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As of November 2026; each nation's own published voice first
The nation whose own account covers this ground is the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians. In its own words: "We are the Pokégnek Bodéwadmik (Pokagon Band of Potawatomi), the Neshnabek (the Original People)," its citizens "historic dwellers of the greater St. Joseph River Valley." Federal recognition was affirmed 21 September 1994 by the Pokagon Restoration Act (Public Law 103-323, 25 U.S.C. § 1300j), whose findings name the Band "descendant of, and political successor to, the signatories of" eleven treaties — including Chicago 1821, the very instrument that takes this townsite, St. Joseph 1828, and Chicago 1833 — and record its members residing "close to their ancestral homeland in the St. Joseph River Valley in southwestern Michigan and northern Indiana." The Act's statutory service area includes St. Joseph County, Indiana — this town's county — among its ten counties; the Band's government is headquartered at Dowagiac, Michigan, with a South Bend satellite office carried in its published accounts. The Miami Tribe of Oklahoma stands at pointer for this ground: the federally recognized Miami government, at Miami, Oklahoma, recognized since 1846 following that year's forced removal — the Miami are one of the two peoples the county histories name as the valley's original inhabitants, and no Miami instrument read cedes or reserves this townsite. The Miami Nation of Indiana, the separate Indiana-based government at Peru, does not hold federal recognition and prints at pointer only, no carrier tying it to this townsite. The Citizen Potawatomi Nation (Shawnee, Oklahoma) enters at pointer on one connection only: its people's history carries the 1838 Trail of Death — the removal that, on this record, did not cross this county — and it is not presented as a nation of this ground.