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The valley's trade line — and the test this ground fails, as the townsite failed it: no post stood here
The test: The valley's posts stood where the valley's geography put them: at the river's mouth, at Bertrand below the chiefs' towns, and at the carrying place where South Bend now stands. For the Mishawaka townsite the test was run in that build and the answer was none — no trader's post stood at the rapids village. For this ground the same test returns the same answer, at the same strength: no trader's post, no licensed stand, no trader's cabin is recorded on the Harris Prairie upland in any source reached. The ground was the posts' upcountry — the hunting and trading hinterland north of the river, worked from the stations below. The settling record class is named in this build's notes: the federal Indian-trade license records and the American Fur Company papers. The line itself, dug for the Mishawaka build from Anson's study of L. M. Taylor in the Indiana Magazine of History and from Howard (1907), is carried here person by person, because these are the men whose trade this ground fed.
Antoine LeClare and William Burnett: The line opens at the lower river. Antoine LeClare settled a few miles upriver from Fort St. Joseph in 1781; Anson calls him the valley's first resident. William Burnett, a New Jersey independent, held the post at the river's mouth: his entry is dated 1775–1782 on the Michigan marker, 1779–1782 in the Ball State study, his warehouse to about 1791 in Howard and Anson. In 1782 he married Kakima — daughter of Chief Aniquiba and sister of Topenebee in the Citizen Potawatomi genealogy, Topenebee's daughter in Sleeper-Smith's reading; both are carried, as the Mishawaka file carries them. Their seven children were educated at Detroit. Burnett's establishment ran to house, barn, storehouses, blacksmith shop and bakery, with warehouses at the mouth, at Chicago, and on the Kankakee; his day book's last entry is 19 July 1802; he disappeared or died in the War of 1812 — one local account dates his death 1814 — and his son James kept the mouth post until 1833.
Joseph Bertrand — the nearest post to this ground: Joseph Bertrand, born at Mackinaw in 1780, built in 1808 a log cabin and fur press on the west side of the St. Joseph near the Great Sauk Trail crossing, below Pokagon's branch, at Parc aux Vaches — just north of the state line. Of all the valley's posts, Bertrand's stood nearest this section's ground: a few miles over the line from Harris Prairie, at the upriver end of the same upland world, where the trail crossed the river below the villages of Topenebee and Pokagon. The trade of the state-line country — this ground's pelts, this ground's corn — moved through Bertrand's press and the mouth post below it; no record reached carries a post of Bertrand's, or any trader's, on the Indiana side of the line in this township.
Navarre, Coquillard, Taylor — the carrying-place line: Pierre Frieschutz Navarre came in 1820 as the American Fur Company's agent; Howard names him the first white man to make a permanent home in present St. Joseph County, his post the county's first, at the carrying place — Big St. Joseph Station, at present Navarre Place in South Bend. He sold his agency to Coquillard after about a year, went with the removed Potawatomi in 1838 on the WPA Guide's account but returned, and died on 27 December 1864 at a daughter's home in South Bend; his 1820 cabin stands preserved in Leeper Park. Alexis Coquillard, born at Detroit on 28 September 1795, followed: his post is dated 1823 by the History Museum and 1824 by Anson, the conflict carried; in partnership with his father-in-law Francis Comparet he held, on the WPA Guide's figure, some $75,000 for the Upper Lakes agency; he co-founded South Bend and platted it with Taylor in March 1831 — and the line ends where this section's removal entry ends, with Coquillard conducting the removal of 1840 and Abram Burnett interpreting. Lathrop Minor Taylor, born 4 February 1805 in Clinton, Oneida County, New York, came in 1827 as clerk in charge of S. Hanna & Company's post at the south bend, the second permanent white resident of South Bend; the partnership ended in 1836 and his own trade peaked as late as 1851–53 on Anson's study; he became the county's first clerk and recorder, and it is his office that the survey and entries entries below run through. Between Navarre's landing in 1820 and the first entries of 1830, the trade was the valley's only European economy, and this ground's part in it was the part of an upcountry: hunted over, crossed, and known — by the men at the posts below.
Sources: Anson, the L. M. Taylor study, Indiana Magazine of History, and Howard (1907), as dug in the Mishawaka BEFORE THE CITY depth addendum of this project — the trade line whole, with its conflicts; the Citizen Potawatomi genealogy and Sleeper-Smith — Kakima's parentage in its two readings; the Michigan marker record and the Ball State study — Burnett's dates in their range; the History Museum (South Bend) and the WPA Guide — Coquillard's post date and agency figure, Navarre's 1838 account; Howard (1907), Chapter V, §3 — the Harris ground test is this section's own: no post named for this township in the county histories read first-hand for this build.