The Last Blackrobe of and the Trail of Death: Reverend Benjamin Petit and the Potawatomi Indians of Indiana, John William McMullen, Bird Brain Productions, 2010, 0982625561, 9780982625569, 442 pages. From the forgotten history of 1830s Indiana, John William McMullen unearths the true story of Benjamin Petit, a French Attorney turned missionary priest, and his mission to the Potawatomi People in the Diocese of Vincennes, Indiana. Under the urging of the saintly Bishop Simon Brut, Petit joined the northern Indiana Potawatomi tribes in 1837, a year before their forced removal west. McMullen retells the incredible journey of Petit who traveled with the Potawatomi People and became part of their history. "The deportation of Chief Menominee and his tribe of Potawatomi Indians from their reservation at Twin Lakes in Marshall County, in September, 1838, is one of the darkest pages in the history of Indiana. The farther in time we get away from this event the clearer this will appear and the more interest will be attached to the route which is consecrated by the blood of that helpless people at the hands of a civilized and Christian state: The Potawatomi Trail. "Of all the names connected with this crime, there is one, Father Benjamin Petit, the Christian martyr, which stands like a star in the firmament, growing brighter and it will shine on through for ages to come." - Benjamin Stuart, Indiana journalist, early 20th century "For American Indians the scars of injustice inflicted upon them in the past are deep, painful, and, tragically, are inherited from one generation to the next. Those injustices have become ghosts in the cultural memory of a people crying out for justice. We must fully disclose the past in order to deal with the many years and generations of unresolved grief and distrust." -Thomas Hamilton, member of Citizen Potawatomi Nation. John William McMullen resides in Evansville, Indiana with his wife and children.

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Rev. Benjamin Marie Petit was born in the city of Rennes, France, on April 8, 1811. He was recruited by Bishop Simon Brute to come to America and be a missionary to the Indians in Indiana. Petit arrived as the Catholic missionary to the Potawatomi Indians in northern Indiana in November 1837, replacing Father Louis Deseille, who had died among the Potawatomi. By June 1838 Petit had learned much of their difficult language and their culture, and had instructed and baptized many. Father Petit wrote to this mother in France: “We were orphans,” they said to me, “and as if in darkness, but you appeared among us like a great light and we live.”

A man of small stature, he became their beloved Chichipe-Outipe, which is Potawaomi for Little Duck. He wrote many letters home to his family in France, describing everything he encountered, including his broken-down old horse, and kept an account of the money he spent. Thus we know that he purchased a black straw hat for $1.25 on June 13, 1838. He carefully recorded the baptisms and marriages he performed. These records are now in the Library at South Bend, Indiana. The Indians begged their “Father Black Robe” to accompany them on their forced removal from Indiana in September 1838. His superior, Bishop Brute of Vincennes, Indiana, finally consented in time for him to join them enroute at Danville, Illinois. From then on he ministered to their needs, both spiritual and material on their march to Kansas territory. “Often throughout the entire night, around a blazing fire, before a tent in which a solitary candle burned, 15 or 20 Indians would sing hymns and tell their beads. One of their friends who had died was laid out in the tent; they performed the last religious rites for him in this way. The next morning the grave would be dug; the family, sad but tearless, stayed after the general departure. The priest attired in his stole, recited prayers, blessed the grave, and cast the first shovelful of earth on the rude coffin; the pit was filled and a little cross placed there.”

Petit described the march as follows: “The United States flag, carried by a dragoon; then one of the principal officers, next the staff baggage carts, then the carriage, which during the whole trip was kept for the use of the Indian chiefs; then one or two chiefs on horseback led a line of 250 or 300 horses ridden by men, women, children singled file, after the manner of savages. On the flanks of the line at equal distance from each other were the dragoons and volunteers, hastening the stragglers, often with severe gestures and bitter words. After this cavalry came a file of 40 baggage wagons filled with luggage and Indians. The sick were lying in them, rudely jolted, under a canvas which, far from protecting them from the dust and heat, only deprived them of air, for they were as if buried under this burning canopy - several died thus.” He mentioned that by 8 o’clock they were usually in the saddle and headed west.

