Kansas City Wyandotte Kansas United States

The Shawnee Prophet, Tenskwatawa, a religious and political leader of the Shawnee tribe and brother of slain Shawnee leader Tecumseh, is now in his early 60’s.

In 1825, he had returned from Canada to the United States and assisted in removing many of the Shawnees west of the Mississippi and, the following year, had established a village at the site of modern Kansas City, Kansas, where in 1830 he has his portrait done by George Catlin, an American painter, author and traveler who specializes in portraits of Native Americans in the West.

The Great Flood of 1844 hits the Missouri River and Mississippi River in June and July.

The adjusted economic impact is not as great as subsequent floods because of the small population in the region at the time.

The flood devastation is particularly widespread since the region has few or no levees at this time, so the waters are able to spread far from the normal banks.

Among the hardest hit in terms of mortality are the Wyandot Indians, who lose one hundred people in the diseases that occurred after the flood in the vicinity of today's Kansas City, Kansas—the Wyandot are a people formed from the war and disease depopulated elements of the once mighty Huron Confederacy and the Petun Indian tribes who had migrated south and west.