This cession involved a tract of land roughly twenty-five miles in width on the north or west bank of the Wabash River between Tippecanoe river and Vermillion river. While it was negotiated with the Potawatomi, they stipulated that the government must purchase any claim the Kickapoo have to the land lying to the south of Pine Creek. It is interesting to note that at this time, the Potawatomi also ceded to the United States all their claim to the country south of the Wabash River. We may note that he only Potawatmi village which can be placed to the south of the Wabash River is the town of Chippoy or Chipaille located on Big Shawnee Creek in Fountain County. The sequence of occupation in this area is well illustrated by the history of a single village that of Tippecanoe (later known as Prophets Town) located on the west bank of the Wabash, just below the mouth of Tippecanoe River in Tippecanoe County. It was originally occupied by the Miami, the earliest known occupants of the region. Later it was occupied by the Shawnee who had possession of the town when it was destroyed by American forces under General Wilkinson in 1781. Soon after, it was rebuilt by the Potawatomi who invite the Shawnee chief Tecumseh and his brother, Tenskwatawa the Prophet, to make it his headquarters in 1808. The Indians were dispersed at the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811, but the town was reoccupied for a short time a few years later.
The priority of Miami occupation in this area is readily established. The principal; village of the Wea, a division of the Miami, designated Ouiatenon was located on the Wabash just below the mouth of Wea Creek. An area six miles square about this town (actually a group of towns plus a Kickapoo village on the opposite bank) was first ceded to the United States by the treaty of Greenville, Ohio, on August 3, 1795. However, by article 8 of the treaty concluded at Fort Wayne, Indiana on September 30, 1809, the United States agreed to relinquish its rights to the area. The area on the west bank of the Wabash would therefore again be included in this cession. A Wea town on the west bank of the Wabash is shown as late as 1815 in a map compiled by Rene Paul. (Plate XL, Indian Villages of the Illinois Country, compiled by Sara T. Tucker, Vol. II, Pt. I, Scientific Papers, Ill. State Mus. 1942.) The association of the Kickapoo with the Wea at Ouiatenon indicates that they too come in at an early period, though subsequent to the Miami. The Kickapoo village located near Ouiatenon may perhaps be the town of Masanne (Mentioned by Nicolas Joseph de Noyelle in Wis. Hist. Coll., XVII, P. 222) which appears to have been one of the principal Kickapoo villages in 1735. They were in the area even earlier for in 1725 when two Frenchmen were killed on the Wabash, Dutisne suspected that they were killed by the Kickapoo.
But what is important is that this sequence of occupation does not simply represent successive occupations in which the former occupants were eliminated from the area. Villages of all three tribes persisted in the area. And the region to the south (east bank) of the Wabash saw the addition of even other tribes, for villages of the Wyandot, Shawnee, and even the Winnebago are reported in the area. The Potawatomi requirement in the treaty that the United States purchase the land lying to the south of Pine Creek from the Kickapoo represents a recognition of this fact. That this was Kickapoo county is indicated by the fact that a Kickapoo village is reported as late as 1821 in Warren County on the Wabash just one mile above the mouth of Pine Creek. (Blackburn, Glen A. -compiler, The John Tipton Papers,; Vol. I,. Indiana Historical Collections, XXIV, 1942, p. 276. Extract from Tipton's Journal of the Indian-Illinois boundary, 1821. The Kickapoo stated that this area was their rightful territory in the treaty of August 30, 1819 at Fort Harrison, Indiana.) Farther to the south, the Vermillion River represented Kickapoo country to the extent that on Kickapoo land was known as the "Vermillion Band." None of these tribes, however, appeared to have resided in this area as densely as did the Potawatomi, for example, in the more northerly section of the state. It is possible that much of the region was used as hunting grounds by villages to the south of the Wabash. The only specific Potawatomi villages known in the territory consist of Prophets Town or Tippecanoe, previously mentioned, plus "the towns of the Potawatomies a few leagues below the station of the Prophet" which are mentioned in a letter from William Henry Harrison to the Secretary of War in 1809. (Harrison, William Henry: Messages and Letters. Indian Historical Collections, VIII, 1922, p. 342).