After General went back to Indiana, he left the emigration in the charge of William Polke, Rochester, Indiana. Polke placed Father Petit in charge of the sick. They did the best they could but lacking modern medicine, they could give them only tea and sugar and rest. There were doctors hired to accompany the emigration, but the Potawatomi preferred Father Petit. He baptized the dying children, among then newly born “who with their first step passed from earthly exile to the heavenly sojourn,” according to one of his letters, which were published as a book, The Trail of Death Letters of Benjamin Marie Petit, by the Indiana Historical Society in 1941. (This book is out of print but the whole is included in the new book, Potawatomi Trail of Death - Indiana to Kansas, published by Fulton County Historical Society, Rochester, Indiana, in 2003.) In them he vividly describes the hardships and the anguish of “my poor Christians, under a burning noonday sun, amidst clouds of dust, marching in line, surrounded by soldiers who were hurrying their steps” and the heartbreak of the Indians as they buried their loved ones and marched on. Across the great prairies of Illinois they marched, crossed the at Quincy, and they made their way through to enter Kansas territory south of Independence, Missouri. Forty-two Indians died on the march, mostly children. Father Petit blessed each grave and conducted Mass each day. He was himself at times sick with fever, probably the dreaded typhoid that killed so many of the Indians.

After placing the Potawatomi in the spiritual hands of Jesuit Father . S. J., at the Sugar Creek Mission in Kansas on November 4, 1838, Father Petit again fell sick with fever and painful open sores. On January 2, 1839, he started by horseback back to Indiana, accompanied by Abram “Nan-wesh-mah” Burnett, a full-blood Potawatomi friend who was the same age. Petit again took ill on the journey. With three open sores draining his strength, he rode east from Jefferson City, Missouri, in an open wagon, the roads rough and the rain frequent. He reached the Jesuit seminary at St. Louis University on Jan. 15. The fathers gave him all the medical attention and care they could, but he grew weaker and weaker. Father John A. Elet, then rector - president of St. Louis University, later wrote that he placed a crucifix to Father Petit’s dying lips and twice he kissed it tenderly. He lay in agony and finally expired 20 minutes before midnight, February 10, 1839, a martyr to his duty and his extraordinary devotion and love for his Potawatomi family. He had lived but 27 years and 10 months.

Father Petit died in the Jesuit seminary building at 9th and Washington streets, and was buried in the old cemetery at 7th Street and St. Charles Avenue. In 1856 the cemetery was moved to make way for downtown St. Louis. At that time, Father , founder of Notre Dame University, South Bend, Indiana, came and took Father Petit’s body back to Indiana. Father Petit’s remains rest under the Log Chapel at the University of Notre Dame.

“In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. If it should please God to send me death, I accept it in all love and submission to his amiable Providence and I hope that his mercy will have pity on me at the last moment. I commend myself to Mary now and at the hour of my death.” From Father Petit’s will, written August 17, 1837, at Vincennes, Indiana.

Father Benjamin Marie Petit, from an oil portrait by George Winter, frontier artist, in 1838. With permission of Mrs. Cable Ball, Lafayette, Indiana, in July 2005 the painting was photographed by John McCullen, Vincennes, Indiana, and manipulated on his computer to go in his new book. The Last Blackrobe of Indiana and the Potawatomi Trail of Death: Reverend Benjamin Petit and the Potawatomi Removal by John William McMullen is now available from the Potawatomi Trail of Death Assn. For more information click here.

