Is a sassafras a good tree to plant in Indiana?
Sassafras can work here, with caveats. Native and common statewide, and in central Indiana it is a woods-edge, fencerow and old-field species rather than a landscape tree — it colonizes clearings and abandoned ground, which is exactly why it shows up on the back edge of newer subdivisions built on former farm ground.
What you'd be signing up to clean up
It is not a heavy dropper. Fall color runs gold to orange to bright red and comes down over a short window; the ongoing nuisance is twig litter after every wind event and the lawn sprouts that come back each season, plus small dark blue drupes on red stalks in late summer that birds strip fast enough that most people never notice them.
Where to keep it away from
Seed-grown sassafras drives a substantial taproot, which is why it transplants so badly that nurseries barely carry it and why the stump is stubborn. Lateral roots sucker aggressively and far from the trunk, so a stem removed without stump treatment does not end the tree — it converts one trunk into a colony of sprouts across that section of lawn.
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