The main body of Delaware Indians lived in present-day Kansas, though smaller groups lived in Texas and Wisconsin. A 24 September 1829 treaty with the federal government canceled their rights to the land they were then occupying in Missouri and allocated them lands west of Missouri at the junction of the Kansas and Missouri rivers. The identity of the Blacksnake Indians is less certain, though Dana probably referred to American Indians living at or near the Blacksnake Hills along the Missouri River. In 1846 Pierre-Jean De Smet stated that a tribe known as the Blacksnake had given their name to the Blacksnake Hills but had recently been destroyed by war; according to him, that region was now peopled by the Sauk and Fox, as well as the Iowa. (Weslager, Delaware Indians, 369, 371–373; Chittenden and Richardson, Life, Letters and Travels of Father Pierre-Jean De Smet, 612.)

Weslager, C. A. The Delaware Indians: A History. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1972.

Chittenden, Hiram Martin, and Alfred Talbot Richardson, eds. Life, Letters and Travels of Father Pierre-Jean De Smet, S. J., 1801–1873. . . . Vol. 2. New York: Francis P. Harper, 1905.

Tindall, an adopted member of the Delaware tribe, came to the attention of the council in March after some of the members saw him with Dana. (See Council of Fifty, “Record,” 4 Mar. 1845.)