(pg. 95-103)
The difficulty which quite clearly had arisen from Potawatomi expansion during this period of frontier warfare was finally settled by a treaty concluded between Ninian Edwards, William Clark and August Chouteau, the United States commissioners, and what are described as "the united tribes of Ottawas, Chippewas, and Pattawatamies residing on the Illinois and Milwalky rivers and their waters, and on the southwestern parts of Lake Michigan." The concept and mention of the "united tribes" occurs again with considerable frequency in councils and treaty negotiations during this period. In general, one obtains a clear impression that so far as treaty negotiations and councils were concerned, they were a "united nation" if they happened to agree in their previous discussions. If there should be any disagreement, and particularly if any payment is to be made, Each group very clearly acted as an independent unit. In this particular instance a treaty with the "three nations" is appropriate since the Milwaukee village is repeatedly described as a mixed Potawatomi, Ottawa and Chippewa community. The treaty, concluded August 24, 1816, at St. Louis, Missouri, relinquished all claim to land ceded to the United States by the Suak and Fox through the treaty of November 3, 1804. A distinct tract of land in the northeastern part of Illinois was also ceded by the Potawatomi, this latter area apparently consisting of a region that had been dominated by the Potawatomi for some time. It should be noted that one additional provision of the treaty relinquishes to the tribes involved, all of the land in Sac and Fox cession of 1804 lying north of a line drawn due west from the southern extremity of Lake Michigan to the Mississippi river. This move, which is hard to rationalize since it was evidently felt that the group had no right to this land anyway, gave to the Potawatmi a valuable tract which they later had to reacquire by the treaty of July 29, 1829.
This immediate post-war period marks a definite acceleration in the rate of land cessions in which the Potawatomi were involved. On September 29, 1817, Lewis Cass and Duncan McArthur met with the Wyandot, Seneca, Delaware, Shawnee, Potawatomi, Ottawa and Cheppewa at the foot of the Rapids of the Miami of Lake Erie to negotiate another treaty. The amounts of land ceded at this time have been summarized as follows:
Gross quantity (acres of land) ceded, viz:
Wyandots= 3,360,000
Pattawatamies, Ottawas, and Chippewas=512,000
Delawares=8,320
Total=3,880,320
Regranted and reserved, viz:
Wyandots and Senecas=128,440
Pattawatamies, Ottawas, and Chippewas=39,680
Shawnees and Senecas=11,900
Delawares=5,760
Total=185,780
(American State Papers. Class II, Vol. 2 Indian Affairs, p. 149,
Washington, 1834).
In Article 8 of this treaty special grants are made to individuals. It is these special grants to individuals, to chiefs, and as special reserves, that constitute the acreage in the second part of the above table. Grants to individuals become even more numerous in subsequent treaties, the individuals including persons married to Potawatomi children and their descendants.
The specific treaties in which the Potawatomi were involved at this time include the treaty made at St. Mary's in Ohio on October 2, 1818. Only a few small tracts were withheld from the tracts ceded at this time. Then on August 29, 1821 a treaty was concluded at Chicago which included a large number of individual land grants. The treaty of Prairie du Chien, August 19, 1825, came to no definite conclusion in regard to the Potawatomi since it is mentioned that "as the Milwaukee and Manetcowalk bands are not represented at this council, it cannot be now definitively adjusted." This is in itself interesting in specifically mentioning a Menitowoc band at this time. It would suggest that perhaps there is again a northward expansion of the Potawatomi, moving toward the Door County area in Wisconsin which they subsequently occupied. Then on October 16, 1826 a treaty concluded at the mouth of the Mississinewa on the Wabash, again includes a large number of individual land grants.
Around the time of this treaty several important points become clear- points that represent policy decisions that markedly effect the course of Potawatomi history. Immediately following the treaty of 1826 mentioned above, the commissioners, Lewis Cass, J. Brown Ray, and John Tipton prepared a report which they sent to James Barbour, Secretary of War. In this letter, dated October 23, 1826, they deal with the difficulty of establishing clear ownership of the land and changes in ownership which we have summarized above.
It is difficult to ascertain the precise boundary of Indian claims. The lines of demarcation between the different tribes are not distinctly established, and in fact, their title rests more upon possession than prescription. The tribes are frequently intermingled, and each has sometimes a common interest in the same district of country. North of the Wabash, the Miamies and Pattawatamies are in this condition. At the treaty of Grouseland, in August, 1805, the right of the former tribe to the country upon the Wabash and its tributaries was recognized, but time and subsequent circumstances have materially affected this arrangement. At the treaty of St. Mary's in 1818, it was considered important to procure a cession from the Pattawatamies of the country south of the Wabash, and the entire cession from the Vermilion to the Tippecanoe was made by that tribe; and it seemed to be generally admitted by both of these tribes that there was a common and undefined interest in the country north of the Wabash. These circumstances rendered it proper to treat with the Miamies and Pattawatamies for the whole tract to be purchased, in order as well to do justice by them, as to prevent a resort to hostilities, the usual arbiter of Indian disputes.
In treating, however, with the Pattawatamies, we were sensible that there title to the most valuable section of the country was not as valid as that of the Miamies, and therefore the consideration paid to them is much less than that paid to the others' (American State Papers. Class II, Vol. 2, Indian Affairs, p. 683. Washington, 1834).