From the forgotten history of 1830s Indiana, John William McMullen unearths the true story of Benjamin Petit, a French Attorney turned missionary priest, and his mission to the Potawatomi People in the Diocese of Vincennes, Indiana. Under the urging of the saintly Bishop Simon Brut, Petit joined the northern Indiana Potawatomi tribes in 1837, a year before their forced removal west. McMullen retells the incredible journey of Petit who traveled with the Potawatomi People and became part of their history. "The deportation of Chief Menominee and his tribe of Potawatomi Indians from their reservation at Twin Lakes in Marshall County, in September, 1838, is one of the darkest pages in the history of Indiana. The farther in time we get away from this event the clearer this will appear and the more interest will be attached to the route which is consecrated by the blood of that helpless people at the hands of a civilized and Christian state: The Potawatomi Trail. "Of all the names connected with this crime, there is one, Father Benjamin Petit, the Christian martyr, which stands like a star in the firmament, growing brighter and it will shine on through for ages to come." - Benjamin Stuart, Indiana journalist, early 20th century "For American Indians the scars of injustice inflicted upon them in the past are deep, painful, and, tragically, are inherited from one generation to the next. Those injustices have become ghosts in the cultural memory of a people crying out for justice. We must fully disclose the past in order to deal with the many years and generations of unresolved grief and distrust." -Thomas Hamilton, member of Citizen Potawatomi Nation. John William McMullen resides in Evansville, Indiana with his wife and children

Benjamin Marie Petit (April 8, 1811 – February 10, 1839) was a Catholic missionary sent to the Potawatomi nation of Native Americans in Indiana in 1837. A native of Rennes in Brittany, Petit was trained as a lawyer at the University of Rennes, then studied for the priesthood at the Saint-Sulpice Seminary in . In 1836, he came to the United States, along with a number of other priests, deacons and seminarians, among them Anthony Deydier, to work with Bishop Simon Bruté in Indiana. Also a native of Rennes, Bruté ordained Petit as a priest in 1837 and sent him to work among the Potawatomi.

In 1838, when the United States forced the removal of a band of 859 Potawatomi from the vicinity of Plymouth, Indiana, to the present-day site of Osawatomie, Kansas, Petit accompanied them on most of the two-month march, now called the Potawatomi Trail of Death. More than 40 of the Potawatomi died of disease and the stress of the march. Petit himself became ill during the march. Because of the needs of the Bishop of Vincennes, Simon Brute, Petit was recalled to Vincennes. Fr. Robert Gorman, former archivist of the Archdiocese of , wrote in his unpublished history of the diocese:

"...he [Brute] wrote to Benjamin Petit on the Osage River, recalling him to Vincennes. Petit, who had overtaken the Indians at Danville on September 16, 1838, arrived with them at their reservation on the Osage on November 4, 1838. In the course of the march along the trail of death about 150 Indians had deserted or perished. 0n his arrival, Petit himself was suffering from a serious illness caused by fever and exhaustion, which lasted during the two months he stayed at the Osage. Brute's letter arrived on December 23, 1838 and, having completed arrangements to transfer his charge to the Jesuit missionary, Christian Hoecken, who hitherto had worked on the Kickapoo mission. Petit, accompanied by an Indian, started on his return on horseback, January 2, 1839. After 150 miles of this mode of travel he found it impossible to go on and got on the stage which carried him to Jefferson City. The route from this point to St. Louis was traversed in an open wagon in the rain and over bad roads. On January 15, 1839 he arrived at the Jesuit College in St. Louis in the last stages of debility, with many running sores on his body, which was completely jaundiced by the fever. Three days later he wrote to Brute informing him of his location and condition. He hoped for recovery but died in less than a month, on February 10, 1839. On the receipt of the news in Vincennes Brute celebrated a solemn requiem in the cathedral on Monday, February 18, l839 and delivered a touching, eulogy on his favorite missionery who was known as the Seraphic Benjamin Petit. The immense charity and tragic story of Petit were long remembered and left their mark on the diocese."[2]

"The deportation of Chief Menominee and his tribe of Potawatomi Indians from their reservation at Twin Lakes in Marshall County, in September, 1838, is one of the darkest pages in the history of Indiana. The farther in time we get away from this event the clearer this will appear and the more interest will be attached to the route which is consecrated by the blood of that helpless people at the hands of a civilized and Christian state: The Potawatomi Trail.

