During an era of Indian removal, Potawatomi lands once stretched across millions of acres in southern Michigan, northern Illinois and Indiana, southeastern Wisconsin, and northwestern Ohio. As French, British, and later American powers fought for space and resources on the continent, different tribes allied with different European groups to protect their lands. Despite their important role in the history of the United States, Potawatomi communities were forcibly removed from Michigan under President Andrew Jackson's Indian Removal Act of 1830. On September 4, 1838, more than 800 Potawatomi who had originally resisted removal to Oklahoma were relocated to Kansas in the event known as the Potawatomi Trail of Death. The 1821 and 1833 Treaties of Chicago ceded Potawatomi lands throughout the Great Lakes to the federal government, but Leopold Pokagon negotiated an amendment to the 1833 treaty that allowed some Catholic Potawatomi to remain in their traditional homeland in the St. Joseph River Valley. Descendants of the families who stayed there are known today as the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians, whose federally recognized status was reaffirmed by an Act of Congress on September 21, 1994, a day now recognized by the band as Sovereignty Day.