On September 5, 1838, nearly 850 Potawatomi Indians marched single file through Rochester during the forced removal from Indiana to Western Territory, Kansas. Three chiefs, Menominee, Black Wolf, and Pepinewa, were transported in a jail wagon, and the group included 286 horses and 26 wagons. Many Indians from Fulton County were among them, including Chief Wamego and people from his village, Chieftess Mas-saw, I-o-wa, and Pawk-shuk, son of the deceased Chief Aubbeenaubbee. The first night they camped at Chippeway on the Tippecanoe River, and the next morning 51 Indians were left there because of sickness and lack of transportation. The second night they camped at Mud Creek six miles south of Rochester, where the first death, a child, occurred, and wagons were sent back to Chippeway to bring the sick. As they passed through Rochester, the Indians stretched in a line a mile long, sympathetic white settlers gave them hoe-cakes for the journey, and nine-year-old Billy Ward followed his Indian friends until his mother caught up with him a mile south of Rochester and took him home. Water was scarce and roads were choked with dust. More than 40 deaths were recorded on the trek to Kansas. Father Benjamin Petit, who accompanied them, died before he could return to Indiana, and his body was later brought back for burial at Notre Dame in South Bend. The conductor was William Polke, Fulton County's first white settler; he and Father Petit tried to help the Indians, but typhoid was also killing white people in the villages they passed, and there was no medicine. The group arrived at what is now Osawatomie, Kansas, on November 4 after 61 days of travel over 660 miles.