"For American Indians the scars of injustice inflicted upon them in the past are deep, painful, and, tragically, are inherited from one generation to the next. Those injustices have become ghosts in the cultural memory of a people crying out for justice. We must fully disclose the past in order to deal with the many years and generations of unresolved grief and distrust." -Thomas Hamilton, member of Citizen Potawatomi Nation.

"The utmost good faith shall always be observed toward Indians; their lands and properties shall never be taken from them without their consent; and in their property, rights, and liberty, they shall never be invaded or disturbed, unless in just and lawful war authorized by Congress; but laws founded in justice and humanity shall from time to time be made, for preventing wrongs done to them, and for preserving peace and friendship with them.... "--From the Northwest Ordinance of 1787

"I stood there at midnight, the moon shone in all its splendor with nothing to break the stillness of the night save the occasional hooting of an owl or the call of the whip-poor-will, when I heard the footfall of the hoofs of a horse as he came galloping down the hill. I heard him as he splashed through the creek, and as he passed by, I saw whom he carried ... it was the Blackrobe Father Benjamin Petit, hastening on to comfort his people and to counsel them....

He soon arrived and found himself surrounded by armed horsemen. The soldiers refused him entry and guarded him with bayonet-tipped rifles, but his collar, cassock, and the cross about his neck indicated his purpose. Dismounting his ride, he tied the reins at the hitching post and entered the former chapel now reduced to a barn. More than a hundred of his people were corralled in the building.

"I have lived too long to see my people come to an end such as this," Menominee declared to Petit. "The flap of the wigwam of my life is opening to the better land beyond. Soon I shall enter into the wigwam of the Great Spirit, and there I shall stand firm and beseech Him to grant our people a future of hope. I shall plead with Him to protect my people from the great destroyer of your children and ours, the great dragon." Menominee continued, "Yet I fear that, in time, our race shall disappear. Generations yet to be born will likely hear of our race and ask 'Where have they gone?' Civilized man considered our races savage and yet he has treated us most savagely."

He was frozen and weary. What could he do? Will my people despise me knowing that I am to remain behind while they go off to an unknown land alone? Some of the Indian converts lamented, "Has the God of the Blackrobes abandoned us?" Others questioned, "Where is God, Father Chichipé." Worst of all were the children's plaintive cries, "Maketokonia Chichipé, why are these bad men making us leave? Where are they taking us? What did we do wrong?" they clutched him tightly in fear. One of the newly baptized asked: "Where is Jesus?" Archbishop Baltimore Bazin Bessonies Bishops Biskup Black Oak Ridge Brute Cathedral Chartrand Chatard citizenship Corbe Deydier Emmitsburg Feast Day Fort Wayne Gary Geurin Guerin Hailandiere Indianapolis Jesuits John J. Doyle Lalumiere Mother Theodore North American College Notre Dame Old Cathedral Petit Plunkett Potawatomi Rennes resignation Ritter Ruff Saint John's Saint Louis Seton South Bend St. Francis Xavier St. Louis St. Palais Tobin Vincennes

M. De Vincennes.——Francois Morgan de.Vincennes, or rather Vinsenne, according to his own signature had his name attached to our town a few years after his death, which happen in 1736. It is found to designate the place in the oldest register of the Church of St. Francis Xavier, those of 1749. Before, it was only called the post or fort on the Ouabache, which is mentioned in documents more than twenty—five years anterior to his death; for instance, about 1708, when Father Mermet, a Jesuit, was at St. Louis of Peoria; and shortly after, perhaps the same year, is found a Missionary at the fort upon the Ouabache, sent to that post on the request of the people living there. For how long before? We do not exactly find it recorded.

