The treaties that did not touch this ground

1795 — 1833

Proximity is not cession, and the instruments that passed this ground by are named so that none is ever inflated into a taking: The Treaty of Greenville (1795) ceded the Ohio country and a schedule of reserved tracts about the lakes and the Wabash posts; none of its ground lies in the St. Joseph valley. The treaties of Fort Wayne (1803 and 1809) took the Wabash country — the 1809 cession, three million acres along the Wabash and its branches, is the largest of them, and its northern edge stands far south of this county. The Treaty of St. Mary's (1818) made the great central-Indiana purchase, the "New Purchase"; its northern boundary is the line the 1826 treaty uses as a reference, running through the Tippecanoe and Eel river country south of this ground. The Treaty of Chicago (1821) ceded the Potawatomi and allied lands in southwestern Michigan. The first Treaty of St. Joseph (1827) adjusted reservations on the Michigan side. None of these instruments touches the two townships of this frame.

Two instruments of the same years come close enough to require their boundaries printed. The Treaty of Mississinewa — Paradise Springs — of 16 October 1826 (7 Stat. 295; proclaimed 7 February 1827) ceded, by its first article, a tract on the Tippecanoe and Eel rivers south of this ground, and a ten-mile strip along Lake Michigan bounded east by the land ceded at Chicago — the lake-shore strip of the state's northwest corner. Its second article is the Michigan Road grant, carried in the state-as-landowner entry below; the grant is a taking of sections along a road, not a cession of this township ground, and no mile-section of it is shown on these townships. The treaties of Tippecanoe of October 1832 come closer still, and the principal one's own calls acquit it: the treaty of 26 October 1832 (7 Stat. 394; proclaimed 21 January 1833) begins its cession at the Illinois line on Lake Michigan, follows the lake to the southern boundary of the 1826 cession, runs east "to the northwest corner of the cession made by the treaty of St. Joseph's, in eighteen hundred and twenty-eight," then "south ten miles," then with the Indian boundary line to the Michigan Road, south with the road, and so by the 1826 and 1818 lines back to the lake. The 1832 tract therefore wraps the 1828 cession on its west and south; it took the county's western and southern remainders, and for ground already inside the 1828 band it is a neighbor, not a taker. Its companion of 20 October 1832 (7 Stat. 378) took the Illinois and Kankakee tract, its reserves — five sections for Shawwawnassee including Little Rock village, one section for Ahbetekezhic below the state line on the Kankakee — standing on the Illinois side. The last of the sequence, the Treaty of Chicago of 1833, closed out the Potawatomi cessions west of Lake Michigan and in Michigan; in Indiana it took nothing. The sequence for this ground is therefore short, and it is the whole sequence: title here passed once, in 1828.

Sources:

1. Treaty with the Potawatomi, 16 October 1826, 7 Stat. 295, and Treaties with the Potawatomi, 20 October 1832, 7 Stat. 378, and 26 October 1832, 7 Stat. 394 (texts in Kappler, Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties, Vol. II) — Article 1 of 1826 (the two cessions); Article I of 26 October 1832, quoting the 1828 cession's northwest corner and the ten-mile call; Article II of 20 October 1832 (the Shawwawnassee and Ahbetekezhic reserves).
2. "The Indians and the Michigan Road," Indiana Magazine of History (1987) — the 1826 Article I cessions characterized: the ten-mile strip north of the lake's southern extreme and the irregular strip along the Eel River.
3. The standard treaty sequence for northern Indiana as carried in this build's South Bend and Mishawaka records — Greenville 1795, Fort Wayne 1803 and 1809, St. Mary's 1818, Chicago 1821 and 1833, St. Joseph 1827, none touching this ground.