INTRODUCTION

The major objective of this report has been to determine the location of the various bands of Potawatomi Indians at the time treaties ceding land to the United States were made and simultaneously to determine the extent to which these same lands were occupied by other Indian tribes at the time of the respective cessions. The geography of the old Northwest at the time of the land cessions was imperfectly known and little reliable information regarding the history and migrations of the Indian tribes was available. Even today, while detailed regional studies of limited scope have been prepared, the general picture of the pattern of Indian settlement is imperfectly understood. This is in part due to the complexity of the problem.

The early history of the Northwest is marked by extensive conflict on the part of the White claimants to control of the land and these conflicts had a marked effect on the location of the Indian tribes of the region. But the tribal movements were not solely the result of warfare between the French and English, or the Americans and English. They existed at earlier times, in part as a result of the economy of the people for some were semi-nomadic hunting peoples. Alternatively, as a result of a growing dependence upon the fur trade, tribal movements were necessary to continue the exploitation of this natural resource. In addition, population pressures resulted particularly through aggressive warfare on the northeastern margin of the area. It was in this region that expanding Iroquoian tribes, provided with firearms through their trade contacts with Europeans, caused many tribes to move westward beyond their reach. Some of these tribal movements penetrated the area under consideration, but above all the indirect effects of this shift in population, like ripples caused by a pebble tossed in a pond, resulted in a marked dislocation of peoples in the northern Mississippi valley despite the fact that they were remote from the initial points of conflict. Considered historically, it is evident that for most of the tribes in the northern Mississippi valley, their habitat in the seventeenth century does not correspond with their habitat in the eighteenth century. Similar shifts are seen in all subsequent periods.

While emphasis in this report is placed on specific locations of Indian villages at about the time land cessions were made, our imperfect knowledge of the area makes it essential that some consideration be paid to the broad sweep of tribal movements at that time and in still earlier periods. Gaps in our knowledge of specific settlements can to some extent be filled in by this technique. The occupation of a given area is therefore considered in conjunction with the prehistory and history of the region and the tribal movements of the Indians involved.

Methodology
In this study, primary reliance is placed upon two sources of information in determining the Indian occupation of a given region. The first, and most important of these, consists of the various written accounts prepared during the period under consideration. They are of an extremely varied nature: reports of exploring parties, reports of military expeditions, on the frontier, diaries and letters of settlers, fur traders, missionaries, and Indian agents - in short, any of a thousand and one types of documents that describe the region either directly or indirectly. The second important source of information consists of early maps that frequently give the location of Indian tribes and Indian villages. The major problem encountered in using these sources is that geographic references are often obscure making it difficult to give a precise location to the village and further since the villages tend to lack precise names, this confusion is compounded. Slightly different locations may therefore be attributed to the same village- an actual possibility in an aboriginal setting, however, because of the tendency of the villages to shift their location periodically. This is not considered a serious handicap in establishing the Indian occupancy of an area since it can but accentuate the actual occupancy of a given tribe. Confirmation of the precise location of given villages and peoples can be obtained through one field, archaeology. However, the archaeological investigation of the Indian occupation is in its infancy and in only a few instances can support the data derived from historic sources. In determining the Indian occupation of a given area, sources of the type mentioned above were consulted to determine precisely which tribes were to be found in the area. The villages, their tribal affiliation, names, etc. were recorded and plotted on a map. In general, plotting on a map gave some idea of possible duplication through variant names.

Organization of Report
The very broad area over which the Potawatomi ranged, and the even wider area so far as their connection with land cessions is concerned, makes it extremely difficult to present a narrative account of tribal distribution in a report of reasonable limits. For convenience of reference, the report is therefore divided into two sections. The first section contains a discussion of tribal distribution in terms of the specific land cessions in which the Potawatomi were among the negotiators of the treaty. This section is organized in terms of the states in which the land cessions were made and according to the particular treaty by which the cession was made. In each instance reference is made to the a real representation of the cession as given by Royce's maps in the 18th Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, published in 1899. The second section of the report centers around the Potawatomi and consists of a narrative report of the history and distribution of the members of this tribe with supplemental information on population and aspects of land use and tenure that shed light on their utilization of the area which they inhabited.