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Howard (1907), Chapters II–III; Chapman (1880), Chapter I
The Potawatomi tie is positive and general; the Miami tie is earlier and at valley strength. Howard: when La Salle reached the St. Joseph in 1679 he "found the country in the possession of the Miami Indians," the main body of the Miamis seated in 1680 on this river a little above the site of South Bend — the Miami village at Mount Pleasant on Portage Prairie, west and south of this township, worked in the village test below. The Potawatomi "had come from the Green Bay country" and "took possession of the southern shores of Lake Michigan and the adjacent territories now known as southwestern Michigan, northwestern Indiana and northeastern Illinois," so that the Indians known to the early English-speaking inhabitants of the county "were therefore chiefly Pottawatomies. With them were mingled some Miamis, Chippewas and others." Chapman agrees at the same strength: "The original inhabitants of that tract of country which now constitutes the county of St. Joseph, as well as the entire St. Joseph Valley, were various tribes of Indians, more particularly the Miamis and Pottawatomies." All of this is valley and county strength — it establishes whose country Clay Township lay in, and it is printed at exactly that strength; neither history ties a named band's seat to the township itself, which is the next article's test.