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The tribes fragment carries the peoples whole; Howard (1907), Chapter II
Title to the Indian Village ground begins, as it does for every place in this county sequence, in Indigenous country. The St. Joseph valley at first European contact was Miami country — Howard: when La Salle reached the river in 1679 he "found the country in the possession of the Miami Indians" — and by the treaty era it was Potawatomi country, the Potawatomi having taken possession of the southern Lake Michigan shore and the adjacent territories, with Miamis, Chippewas and others mingled among them. The tribes fragment works the peoples, the village test and the modern nations whole. What the land requires is the instrument: the single cession whose calls take this townsite, proven by plotting, with every neighbouring instrument tested and excluded from its own text. That work follows.