“1722. The Comte De Frontenac (Governor of Canada) sent afterwards M. D’ Argenteuil with a detachment of soldiers, who had orders to go to Michillimachinac, and to the Miamis. M de Vincennes was to command in the last post, and M. de Tonti at Michillimachinac ——(His. of Amer. tom, 3, page 309.)

More than ten years after——too large a chasm in the service of M. de Vincennes——we find him, about 1733, married in Kaskaskia, to the daughter of a rich inhabitant, Philipe Longpre; and in different acts still preserved at the Recorder’s office in Kaskaskia, signed by himself, he is thus designated: Francois Morgan de Vinsenne, commandant of the troops of the King in the post upon Quabache. In March, 1734, we find the will of his father—in—law, and in September, an inventory of the goods and chattels, after the death of the same, showing that N. de Vinsenne was absent——probably at the post. In January, 1735, an act of sale, signed by himself in Kaskaskia, proves his presence there. His wife had remained at the post “Ouabache’ and the act was sent to her for her ratification; it was returned by “Lesperencer” to be the mark of “Madam do Vinsenne’ who declared she did not know how to sign her name.

The French were at war with the Chicachas. The friendly tribes of the Illinois, and the royal troops on the upper parts of the Mississippi, about Kaskaskia, appear to have been called to the South by N. D!Artaguette, the commander—in—chief. The events of this war were disastrous; they are partly related in the last volume of Father Charlevoix, and the following interesting account of the death of M. de Vincennes, form the very last lines of that volume.

“All France knows the loss that the colony of Louisiana has sustained in 1736; the death of the brave chevelier D’artaguette, and a great number of officers of merit; also the noble devotedness of Father Senat a Jesuit, who preferred the manifect danger of being taken by the Chicachacas, and burnt by them , as in far it happened, to the chance of flight leaving the wounded unassisted in their last moments these poor men being unable to follow the retreat and it being impossible to carry then away. That retreat was conducted by a young officer only 16 years old N. Vosin, with, as much talent as bravery. As for the unfortunate prisoners, whose number was considerable, they were burnt in the most barbarous manner, with their missionary. But he was alone exhorting them, and supporting the courage of the companions of his torturers. Whilst he exhorted them to behave worthy of their religion and their country, N. de Vincennes, A Canadian Gentleman, and an officer in the army, shared with him the glory of that good deed, and was admired in his death by his tormentors’ ——See Charlevoix, torn 1V, of the edition in 120, page 297).

The value of contemporary observations as historical documents depends upon two important items: the competence of the observer and his intention to give the benefit of his knowledge. Both of these items are generally present in the reports of bishops to the Holy See. In the case of Bishop Simon Brute’s Report to the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda on the occasion of his visit to Rome in 1836, the Report has special value because his experience as superior at St. Mary’s College in Baltimore and Mt. St. Mary’s College at Emmitsburg over so many years, coupled with his detailed visit to the frontiers of his vast diocese, had given him unusual opportunities to observe the condition of the Catholic Church in the United States. He could combine the theoretical ideas of the teacher with the practice of a missionary bishop. His Report has an additional value because he did not confine himself to statistics, which could be obtained from other sources, but gave to his ecclesiastical superiors his personal opinions on the general condition of the Church in the United States, as well as a report on his own diocese. http://edufb.net/8.pdf http://edufb.net/31.pdf http://edufb.net/22.pdf http://edufb.net/14.pdf http://edufb.net/43.pdf http://edufb.net/32.pdf http://edufb.net/11.pdf http://edufb.net/14.pdf http://edufb.net/28.pdf http://edufb.net/20.pdf http://edufb.net/38.pdf http://edufb.net/25.pdf http://edufb.net/5.pdf http://edufb.net/39.pdf http://edufb.net/44.pdf http://edufb.net/1.pdf http://edufb.net/40.pdf http://edufb.net/29.pdf http://edufb.net/37.pdf http://edufb.net/14.pdf http://edufb.net/29.pdf http://edufb.net/43.pdf