1843, then ordered saplings and seeds from a
nursery in Ohio. They began an
apple tree orchard and a garden of corn, beans, and potatoes. Although the soil had not been plowed and the first summer was extremely hot, they continued to cultivate the garden. Solomon had more children in Kansas. She is known to have had three boys and five girls throughout her life, though all of them died young. Her two-year-old son died in 1848, and another son died of
remittent fever a year later. She only had three living children by 1851. That year, Young died of
tuberculosis, and in 1852, a daughter died of
cholera. By the end of the decade, Solomon had buried her entire family in the
Huron Indian Cemetery, which had replaced the mission school and church as a Wyandot fixture. A gray horse,
bay horse, and brown
mare, worth $195 combined, were stolen from Solomon in September 1848, which she attributed to emigrants traveling the
Oregon Trail. That fall, further thefts occurred involving 30 of her pigs, worth $90 in total. Possessions totaling $580, including
oxen and horses, were stolen from her between 1855 and 1859. In one case, a housekeeper named James Cook reportedly fled after stealing $225 worth of gold coins from a trunk owned by her brother. Solomon submitted an
affidavit about the thefts to an
Indian agent in 1861 in order to be compensated. Her friend Catherine Johnson corroborated each theft and stated that all were committed by white men. Federal commissioners approved some of her claims, worth $295, for compensation. == Return to Ohio ==