03/10/2023
Abram B. Burnett – Potawatomie Chief
Abram B. Burnett was an Indian chief of the Potawatomie tribe, for whom Burnett’s Mound in southern Topeka, Kansas is named.
Burnett, whose Potawatomi name was Nan-Wesh-Mah was born in November 1812 on the north side of the Tippecanoe River near Fulton County, Indiana. His parents were Potawatomi Chief Shau-Uque-Be and Cone-Zo-Quah, the daughter of Chief Chebaas. At that time, the Potawatomi were a powerful tribe, numbering as many as 10,000. Living near Lake Michigan, the family was of importance to the tribe. He was educated at a Baptist missionary school for Indian children in Fort Wayne, Indiana, under the direction of the Reverend Isaac McCoy, a famous missionary. Later, he also attended a seminary at Bearswallow, Kentucky. Considered very intelligent, he was known to have read newspapers avidly. After his father died, he was adopted by his mother’s cousin, Abraham Burnett, who took his name.
In 1821 Reverend McCoy took Abram with him as an interpreter and traveling companion on a trip to visit other area Indians. The same year, a series of treaties would begin where the Potawatomie gave up their lands in Indiana, Illinois, and most of Michigan and began to move to lands assigned to them in northeast Kansas. Abram would become an important mediator for the Potawatomie tribe.
On June 5, 1838, Chief Burnett married a woman named D’Moosh-Kee-Kee-Awh. Three months later, he and his wife, along with the rest of the Mission Band were forced to move to a reservation in southeast Kansas, in what would become known as the Potawatomie Trail of Death. As the Indians traveled from Plymouth, Indiana to Kansas, a distance of about 660 miles, between September 4 and November 4, 1838, they were overcome by typhoid fever. This, along with the stress of the forced march led to the death of over 40 people, mostly children.His first wife died in 1842. In 1843, on one of his many trips to Washington, Burnett met a young German woman named Mary Knofflock and married her. The couple would eventually have six children.