This analysis of the situation appears quite close to that presented in the preceding sections. But toward the close of this same letter we have the aspects of policy toward the Indian emerging that bring a marked change in the situation.
"It was impossible to procure the assent of the Pattawatamies or Miamies to a removal west of the Mississippi. They are not yet prepared for this important change in their situation. Time, the destruction of the game, and the approximation of our settlements, are necessary before this measure can be successfully proposed to them. It was urged as far as apparent that further persuasion would defeat every object we had in view. It was then important that the Indians should be separated into bands, by the intervention of our settlements.. As long as they can roam unmolested through the country, we may in vain expect either to reclaim them from the savage life they lead, or to induce them to seek a residence where their habits and pursuits will be less injurious to us. We could not purchase any particular district near the centre of the Pattawatamie country; but that tribe freely consented to give us land for the road described in the treaty, and for the settlement along it. Such a road may at times be useful to them in traveling, and it will readily furnish them with a market for their game, and the means of procuring their accustomed supplies; but, what is more important to us, it will sever their possessions, and lead them at no distant day to place their dependence upon agricultural pursuits, or to abandon the country" (Ibid., p. 684).
It is evident from this that the United States has moved into a new era in relation to its policy toward the Indians of the northwest. The policy of the United States is not to be a simple trading and maintenance of peace with Indian nations on the frontier but to either train the Indians to become sedentary farmers like the other pioneers of the area, or to simply move west of the Mississippi into the new frontier.
With this change in policy in mind it is perhaps of some value to review the situation and see where the Potawatmi still remained. By this time their settlements in Michigan were limited to the small section in the southwestern portion of the state adjacent to the St. Joseph river. They still claimed territories in Indiana and Illinois but these were confined to the far northern portions of the state. All of this implied a considerable compression in range, a serious factor to a group that still relied upon hunting. Perhaps it was this pressure, but the period appears to be marked by a northward expansion of the Potawatomi. Their earlier southward movement had progressed to such an extent that for a period in the latter eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Milwaukee became a northern frontier of Potawatomi settlement, rather than an area near the southern limits as it had once been. But now there is an increased expansion along the western Lake Michigan shore. The band centering at Manitowoc is one example of this just previously mentioned.
The final phase of Potawatomi history to be treated is primarily a matter of recording the final extinguishment of Potawatomi title to the lands east of the Mississippi and the removal of the Indians west of the Mississippi. Officially that is what was done although actually a sizeable portion of them resisted this forced removal. Part of them resisted removal by moving northward in Wisconsin in lands that were regarded as Menominee property and by that tribe ceded to the United States. As late as 1870 state and national laws were passed to force stray bands to remove, but were not carried out. Others fled to Canada, and probably a significant number simply remained in their former territories and settled down to a sedentary existence. Although the Potawatomi of the Huron had ceded their lands in 1807, a portion of this band had never moved. Publius V. Lawson reports that a remnant of this group took lands in severalty in 1888 and all became citizens. In his report, published in 1920, he states that they number about 100 members and reside on the Kalamazoo river in Calhoun County, Michigan, in the vicinity of Athens (Publius V. Lawson, "The Potawatomi". Wisconsin Archeologist, Vol. 19, No. 2, p. 99, 1920).
The steps preparatory to Indian removal included the treaty of September 19, 1829, at St. Joseph, Michigan in which the scattered bands in eastern Michigan were consolidated on 99 sections of land on the St. Josephs River. Then a series of large land cessions were made (August 20, 1828 at St. Joseph River; July 29, 1829 at Prairie du Chien; October 20, 1832 at Camp Tippecanoe; October 26, 1832 at Tippecanoe River; and October 27, 1832 at Tippecanoe River). In all of these cessions, with the exception of that of October 20, 1832, each instance the Potawatomi involved so far as actual residence in that region was concerned, were confined to one or more small tracts within the originally broader region. A modification of this policy was made in the treaty of September 26, 1833 at Chicago, Illinois. At this time in part consideration of the cession of lands in Wisconsin and Illinois the Indians were given a tract of land of not less than 5,000,000 acres west of the Mississippi. With this established as the definite objective of furthering, work was begun immediately with the cession of September 27, 1833 at Chicago, Illinois to begin to extinguish the title to the small reserves that had been given to the Potawatomi. This program proceeded rapidly and the title to four small tracts was extinguished in Indiana in 1834 in four treaties concluded between December 4 and December 17. The number of these small tract cessions increased to nine in 1836 and on April 11 in the treaty concluded at Tippecanoe River in Indiana a provision was specifically included in the treaty that the Indians were to move west of the Mississippi within a period of two years. This provision became a fairly general one and finally on February 11, 1837 in a treaty at Washington, D.C. this was the major treaty provision to take care of number of bands with whom this requirement had not been specifically made.
For the most part the Indians were reluctant to move west of the Mississippi, even when the time period expired. The manner in which the removal was finally accomplished is adequately treated in a number of accounts that have recently been supplemented by a paper of Leon M. Gordon II, "The Red Man's Retreat from Northern Indiana" (Indiana Magazine of History, volume XLVI, No. 1, pp. 39-60, March 1950). The corresponding picture of settlement and dispersal in Wisconsin has been treated by Publius V. Lawson in his article, "The Potawatomi" (The Wisconsin Archeologist, Vol. 19, No. 2, pp. 41-116, April 1920).