<P> Indian lands ceded to the federal government were sold to new owners--settlers and land speculators . More than three million acres of the ceded lands in Indiana were sold in 1836 alone . The financial panic of 1837 slowed the land rush, but it did not stop it . Squatters also hoped to claim a portion of the former Indian land . Under the provisions of the Preemption Act (1838), the squatters who were heads of families and single men aged twenty - one or older were allowed to claim up of up to 160 acres; the right was later extended to widows . </P> <P> Native Americans remaining in Indiana after the 1840s eventually merged into the majority culture, although some retained ties to their Native American heritage . Some groups chose to live together in small communities, which continue to exist . In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century other Native American groups migrated to Indiana, a large portion of them were Cherokee . The Miami Nation of Indiana is concentrated along the Wabash River . Other Native Americans settled in Indiana's urban centers, such as Indianapolis, Elkhart, Fort Wayne, and Evansville . The state's population in 2000 included more than 39,000 Native Americans from more than 150 tribes . </P>

The map of southern indian cessions and removals shows that under the treaties of the 1830s